" Well Said! "

" I was just wondering, in the Napa Pipe "project" what percentage of the homes and units built will be low-income and affordable housing, Napa County was given the mandate to build over 3500 units of affordable housing. That doesn't mean $300-400,000 homes (you have to make collectively $100,000/year to qualify for such a loan.) Low income housing would address the "poor" of Napa County... "

" The big picture question: Why approve more hotels and golf courses (in Pope Valley)? The leadership of this county is broken. The County and city planning staffs' are efflicted with a virus causing them to spread sprawl and strip malls ( see Am Can Article) like the plague.

New leadership is in orer! Time to cull these folks out of office before they spread more disease. "

" Mr. Townsend, you understand my ability analyze a ballot initiative. I voted no, but I also do not support 3200 homes. I was not fooled, and I know there are plenty of other ways to stop the 3200 homes, including a referendum on the actual project if it is ever approved. I was also not fooled by the proponents of the ballot initiative and their development plans elsewhere. And we won't be fooled again if they try some other veiled trickery. "

" 52% of the voters voted against N. For several reasons:

One: They were told that it was “flawed” – meaning it would lead to unintended consequences.

Two: They were told that the writers were anonymous people and therefore we should be suspicious.

Three: The Supervisors told us they wanted to make the Napa Pipe decision, not you and me.

Those were the messages. Who was the messenger?

The messenger was the developer who spent $1.5 million on sending the messages. The money carried the messages.

The messages may have been true or false. We will never know if the document would lead to unintended cosequnces. We will never know if we should have been suspicious of the creators of N. We will probably learn if the supervisors will make a better decision than you and me.

But the vital ingredient was the money. Money paid for the deceptions, starting with the name Keep Napa Napa and paid for the slick mailings which brought the message into our mailboxes. Money paid for the advertisements. Money persuaded 52% of the people to vote against N.

This was just another example of how money can control the voting process, immaterial of the issues.

Keep Napa Napa never told us how wonderful it would be to have 3200 more housing units in Napa County, requiring water and a lot of other tax consequnces. They just told us the three messages above. And they had the money to do it.

One man with money controlled the destiny of an entire population. So what have we learned from this experience? The messages may be true or false. The money got the 52% vote. "

" There is another question to be asked here. Why did less than 1/4 th of the Napa County population vote in this election? A foreign enemy cannot defeat us, but we can be defeated by the enemy of complacency from within. "

" Unfortunately, too many voters did not understand what they were voting on. I kid you not, but a “Keep Napa Napa” campaign worker came to my door to tell me to vote “no” on measure M because “Napa doesn’t need another 3200 homes”. When I informed her that she had it backwards she responded “Oh, really?” I also have friends that told me they voted “no” on measure M because they were against homes being built at Napa Pipe. After I corrected them, they would say “Oh no, are you sure?” And then there’s always that group of voters that, regardless of the issue or without even reading the measure, will vote “no”. Pretty sad! "

" I too, know many people who thought voting No on N meant they were voting against Napa Pipe.
Obfuscation won this for the KNN folks, plain and simple. "

" Get over it.

"What ever happened to truth and honesty in advertisement?"-- Don, do you truly believe that the Measure N people were all about good ol' "truth and honesty"? Please! Their agendas were probably worse than what you believe KNN's to be. "

" Gunga Ga Lunga - you know what's also sad? Is that it's MEASURE N not Measure M, like you keep repeating in your post. So, I don't think it was the campaign worker that had it backwards, I think it's you. "

" I probably received all the same flyers everyone else did from KNN (as well as many reputable local groups and agencies) regarding Measure N. Since I had already decided to vote No, I can say they money poured into the campaign didn't influence me (although the secrecy of the N measure people did, and I knew about that before the literature hit my mailbox). At any rate, I don't recall any of the literature stating that voting no on N would prevent the Napa Pipe development. From what I read, they pretty much took their info from the 9111 report. There was really no deception here.

If we want to preserve our agricultural heritage, we can all take part in that effort. If we don't, we can just sit back and complain. "

" Okay "nstands4no", guilty as charged: it was Measure N, not M. Get a rope. Put whatever letter makes you feel better after of the measure; the fact that the voting public was confused, ignorant, or apathetic does not change. Let’s try and stay focused now…and I’m sorry if my gross error made you sad. "

" I want to stay out of this except to agree with one part of one sentence in Jasper's post:
"Keep Napa Napa never told us how wonderful it would be to have 3200 more housing units in Napa County"

If Rogal reads these things: why *didn't* you spend at least part of your money defending your plan and why aren't you defending it and more than that selling it now? It might be a wonderful thing but that fact that you ignore the critics just adds fuel to the fire. Whoever you've hired for PR has done you more harm than good. "