Sacramento Bee Endorses Jennifer Montgomery for Placer County Board of Supervisors

Montgomery for Placer Supervisor
Published: Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008 | Page 12A


Voters in Placer County's Fifth Supervisorial District have a clear choice in this election:
Do they want to re-elect Bruce Kranz, who, while highly engaged, has defied his constituents at times and has shown questionable judgment on numerous development and planning projects?
If not, if they want more productive representation in their county government, they should elect Jennifer Montgomery to the seat.
Montgomery hasn't held elected office before, but throughout this campaign, she has demonstrated the kind of temperament, vision and listening skills that would make her an excellent supervisor. The Fifth District needs that kind of leader.
The stakes couldn't be higher. This district includes many of this region's natural wonders – Lake Tahoe and Donner Summit among them – as well as numerous small communities, such as Colfax, Weimar and Bowman. In coming years, these communities will need to plan economic development with a sensitivity toward this district's heritage and delicate environment, and they'll need a supervisor who hears what they say.
The owner of a housecleaning service in Serene Lakes, Montgomery understands the challenges small businesses face, but she also is concerned about resort projects and other development that could be inappropriate for the area. She has an interest in improving transit and high-speed Internet service – two ideas that would help Fifth District residents become less dependent on car commuting.
Kranz, by contrast, too often seems seems deaf to constituent concerns. The most recent example is at Tahoe, where Kings Beach residents spent years on a transportation plan that would make their town center more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists.
Instead of supporting that plan or working to improve it, Kranz used his seat on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to push for a four-lane road with signal lights. Such a project would have served motorists passing through Kings Beach instead of the people living there.
Not only that, but Kranz defied his colleagues on the Placer Board of Supervisors after they voted 4-1 to support the pedestrian-friendly plan.
Kranz said he wouldn't take their support to the TRPA board. After he made that comment, the supervisors removed him from the Tahoe planning agency and appointed an alternate.
Kranz has shown a blind side on other issues. In a choice that seemed ripe for possible conflict, he appointed a Realtor, Michelle Ollar-Burris, to the county's planning commission. Only after The Bee revealed that she had split properties in possible violation of state law did Kranz remove her from the commission.
Kranz also refused to support the region's Blueprint planning principles with his vote on the Placer Ranch project. In addition, he has used his position to whip up unfounded fears that the Placer County Conservation Plan could result in "an increased risk of wildfire to the area."
Kranz hasn't earned a second term in office. That's why Bob Houston – whom we endorsed in the primary – is supporting Montgomery instead of Kranz. So are many other Fifth District leaders. Voters should join them on Nov. 4 to vote for Jennifer Montgomery.

Comment: 1
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alcamus39 wrote on 10/21/2008 09:00:46 AM:
Jennifer Montgomery will shift the balance of power of the BOS from backdoor, good ole boyism to an enlighted view of the modern world and how to live in it. She is the best person to run for office in Placer County in the last fifty years. She is the real, the sterling, the true.

Proposition 8 Supporter Pervert Jesus' Teachings

Voting to take away marriage rights from one segment of the population in the name of religious beliefs restricts the term “religion” to only those communities who wish to retain the power to preach to the world that the God they worship approves of their lives but not of the lives of others."
It is religious people who put their own narrow sguints above the public good and try to legislate from the pulpit that give fundamentalists such a bad name. They twist the teachings of Jesus to fit their own small-minded, tunnel vision.
Where in the Bible is one utterance by Jesus condemning homosexuality? Jesus embraced lepers and prostitutes; he certainly would embrace and love all his people. Only shallow, smug, self-serving people would ever dream of supporting an outrage such as Proposition 8. These people have the audacity and stupidity to call themselves Christians. Jesus would writhe in pain understanding what they are trying to do in his name. These people cheapen and bebase the teachings of Jesus Christ and constitute one of the sorriest offshots of Jesus' teachings and, more importantly, a perversion of his teachings.

Elect Jennifer Montgomery to District 5 Placer County Board of Supervisors

Placer County is very close to being a true Paradise. Its major flaw is its extreme politics. Four simple actions could make Placer County that Paradise. If Jennifer Montgomery is elected to the Placer County Board of Supervisors, Elaine Rowen and John Vodonick are put on the Sierra College Board, and Charlie Brown is elected to Congress, then all minuses become pluses. They will bring to Placer County honesty, intelligence, balance and moderation, all virtues admired by the Ancient Greeks and the thinking people of Placer County.

What Will Drexel University Cost Placer County? Much.

While we politicize Sierra College and allow it to deteriorate to a laughable state, the last thing we need is to allow another college, Drexel University, to be used as a ploy by Angelo Tsakopolous to allow him to develop hundreds of agricultural acres in Placer County to enrich himself. He is slowly advertising Drexel's Graduate School in Sacramento, he is smoozing our gullible Placer Board of Supervisors to change zoning so he can donate 600 acres to the university as the price of doing business in Placer County and developing the other thousands of acres he owns. People must wake up.
People must wake up and protect our beautiful county. Call the Placer County BOS and tell them not to allow AngeloTsakopolous to build this university on agricultural lands. This is a mega giveaway to a mega land speculator with the blessings of the BOS who have had an unpleasant history of dealing with Angelo Tsakopolous, who donates thousands of dollars to back Doolittle Stooge Jerry Simmons in a failed attempt to unseat Supervisor Robert Weygandt so he (Angelo) could more easily take control of Sierra College AND build his Drexel University, thereby controlling two colleges in Placer County.
First, the people must stop this land grab, and, secondly, get rid of Aaron Klein and Scott Leslie, Doolittle stooges on the Sierra College Board of Trustees, and elect John Vodonick and Elaine Rowen and then read Terry Davis's column in the AJ about all these nefarious machinations.