On Tuesday night March 28th I attended the Santa Clarita City Council meeting at City Hall. If you weren’t lucky enough to be there you missed something absolutely amazing; Councilman Frank Ferry’s explosive outburst. It was an unbelievable childish tirade that was clearly embarrassing to some of his fellow council members and city workers. Heck, I was almost embarrassed as well! I was only there to speak out against the increase and to offer an alternative plan that was more inclusive and ultimately would have resulted in a solution for the city’s park fee issue.
But Frank’s proposal had more to do with annexation of the West Ranch area than it did of the park fee issue. This was evident after I exhausted the three minutes of speaker time allotted and Frank launched into a five minute rant that was woven with misinformation and personal attacks. What a spectacle it was!
The following, in no particular order, are some of the highlights from Frank’s tantrum and what was inaccurate, misleading or just wrong about what he said.

• Frank couldn’t understand why the west side didn’t want to just blindly jump into the arms of the city by annexing. He went on to say that 26 other neighborhoods did it so what’s the difference now?
Simple, the West Ranch communities have an enormous sales tax base along the commercial corridor of The Old Road from Calgrove all the way up to Magic Mountain. The other 26 annexations that the City has done to date were, for the most part, net negative on the city. In other words, it has cost the city more in services to these areas then they are taking in from a revenue standpoint.
Frank even shouted out that there was three million dollars in sales tax from the Market Place that the city was not receiving. I would argue that it is probably higher than that.
I believe that our community has every right to ask questions and yes negotiate our future. Self-determination is a basic right for our communities on the west side and Frank does not have any respect for that view.

• Frank rambled on about the residents not being able to vote on annexation. Here the Councilman was completely wrong since there have been a number of votes on this matter. In fact the community has voted at least three times over the past ten years on annexation. In each vote the community turned thumbs down on the prospect of annexing into the city. In fact, in the last vote more than 70% of those that voted said they didn’t want an annexation at this time. Also, it is worth pointing out that a number of years back a group of west side residents formed the West Side Annexation Committee to try and drive an annexation. This group managed to collect only a few hundred signatures in favor of annexation and eventually folded up and disappeared.

• Frank’s display on Tuesday night was truly unprofessional, embarrassing, and lacking in any amount of civility. Someone should tell Frank that it is the norm for a person in a leadership role to generally try to keep their emotions in check. Frank’s outburst really showcased what an immature politician he is and the fact that he has no interest in building a consensus or respecting other points of view.

Please pass the link to this blog to anyone interested.

Part II coming soon!