12/06/2012
This was sent to me by Susana Mendez.......please reaf!!!!!!..............Robert,
Can you please invite and/or post on the bicyclist group that we will be filing a lawsuit? we're meeting at the bridge at 12pm and then taking a bus to the courthouse to be there at 1pm. We need to fill the bus and we also need as many people as can ride bikes to meet us there. this land and bridge is ours, even though they deny it. i've cut and pasted the last paragraph of the press release below, then the actual text of the press release.
"Join us this Thursday, December 6th for a community event that will begin at 12 noon at the east end of the Hays Street Bridge and travel by bus to a press conference at 1pm at the north entrance of the Bexar County Courthouse (100 Dolorosa), where the Restoration Group and community supporters will file the lawsuit."
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Press Release December 4, 2012
Contact: Gary Houston, Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group 210.240.9645
Restoration Group and Supporters to File Legal Challenge to City’s Betrayal of Public Process and Public Lands
In 2000, a diverse group of community members, working together as the Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group, began collaborating with the City of San Antonio to restore the Hays Street Bridge, recently included on the National Register of Historic Places. As part of their work on the restoration project, the Group entered into a contract with the City in 2002.
According to the terms of this contract, the Group would raise almost
$200,000 in local funds, which would be matched with the federal funding required to restore the bridge. This contract also required the city to use the funding solely for the restoration project, which would include facilities for public access to the site and historical education.
In the context of this contractual agreement, the Restoration Group solicited and received the land near the bridge, for the purpose of developing it as a park that would allow community and educational use of the restored bridge as a historic landmark. This land was given to the Restoration Group pursuant to the Group’s contract with the city, as part of the restoration project. As the Restoration Group was moving toward this phase of the project, the City began negotiating with a private developer to give the land away, without the consent of the Group. In fact, the Restoration Group was not informed of the City’s plans after the City had already entered into an agreement with the developer.
This week, members of the Restoration Group and community supporters will file a lawsuit at the county courthouse over two significant violations of trust. The first and most immediate is the breach of contract that took place when the City betrayed the community’s interests in its decision to move forward with the Alamo brewery project. The second, related betrayal is the City’s violation of public trust and public lands in ignoring the signatures of 2800 registered voters calling for a public vote on the land sale, as required by state law. This law represents a long standing recognition that park land – whether designated, used, or understood as such – belongs to the people, not to municipal government that holds public land in trust for them. For this reason, the state of Texas treats public lands as deserving of special protection from exactly the kind of privatization schemes we see in the Alamo Beer case.
Through this lawsuit, we hope to open a wider campaign of community education on who “economic development” is for, why it historically has benefited a privileged few at the expense of many, and what a true strategy of community-based development and cultural preservation might look like. In the wider context of the City’s current efforts to seek exception to these legal protections for park land in the case of Hemisphere redevelopment plans – especially related to the ethics violation involved in these plans – it is important to insist that the city honor its obligation to public space and public process.
Join us this Thursday, December 6th for a community event that will begin at 12 noon at the east end of the Hays Street Bridge and travel by bus to a press conference at 1pm at the north entrance of the Bexar County Courthouse (100 Dolorosa), where the Restoration Group and community supporters will file the lawsuit.
