Listening to the Petaluma City Council
2013-02-20 01:56:10.877699+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments
Listening to the Petaluma City Council massage ordinance deliberations. Very disturbed by the PD and CMTC use of language and wording.
2013-02-20 01:56:10.877699+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments
Listening to the Petaluma City Council massage ordinance deliberations. Very disturbed by the PD and CMTC use of language and wording.
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comments in descending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2013-02-20 19:53:26.271109+00 by: Dan Lyke
For people who've asked for clarification:
There was an awful lot of "for our purposes" and "we think it would be better", but a distinct lack of discussion of the underlying drive for the ordinance, and the mechanics by which it would solve the alleged problem. I believe that every policy change discussion should start with "here's an objective quantification of the problem, here's a proposed solution, here's why we think this proposed solution will solve the problem, here's an estimate of the costs of the solution on the various stakeholders".
None of those things were really actively addressed, instead the whole proposal came across as "more control is good" and "we're okay with collateral damage as long as it helps us get our control".
The CMTC rep was trying very hard to avoid pointing out that CMTC was fine as long as they and their member schools got their pound of flesh. As a stakeholder, the CMTC has a huge economic interest in being a major part of the process, and yet the answers were evasive, and at one point Mayor Glass had to stop her and ask her to address her comments solely to the aspects of the proposed ordinance, not to hypotheticals that may or may not occur under various aspects of state law that had nothing to do with the ordinance.
If there are issues with the externalities of businesses running in Petaluma, address those. If there are issues with kidnapping (ie: "trafficking"), address those. However, the proposed ordinance was mostly a matter of "give massage practitioners more hoops to jump through so that the police department has more tools with which to harass citizens", and we've seen over and over again that that approach to legislation never has good outcomes.