"The Old City Business District will now act as the RCO for the neighborhood when it comes to land use and zoning. However, as a business district, it has different objectives than a civic association, Schiavo noted."
When the special service districts were created, it was always quite obvious that our civic associations were going to help them take charge, while being lured with temporary delusions of grandeur and power. Once the new neoliberal systems were built and normalized to take over neighborhoods, as unaccountable mini-dictatorships; of course, the civic associations would themselves lose power and be marginalized, like they always had been in the past, as cranks.
That time has arrived! A different grand plan of tactics, with the same goals, is in place for the formerly public parks. And the marginalization of these groups like FOCP can be easily explained too.
Briefly. When the city designed the secret plot to charge huge rents to community groups using the parks, they created 3 categories of stakeholders and a way to grant "waivers" for some of the total charges. Last year, they gave waivers to everyone, because independent neighborhood groups would fall into category 3. Category 2 is designed around groups like FOCP. And, of course, category 1 is designed for special service districts like UCD and CCD.
Waivers are withdrawn from category 3 starting now. After a period, the "Friends of" groups will lose their waivers, and the obedient ones, will get "expert assistance" from a corporation waiting in the wings. Finally, the special corporate service districts will be allowed to give themselves and cronies waivers. And they will be allowed to collect rents, called permits, from every independent grass roots groups so important for the quality of life in urban neighborhoods.
I've heard that category 3 stakeholders are already being threatened with extreme rental charges for park events. It's very hard to know the full chilling effect it has in neighborhood culture, because neighborhood groups that have festivals, etc. just quietly disappear. And the story is never known outside of the few event organizers, who can't pay the huge park rental fees. Eventually, no independent neighborhood group will be able to use the park without corporate sponsors!
Furthermore, in my opinion, the new park rental fees seem to be designed for kick back to the special service districts that will control all parks.
With our permanent revenue crisis, they will allow the special service districts to keep the park rental fees they collect, and justify it as "revenue" because of all the self proclaimed charities they shower upon us consumers. They define category 1 organizations around the idea of large budgets, so this form of the privatization of taxes will also be part of the transformation of parks into corporate commercial spaces much like in Turkey.
It seemed that this old city story was a good place to remind folks of the larger picture that we can't continue to ignore. As well as to see the end of the tenure and role of the civic associations. This story isn't about an isolated incident in old city, but is part of the shift of power for a totalitarian state, that will use many different techniques built into the many secret policy changes of the past several years. We can see the fully formed architecture of control, which will control the population at the neighborhood level. The civic associations were used for several years to defend and normalize secrecy and total corporate control of the people without accountability.
The last several years should be thought of as the golden years for these civic gangs and their illusion of power. Now, in neoliberal capitalism, the civic gangs have served their purposes and are obsolete!
Still sorry to shine the light after all these years,
Glenn
PS: To formerly public parks from Turkey to Clark Park, rest in peace.
