Who is to stop city hall?

There are a couple of articles and letter in today’s Los Gatos Weekly about the Templar gun shop (September 24, 2013). I have no interest in commenting on this issue as feelings on both sides are so extreme, vehement and almost childishly pedantic. Nope, that’s not for me. I much prefer calmness, saneness and reasonableness.

Last week there was also an article in the Weekly about the gun shop. I joined a couple of lawyer friends for lunch that day and they were perusing the Weekly as we figured what to eat. The subject of the gun shop came up, and as usual with this topic, I remained silent. The two young lawyers both agreed that town should not be hassling any business that operates reasonably, no matter what they sell. I listened to them agree with each other and something struck me, something I am very aware of, something I feel very strongly about, but hearing them talk, I realized I’d never thought about this strong feeling of mine in this sort of context, the context of business-government relations.

I was thinking about when I was living the little farming community of Almaden and as the developer’s bulldozers would show up to demolish the farmer’s house and barn and everything else, these farmers always talked about sitting on their front porches with a shot gun to hold the dozers at bay. Of course, this never happened but they all talked about it. By the time the bozers and road graders actually showed up, the farmer’s impotent, little efforts were already quashed. The city planners in San Jose knew all too well how to make their many property take overs (also called acts of imminent domain) look fairly legitimate. I was probably around ten years old when the first dozers showed up out near Branham Lane to scrub the land clean and leave nothing but bare, rich earth to be paved and cemented over.

The San Jose city manager in those days, A.P. “Dutch” Hamann, is someone I’ve mentioned numerous time previously. He developed and perfected legal mechanisms to take over, rezone and “improve” vast tracts of privately owned land all over Santa Clara Valley. His methods were so effective and thorough that they were duplicated all over the country and the man became famous for his ultra-effective tactics. Years later, his methods were deemed illegal and even corrupt, as for the intimacy of the developers and the municipal planners. Me, I was just a child listening to the land owners rage at their own impotence, cursing Dutch Hamann, his cronies and the workers who drove the dozer and graders. I grew up in a terrified awe of what the city could do to us. To my young way of thinking, a terrorist bomb wasn’t nearly as destructive as these cadres of huge, yellow painted, land clearing dinosaurs bellowing smoke and shaking the very earth you stood on. Ha, and they had the police force to protect them and their equipment.

Later on, as the farmers who remained in the area tried to start businesses that would work on the small parcels they were allowed to keep. Maybe they’d start a liquor store or a gas station but even then, the city of San Jose would make them jump through hoops so they could somehow feed their families in this new setting, a new setting on land they had never left in the first place. And always, always, they had to fight city hall in the name of the new god, PROGRESS.

If was progress, it was good. No one questioned that. Progress was absolute, it was always good. Sorry, but I didn’t believe that then and I don’t believe it now. But I’m straying from my point. . .

(click here to read conclusion)