THE MAPES MIGHT BE SAVED
by Sam Dehné
The Save the Mapes group appears to have been reading The Reno Citizen Internet Magazine... and listening to Watchdog Sam Dehne at Reno city council meetings. Sam has urged them to not kowtow to city hall; but instead be brave and stand up against the clowns. And now... not only has their attitude changed from meek compliant supplication... they are even using as their defense the very violations of Open Meeting Law that Sam has exposed over and over for the last several years.
It was Sam who originally recommended that the group use an attackative style with this scandal-plagued city hall. But they shunned his advice thinking that they could beg city hall into doing the right thing. They were proven wrong... as city hall scheduled secret meetings, thumbed their noses at good government, and voted to destroy the Mapes at a Superbowl extravaganza. A veritable grinding of salt into the Mapes wounds.
Little by little the group has finally begun to see the light. At a downtown outdoor party-rally on 3 December, one citizen after another was called to the podium to vow to do what is necessary to save the Mapes. They spoke with gumption and fortitude... finally. They said they are sick and tired and aren't going to take it anymore. But was the very person who confronted and exposed city hall corruption... who put himself on the front lines... who filed the complaints with the attorney general that are now being used as the basis for the lawsuit... was he called to the podium?
This Mapes thing is but one of a plethora of outrages perpetrated by a shameless city hall that proves time and again that it does not deserve the sacred trust of the people it "rules" over. The big problem in Reno is this thing called NIMBYism... Not In My Back Yard. Citizens rally together and focus only on the things that effect them directly. They don't seem to care when bad government happens in somebody else's back yard. And until that attitude is corrected, Reno citizens can expect to get what they deserve... a rotten regime of self-serving nest-featherers.
City hall should have been forced to cancel its plot to blow up the Mapes, and they should have been ordered to:
Cancel the Railroad Trench scheme,
These and many other boneheaded decisions were made during illegal secret meetings and thus are null and void.
Unless these (and many other) atrocities are corrected, it will just be "business as usual"...
The Golden Goose is doomed... and the Mapes is now dead.
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