Township Referrendum

By Charles Bartlett

Let's remove the albatross of the City General Plan & end Top-Down planning. The Referrendum would return government to a neighborhood basis, namely Fremont's five original townships. This could be put to a vote, district by district, each deciding for themself.

Township government seeks to return Alameda County cities and Fremont to small town governments that are scaled according to population, natural geography, schools, contiguous neighborhoods, old downtowns, markets, and architectural feel.

Fremont provides ideal conditions for such a movement since Fremont is composed of at least five town centers-- Niles, Irvington, Mission, Warm Springs, and Centerville. Today these towns are otherwise known as Fremont's business districts. Fremont's original townships combined themselves in 1956, but their individual histories go back an entire century before that. Newark refused to join and remained the "lone star". Township government would gradually dissolve incorporation and return city departments, starting with non-emergency services, to each respective, old town district.

Nor are townships written in stone. They might even be subdivided into further autonomous districts. For example, due to enormous growth since the seventies, Fremont recognizes Ardenwood and Baywood developments as business districts in their own right. There is no reason to be dogmatic about district borders. The main point is to reduce them until they make sense with respect to population, geography, and contiguous neighborhoods.

Is it possible?

What can be done, may be undone. The voter, not city planner, is the sovereign. Disincorporation would begin by submitting Township Government proposals to each business district where respective precinct voters could give their 'yea' or 'nay'. Each district would be free to leave the corporation of Fremont upon a majority vote. The voting precincts themselves would then gradually revert to townships, paving the course of their own future.

What was Fremont's Original Intent? When the five townships incorporated their intent was to protect themselves from falling into a larger civic unit of Hayward. Incorporation was suppose to preserve the small town feel, services, and way of life of the early Townships. However, during the seventies and eighties Fremont began to get restless and tried to compete with San Jose and Oakland. Now we have lost the very things which Fremont originally sought to defend. Township government can be a first, landmark step in getting these priceless attributes back!

What about city employees?

The city employees are only affected IF all five districts simultaneously dissolve 'Fremont' as we know it... Then non-emergency staff would have to seek productive work and not earn their fatty paychecks on the public dole. Presently, city employeers earn more on average than private. Fire and police services, aka emergency departments, may continue as 'Fremont agencies' or simply be transfered to the County Sheriff. The union might even consider forming a private cooperative and contract services to the respective townships. This was a unionism more common in the 1830's.

Most likely city bureaucrat unions will vehemently protest these changes, fearing loss of plush salaries, general pirks, and overly generous retirement pensions. But even unions can't hold taxpayers hostage. Nor are they invincible as Vallejo recently demonstrated when it won the legal right to renegotiate employee contracts in lieu of bankruptcy. This is a major precident and opens new doors toward reducing government according to circumstance. Worst comes to worst, Fremont can simply retire out the many bureaucrats who expropriate labor and owners by property taxes.

Restore Small Town Democracy

Democracy can't work unless scale is small. Incorporation made sense 45 years ago when Fremont's population wasn't more than 20,000 residents. Today, we are the fourth largest city in the Bay Area, and there is easly this many residents in a single business district! We've outgrown the original intent of incorporation and the voices taxpaying, productive citizens are lost in the growing shuffle. Government needs to better fit the neighborhoods, populations, identity, and people it allegedly represents. When cities get too large, issues get too abstract. Government becomes increasinly distant. Let's return civic decisions to the very neighborhoods they impact. Jurisdiction should match size for better balance.

Once small town democracy is restored, so would a small town feel as each business district would finally be unencumbered to organically grow according to their own internal character, architecture, history, charm, and geography.

What about the General Plan?

Fremont's General Plan is a disaster! The General Plan lays out zoning regulation, fixing future usages allocated to Fremont neighborhoods. It is a document that is very difficult to change, and was written really the brainchild of city management with vested interests giving consent. It is a top-down document.

Furthermore, the General Plan has ventured no vision with respect to Fremont's identity until the city was nearly built-out. And, now vision can't be salvaged unless taxpayers are willing raise major cash for massive and unrealistic redevelopment schemes. Putting Fremont "on the map" means big capital projects like an A's Stadium, bigger strip malls, more traffic, more people, and the insanely expensive project of leveling the western BART business area for a new 'downtown'.

Fremont is suffering from a pathetic identity crisis. It wants to be 'big'-- like San Jose and Oakland. But it can't break from its original town centers. However, the real problem isn't that we are unlike San Jose or Oakland, but we have never accepted our five townships. Yet it's the original townships which contain the key to reforming both local government and restoring community and small property in neighborhoods.

Each township should be free to determine its own character and charm, and free to use their own tax dollars as they see fit. Too often the city imposes developments that harm residential property values for the sake of low-income or high density housing, increasing traffic, cars parked alongside the road, pollution, and crime. These proposals are railroaded down the throats of residents because all the city can see is "money". Residents, not city planners, know what is best.

Zoning

While the Fremont has carelessly built-out,wasting agricultural and natural open spaces, losing its rural feel, etc., there are other ways local production/ consumption, family owned businesses, and pedestrian life can be energized: Namely, changing Zoning ordinances to allow mixed residential and commercial use. Rather than build a bigger and better strip malls, Fremont could let your neighbor fix up their house and start a delicious "bed and breakfast". Some of the best food in the Bay Area is cooked by tiny, unknown "nooks in the wall", mom and pop restuarants. Mixed use also brings stores within walking distance.

Once the Master Plan is thrown out, the townships could reconceptualize zoning or lack thereof according to their needs. However, word to the wise-- preserving zoning preserves regulation by a professional city staff. Contrast this with the many successful examples of nonprofessionals or volunteers who belong to homeowner associations who police against mixed use abuses in their own neighborhood. This is an example of where townships can have plenty of protections without tyrannies of zoning. Furthermore, each township could revise city building codes, opting to remove what is burdensome to small owners who have every right to improve their properties. For example, not all cities in the Bay Area require the same amount micromanaging inspection. Some require a permit to change a electrical recepticle, others are only worried about complete teardowns. That's a quantum difference! Fremont could pave a new direction of freedom for the builder-owner that cities have yet dare to give.

Conclusion

With freedom the possibilities are limitless. But the general point behind the Township government is making our city fit the particulars of locality. Fremont has failed its original purpose of protecting the small from the big, and cannot provide the quality of life demanded by its own history and personality without another major planning disaster. The Morrison General Plan is a wreck, but imitating San Jose's trajectory will be even worst. No more top-down solutions! Let's work with our strengths, returning original government back to the districts, neighborhoods, families, and small townships that first legislate it.