All the ducks are lined up. The votes will be in August and there will be three votes for all of the annexations. If you are reading this and you are angry that three people will decide to triple the size of our town, then I need your help.

I need a line of volunteers to show up 08/06/2008 at the city council meeting at 7pm. When the public forum starts, go to the podium one at a time and simply say your name, you are a resident of Los Banos, and you are against the annexations at this time.

The current council has a circle of friends and families that believe annexation is good for the city. They need to see and hear from others who do not want the city to continue to grow at this lightning pace.

According to the Los Banos Enterprise, despite all that was revealed about his relationship with Ranchwood Realty, the Mayor is going to vote on the annexation of nearly 1000 acres of farmland requested by Ranchwood. The paper quoted the Mayor as saying he does not know which way he is going to vote. I find this surprising because I know which way he is going to vote. The Mayor will vote for the annexation. This is just another example of the Mayor not being honest. The Mayor has also claimed that we have the highest building fees in the Valley. We do not. The City of Ripon has double our fees.

I don't think Gene Forte got his full five minutes. I wanted to hear the letter that the Mayor wrote. If you missed what happened, Gene was presenting his reasons for recalling the Mayor and was reading the Mayor's letter to the FPPC and was about three minutes into his five minutes of public forum when the Mayor cut off his microphone. Bill Vaughn looked shocked and made a comment to the Mayor as the Chief of Police walked towards Gene and the camera was pointed to the Los Banos Logo and all audio was cut off. The event was pre-planned as evidenced by how organized the reaction was. The viewer was left to wonder what happened to Gene and why was he not allowed to speak in public forum?