The halting of the $30 million City Hall project is a smoke screen. While the public believes it’s over, the Board of Supervisors pulled a bait-and-switch at the October 15th meeting, changing rules to hand downtown to the Hop and Mae Adams Foundation. By approving street abandonments without a finalized plan, the Board let a private entity grab public land based on a “loose” malleable zoning variance. Future changes now only need a rubber stamp from the Redevelopment Director, completely shutting the public out. It is not over unless we can actually vote on city projects.
The Board used underhanded legal loop-holes to keep affected downtown businesses blind. Local staples like Sumi Sushi, Basil Thai, and Yaple’s Dance Studio received no official notice about these closures. Yaple’s only discovered they were losing 67 free customer parking spaces on Plaza Street because they received a concerned citizen’s flyer. Taxpayers fund these roads for decades, only for the Board to gift them to a wealthy foundation for an application fee. We see right through this deception. We must demand the Board freeze these closures immediately.
— Daniel Alm, Carson City Resident
