pexels polina kovaleva 6185245 USE YOURE VOICE Want to keep PWC from being sold? Vote Yes in November.

When somebody tells me I can’t vote, it makes me want to vote even more. It makes me want to vote six times instead of just twice for Fayetteville Council offices. The City Council’s actions tell the citizens of Fayetteville that we should not be allowed to vote on the proposal to change the way the Council is elected.

The road blocks thrown up against voting by the Council are not surprising. People in power seldom want to give up power. The Council is no exception. They like being in power. If more people are allowed to vote, we might vote wrong, thus endangering their power.

The Council has done its best to prevent citizens from voting on this proposal. It twice postponed its vote to put the referendum on the November ballot. It waited until the last day to actually vote against it due to concerns that a non-existent form had not been completed by the proponents of the referendum.

By delaying the vote until the last day, the Council apparently hoped that ballots could not be printed in time for the November election.
Like Dean Wormer in “Animal House,” the Council used the non-existent form excuse to put Fayetteville voters on Double Secret Probation to prevent them from voting.

The Vote Yes folks immediately filed a law suit to put the referendum on the November ballot. Superior Court Judge Jim Ammons ordered Vote Yes to appear on the ballot. The Council then filed an appeal to the North Carolina Court of Appeals seeking to stop the vote. The Court of Appeals denied the Council’s appeal and ordered the Vote to go on in November.

If something walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it is probably a duck. The City Council is a duck. It wants to duck and cover up your right to vote.

The Council’s scrambling to prevent the Vote Yes initiative shows they don’t want the voters to decide how they want to be governed. Any political group, Democrats or Republicans, which wants to prevent people from voting is no fan of Democracy. Currently you can vote for two people on the City Council, the Mayor and your District Representative. Five thousand Fayetteville citizens signed a petition to put to a vote the proposal to change the election to allow a citizen to vote for six members of the Council, the Mayor, 4 at-large Council members and a District Representative. Six votes are more than two votes. The average voter gets much more input into how the city is governed if Vote Yes passes.

Your vote yes is crucial. Local ownership of PWC is on the line. The current Council is quite likely to vote to sell PWC down the river, killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Like a zombie from “The Walking Dead,” the double secret deal to sell PWC will rise from the grave. The Council will get a big wad of money from the sale to use for pet projects. The windfall will be spent. The current Council will ultimately leave office. Local control of PWC will end.

PWC rates and preventive maintenance of utilities will take a back seat to the interests of out of state shareholders interested in squeezing every dollar from Fayetteville residents. Citizens will be left holding a very expensive empty bag.

If you want to keep local control of your City Council and prevent the sale of PWC, Vote Yes on the referendum.
To quote Woody Guthrie: “Nobody living can ever stop me/ As I go walking the freedom highway/ Nobody living can ever make me turn back/ This Land was made for you and me.”

Get out and vote yes, this local government and PWC were made for you and me.

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