The article reveals yet another outrageous power grab by out-of-touch Silicon Valley billionaires like Sergey Brin, who just dumped $20 million into “Building a Better California” to push statewide ballot measures on housing, which is currently gathering signatures. This group, seeded with $35 million from tech, including Eric Schmidt and others, wants to override local control by funding initiatives for massive down-payment assistance bonds and by gutting CEQA environmental reviews—supposedly to “speed up” construction. Local control, local impacts will not be mitigated by these projects, once again.
As residents who values our community’s right to decide zoning, planning, and development through local processes, this is deeply troubling. These billionaires, many now dodging taxes by fleeing to Nevada like Brin, aren’t protecting neighborhoods—they’re trying to ram through top-down changes that could force denser, unwanted projects everywhere, ignoring local character, traffic, schools, and open space concerns.
Housing affordability matters, but not at the expense of stripping cities of home rule. Let locals—not distant tech tycoons buying ballot access—keep control over what gets built where. This reeks of hypocrisy: they hoard wealth, move out, then meddle in our backyards. We need to defend local zoning authority fiercely against such statewide overreach.
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