As everyone who reads the news knows, last Sunday’s Marin IJ cover story, “City of Rage: Why is Novato so angry” was hardly well received, in large part because, once again, the tenor of most interviewees suggested that we dumb-dumb bumpkins are emotional beyond reason for lack of reason.
Baloney. Except for the angry trolls who obviously have much deeper mental issues to contend with, people here are engaged and educated on the issues affecting every Novato citizen now and in the future.
One member of the city council afforded a small concession that maybe the wise council and city officials could try to listen a little more while simultaneously suggesting they (the wiser) then “overcommunicate” back to the folks, “what the process is and what the steps are.”
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Overcommunicate is a non-word that seems to infer that they explain what they are doing — something we often are disagreeing with — so many times and in so many ways that even we morons below get it. WE GET IT. You are not getting it. I would like to overcommunicate that thought to you.
Many also suggested things have gotten a lot nastier in our little village. That is also baloney.
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I harken back to the year 2000 and a proposed housing project known as Bahia, in the northeast corner of Novato. It was once like the waterfront properties in Bel Marin Keys, conceived as a swimming and boating oasis. But nature, as she’s inclined to do, was moving fast to interfere.
A developer was trying to get approval on a large housing development. This time the giveback was not affordable units but a much needed lock and dredge. Well, that was if you lived on the water and your dock had turned to smelly silt, right over your boat, and your driveway became your deck. If you were off water, you became an advocate of the environmental crowd who lobbied to save the clapper rail and return the land to native marsh.
It was a neighbor-against-neighbor field day, and it was nasty.
The developer’s entourage hired my company. It was an impressive crew of advisors, consultants, civic leaders, lawyers and such. We produced TV ads and videos where every word was dissected and evaluated. We had infinitely more money and, boy, were we organized.
The grassroots opposition had nothing but unfailing devotion to stopping this project. The mud-slinging went on and on until Election Day. We got slaughtered on the ballot measure – 80 percent to 20 percent.
How would Tony Soprano end this little essay – make his point and be done with it without overcommunicating?
I think “capiche?” would do it.
