After submitting 1,200 petitions to the East Palo Alto City Council, members of Youth United for Community Action (YUCA), an East Palo Alto youth group, failed to convince the city council to allow community members to be a part of upcoming negotiations with the developers bringing a supermarket to the city.YUCA wants to have residents sit in on the negotiations between city staff and the developers in order to obtain a Community Benefits Agreement from the developers. YUCA believes this agreement would provide residents with good paying job opportunities, affordable housing, youth programs and other services when the supermarket project was completed.
While the city council agreed with the concept of community benefits, council members said that there were enough existing structures in the city process through which the community could give input to the council. They also said that there were city regulations in place to support the type of benefits YUCA wanted from the developers. So given these reasons and similar ones, the East Palo Alto City Council said that it was not, at this time, in favor of changing the current city process to give residents a seat at the table during actual negotiations.
With whom do you agree? Do you support YUCA or do you agree with the city council?
1 comment:
It's great that there are young people in the community who are interested in the issues affecting the city. But they need to vary their approach. There is a time to act in a conciliatory manner and a time to be confrontational. YUCA could learn that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. While they're not looking for flies, they could be more polite and respectful when they talk to council members.
Post a Comment