CABPRO has proven this past year it isn’t a gracious loser: When its favored candidates lost local elections in the past year, it slung mud at the naysayers. It also bashed people who questioned — and prevailed — on how it characterizes its nonprofit status.
Now the group has proven it can’t be a gracious winner either. They acted like boors after getting their way — barely — on a fire safety issue masquerading as a property rights dispute this week. They insulted supervisors and the Rood Center staff, who were merely trying to work out a compromise between the landowner, fire officials, planners and neighbors. Everybody else involved was perfectly civil.
After hours of debate on Tuesday, our supervisors voted 3-2 to side with a former supervisor, Crawford Bost, instead of fire officials, the county staff and some neighbors. The details — “Supes to former supe: A locked gate is OK on your emergency access road” — is here. Ed Scofield, Hank Weston and Ted Owens voted for the measure, while Nate Beason and Terry Lamphier voted against it.
CABPRO executive director Martin Light — who’s rarely “at the CABPRO office” — managed to make this meeting, along with hard right bloggers Russ Steele, George Rebane and CABPRO founder Todd Juvinall.
Hard-right sympathizer Robert Ingram was there too, with his “crap through a goose” remark. He also insulted the board of supervisors and planning commission for their diligence in coming up with a compromise.
Light and his cohorts insulted Beason (a fellow Republican) and Lamphier after the vote:
•”As for Super Beason what can be said other than another play to the Nevada City voter base,” Light wrote on Russ Steele’s blog. “Is there any chance someone could ask him to stop playing with the oversized rubber band during a serious public meeting? Odd behavior at least. Reminds me to order up that old classic Caine Mutiny in which the character played by Humphrey Bogart rolls ball bearings in his hand while making decisions.”
This is typical of the smear and mudslinging to any dissenters. Nate’s point was a cogent one: The fire officials raised safety concerns about having a locked gate on an emergency access road. Imagine that!
•Light said this about Lamphier: “I’m glad to have heard Super Lamphier admit he’d met with and received marching orders/talking points from those opposing the Bost’s project.”
Another smear from CABPRO: All Lamphier said was that he met with the group to hear them out. It’s more like “due diligence,” not receiving your “marching orders” from somebody. For his part, Weston volunteered that he was friends with the Bost’s.
•Then Light insulted the Rood Center staff’s professionalism: “I would like to know how much time our left leaning county staff spent building a defense against the Bost’s.” That’s not what they did at all: They just were trying to apply the “rules of the road” (including an ordinance passed by the supervisors) with the application.
“Thanks to George Rebane, Marty Light, Robin (Cayton-Sutherland), Robert Ingram, Russ Steele and many more of those that still cherish the right to own and use their own property,” Juvinall said.
The result — much to the fire officials’ dismay — is a locked gate on an emergency access road.
CABPRO is a group that lives in the past “glory days” of NH2020 and has been “rewarded” in our community for its nasty tactics. It’s time the community stand up to them — as you would with any extremist or radical.
In the meantime, let’s hope somebody doesn’t get trapped at the locked gate during a fire evacuation — and lose their life.
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