Save Our City is a citizens action group whose very existence is predicated on providing support of our Planning and City Commissioners in crafting, revising, and implementing our City's crucial and State-mandated Comprehensive Development Plan, and promoting open and responsive local government. The Comprehensive Development Plan these citizens support is the blueprint to guide City actions to provide for a bright and livable future for our Rehoboth Beach, including the protection of its unique character. This is hardly the sort of civic role that calls for the kind of negative remarks that is characterizing the negative approach of some city commissioners.

In the critical election of 2005 Save Our City placed issue ads in newspapers supporting the implementation of the 2004 Comprehensive Development Plan and supported the three candidates, Mayor Sam Cooper, Dennis Barbour, and Ron Paterson, who all supported the Comprehensive Development Plan and its implementation. Simply by placing the ads, Save Our City was required to comply with Delaware law by filing as a political action committee with the State. The three other candidates in that election, who clearly were opposed to the implementation of the Comprehensive Development Plan, were supported by a group called Citizens for Rehoboth Beach, consisting largely (as measured by contributions) of people with real estate and development interests and who do not live either full- or part-time in Rehoboth Beach. Ultimately, and after delay, that group eventually had to file as a political action group to comply with the law. In the following years Save Our City supported the candidates who were committed to the implementation of the City's Comprehensive Development Plan: in the 2006 election, Kathy McGuiness and Pat Coluzzi, and in the 2007 election, Patrick Gossett and Pat Coluzzi.

Save Our City first published its mission statement publicly in 2005. It is clear and can be reviewed on the www.saveourcityrehoboth.org website in the link "About." Basic to its mission and goals, Save Our City has stated over and over its beliefs that the best actions and decisions for our city's future are those guided by broad considerations and a long-term perspective rather than short-term development that benefits only a few but has profound impacts on the character of our unique city. Save Our City supports the active implementation of the Comprehensive Development Plan by our elected officials, and its volunteers work together to support our Mayor and Commissioners as they make the important decisions on planning, zoning, development, and density issues that protect our city. Save Our City participates and actively encourages and engages in public service for the good of our community

Fundamental to our democratic society -- be it at the national, state, or at our local level -- is an informed citizenry. History is replete with the disastrous examples of elected officials trying to discredit or otherwise suppress efforts to inform citizens about what its elected officials are doing. As such, the citizens of Rehoboth Beach should be very much concerned about the unprecedented recent attacks by certain city commissioners on the citizens group Save Our City. They should consider that the city commissioner who was the author and sponsor of the ordinance to reduce the size of the Planning Commission pushed the entire change through in less than fifteen days and without any formal request for public comments or hearings. Consider also that at the city commission meeting when the proposed ordinance was considered, those commissioners objecting to the attack on the structure and functioning of the Planning Commission referred to thirty or forty letters from citizens urging their city commissioners to vote against the proposed ordinance. A number of citizens spoke up at the meeting expressing their opposition to the attack on the Planning Commission. Only one person, a real estate person who does not live in Rehoboth Beach, publicly supported the ordinance. Consider that in response to this outpouring of opposition, the sponsor and at least two other city commissioners who supported the reduction of the Planning Commission said, in justifying their position, that they had "talked to some people who supported the ordinance but wanted to remain anonymous."

I can make it clear that this is precisely the sort of closed, secretive, negative, hurry-up process intended to harm the Planning Commission and the Comprehensive Development Plan that Save Our City supporters will stand against, using the most powerful tools of all -- public education and discussion. Save Our City volunteers are doing no more or less than exercising those very activities that are guaranteed by our Constitution -- the rights of free speech, assembly, and ensuring petitioning their government to address their concerns. The periodic newsletter of this citizens action group is intended to provide continual timely information to citizens, who may wish to communicate their views to their Mayor and their City Commissioners and Planning Commissioners.

Nancy Martin