Reply to Holding APS Leadership, Staff and School Board Accountable for the Boundary Mess

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Reply to "Holding APS Leadership, Staff and School Board Accountable for the Boundary Mess"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's the thing about trying to bully someone into doing what you want. One element of bullying is that the bully has to have some kind of power over the person being bullied, such as physical strength, social influence, etc. SA has no power over NA, so you're not in a position to bully them into anything. If you want their help, you need to try a different tactic because all this one is doing is causing them to roll their eyes and tune you out.[/quote]

Yes, and that's exactly the problem. NA helps itself by confining AH to SA. It's not just that it creates segregated schools in SA, it's that it creates "high performing schools" in NA by allowing that portion of the county to get ever richer, ever more exclusive. It's not doable. This housing policy pits a larger, wealthier, and better resourced north against a poorer, smaller, less politically powerful south. By design.[/quote]

If that were actually what was happening, you'd have a point. But it's not. Overall, people in NA tend to oppose the expansion of AH everywhere in the county, not just in their own neighborhoods. The advocates for AH tend to come from SA, and they are the ones choosing to put it in SA. [/quote]

It's not really something that is happening at the level of individual homeowners. It's more structural than that. Has there ever even been an Arlington Mill, a Columbia Hills, a Gilliam Place, a Berkeley type project in NA? No? Is it really even imaginable that APAH would try to build a 300 unit, 100% CAF to 60% AMI development north of route 50? Consider that it's not that SA wants these developments, or that a handful of "activists" in SA have this power. Maybe it's that SA is generally not as wealthy and well organized (this is the same thing) and can't fight off such projects, much less discourage them from being proposed in the first place. Have you noticed that APAhs top officers all live north of lee highway? Do you think that is coincidence? No. Politics is the art of the possible. They know that SA is to weak to resist, unlike their own neighbors.[/quote]

So? The point still stands that NA residents tend to oppose this development everywhere. You look at the fact that they haven't stopped it from happening and assume it means NA isn't opposing it, rather than considering the possibility that NA isn't the Great and Powerful Oz after all. Remember, they couldn't even get Vihstadt re-elected last month, and he was the best hope in the short-term for stemming the tide of AH. Instead, SA overrode that vote and elected the guy who wants more AH.[/quote]

You're clueless. Last time I checked NA didn't raise a finger to block any of the aforementioned developments. And Vihdtadt didn't oppose AH. He knows the AH is a sacred cow so he at least took a county wide stance -- he helped encourage its construction in his own neighborhood, Westover. Jesus. Read his campaign bio before bloviating.[/quote]

He wasn't opposed to AH in principle, but he did believe that the CB shouldn't keep approving new AH developments while the county was struggling under the weight of the recent rapid population growth. His position was that we needed to get that under control (e.g., increase school capacity to manage current population) before inviting more.[/quote]

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