By Allen Payton

In a letter to the editor to the Herald, responding to my column about Lamar Thorpe needing to be removed from his position on the Antioch Economic Development Commission, over his leadership of the card room initiative, Thorpe claimed that one of the Antioch Council Members signed the petition to place the initiative on the ballot.

In response to an email question to each of the council members, only one of the Council Members, Monica Wilson admitted to signing the petition, through the spokesman for her campaign for Supervisor, Jon Colmenares.

In an email from Colmenares, he wrote “wanted to answer your question regarding petition signatures for cardroom initiative. Monica signed the petition, and along with the rest of the Council and Mayor, voted to put it on the June ballot.”

Mayor Pro Tem Lori Ogorchock was first to respond to the email with a brief, “Not I.”

Mayor Wade Harper was the next, also denying he signed it.

“I did not sign the petition,” he said. “I would be interested to know if any Councilmember signed the petition.”

In a phone conversation with Council Member Tony Tiscareno, he said he did not sign it, either.

When reached for comment, Council Member Mary Rocha stated “I wouldn’t have signed that petition.”

Wilson did respond later to the questions of why she signed the petition and didn’t inform the public of that during the council meeting, and why she didn’t make a motion to adopt the initiative language as a an ordinance.

“I believe in organizing a community when it needs something,” she stated. “I do believe that the voters should have a voice and I do not believe in imposing ordinances on them. I believe in involving voters for what affects them directly. That for me includes laws that are as high profile as the cardroom initiative and why I signed it. I joined the Mayor and council because I felt that this was an important issue to be put forth to voters.”

One additional email was sent asking Wilson to clarify whether or not she supports the ballot initiative language and what she thinks a council member’s job is if the doesn’t believe in imposing ordinances on the public. Please check back later for her response.

The card room measure will be on the June 7th ballot. It requires a majority vote to pass and become law in the city. If it fails, the current city ordinance of allowing two card rooms in town, down from the previous five prior to 2013, will remain in force, with only one currently operating in Antioch.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2016 at 10:53 pm and is filed under News, Politics & Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.