Venoco’s Weekend Invasion

Venoco promises Carpinteria lots of money and they tout the safety of their proposed Paredon oil rig, yet they try to circumvent the City of Carpinteria and its established review process. It is interesting that this last weekend, Venoco hired a company to bring in people to collect signatures from the locals, yet these people did not seem to know anything about Paredon since they did not live here. They were paid according to the number of signatures they collected.

While putting the issue to a vote sounds like the democratic thing to do, we already have a democratic process in place: elections for our city council. The Venoco initiative stops the planning process dead in its tracks and impartial data about this highly technical project will never be known to the city councilmembers or the voters if the initiative passes. We should let our City Council and the city planning process continue its work so the facts will come out for all.

We should allow the public hearing process to continue so we all have the chance to participate and let the city council know what we think. That is the process that has guided us for decades and has resulted in the wonderful small town we all now enjoy.

If we let Venoco, a private company, or any private company, take over our public hearing process then why should we have a government or city council at all?-Louise Hansen