COUNCILMAN CHRIS PUTNAM TO:

Colleyville Citizens

DATE:

Wednesday April 29th, 2015

RE:

Glade Road Redevelopment | Voting FOR Glade and Colleyville (Res 1) www.voteforglade.com

EARLY VOTING: ELECTION DAY:

April 27th-May 5th at Colleyville City Hall Saturday, May 9th at Bransford Elementary School

Colleyville Friends and Neighbors, In order for us to fix Glade Road, to respect property rights, and to save taxpayers time and money, I am writing to ask you to vote FOR the Protect Glade Road resolution. Voting FOR Glade to protect Glade is a vote FOR Colleyville to protect Colleyville citizens from overreaching government. Voting FOR Glade to fix Glade is a vote FOR everyone who uses the road. I believe that city officials are servants, not masters. We are elected to represent and to stand up for our fellow residents. No development project in any part of our city should be done without actively and productively engaging affected Colleyville residents and businesses. The decision to vote FOR Glade Road is finally where it belongs — in the hands of the people. Some city officials aren’t happy about that. These politicians already have their own plans and agendas that don’t include input from residents (particularly those who live along Glade) regarding the road’s redevelopment. And so, as many of you know, these politicians have actively led an opposition campaign based on false fear, manipulating messages, and political tactics and games that are more to be expected in DC or Chicago instead of here in Colleyville. So I want to take this opportunity to directly share with you an honest and straightforward perspective on the efforts around Glade and on our options to protect and redevelop Glade Road. The issue of protecting Glade Road is two-fold: what do residents want for Glade and how do residents want to impact and influence future decisions made in Colleyville — how city officials should involve and treat their own residents and businesses when considering major public projects?

The Responsible Solution FOR Glade Road to Fix Glade The benefits of voting FOR Glade are many, and the consequences of voting against Glade are clear. By voting against Glade Road, career politicians in Colleyville get their way, and we taxpayers would have to finance and endure a +$20M, 10-year construction project that would require the use of eminent domain “all up and down Glade Road” (a direct quote from senior city staff). Instead of sidewalks (as residents were willing to compromise for), ten-foot-wide trails would be put on private property of homeowners (council still hasn’t ruled against this option), most of the mature tree canopy would be lost, raised curbs and gutters would be installed, and the residential feel of the neighborhood would be replaced by millions of dollars in concrete. Voting against Glade is one more step in the ongoing effort to “Southlake-ize” our town — an effort that a majority of Colleyville residents are resisting. In contrast, voting FOR Glade is a vote to fix Glade — to prioritize traffic flow, to improve critical intersections, to save taxpayers over $10M, and to complete construction within just 3 years. www.voteforglade.com

Page 2 of 4 By voting FOR Glade, we allow for needed infrastructure improvements utilizing the existing public right-of-way, while respecting and defending our belief in private property rights. By voting FOR Glade, we can improve the Bluebonnet intersection — removing stop signs and grading the road down to improve visibility. We can add roundabouts at Riverwalk and at Bransford. These fixes alone, that the city council (including myself) have approved already, will solve a tremendous amount of the peak-hour traffic. By voting FOR Glade, we can use a process called fulldepth reclamation to completely rebuild the road down to its substructure for a long-term fix that will last for decades. By voting FOR Glade, we can even add turn lanes where they make sense. By voting FOR Glade, we meet the needs of the entire Colleyville community. We save taxpayer money, we slash construction time and cost, we protect the environment and character of Glade, and we ensure the city doesn’t forcibly seize the private property of affected residents.

Broken Culture and Trust at City Hall Some city politicians have offered voters a false choice to deliberately mislead and confuse residents about the alternative project FOR Glade. For example, you may hear that “if the Protect Glade initiative passes, nothing will be done to Glade for five years.” That is both ridiculous and false. The city council can and should prioritize and budget to redevelop Glade within the framework of the citizen resolution. And the council can take responsibility and do that at any time provided four council members agree on the solution. That’s precisely what we are elected to do — to establish budgetary priorities for the city. On a similar note, the council can and should survey residents affected by redevelopment like on Glade — fulfilling the polling component of the citizen resolution; the council already consistently conducts and relies on citizen survey data for projects. Recently, one councilman has manufactured a desperate, misleading, and last-minute public safety argument for a political action committee (PAC) against Glade in an effort to craft an emotional appeal, to instill fear within our community, and to confuse voters. Everyone certainly wants safer roads. The problem with this councilman’s fear-inducing fabrication against Glade is that safety has never been the rationale for Glade redevelopment; our city’s public safety officials and executive staff have made multiple statements and have provided data proving this councilman and the PAC’s assertions to be political lies. Just this last week, city staff affirmed, once again, that Glade is a safe road and that public safety is not the reason to redevelop Glade. Sadly, instead of communicating directly with voters about Glade’s redevelopment, some council members, like the one referenced above, are hiding their political tactics and games behind a puppet PAC that has tried to manipulate and confuse voters with its signage, its personal insults, and its claims. The misleading signs all over town are patently false, and the fact that a city councilmember is promoting this false narrative should be offensive to everyone in our community. Several attorneys are now on-record concerned that the elected officials, who have concocted the false safety narrative and have put up signs saying such, have now exposed the city — and all of us as taxpayers — to new liability claims for wrongly implying Glade is unsafe. And all of their efforts are for what? Simply to try to manipulate you and to win an election. That’s wrong. Colleyville deserves better than that. www.voteforglade.com

Pol. adv. paid for by Chris Putnam Campaign

Page 3 of 4 While Glade does have accidents as one of the most traveled roads in town, accidents on Glade, like on many roads, occur at busy intersections and roundabouts with the vast majority being attributable to “driver inattention” (texting, talking, technology, etc.), “failure to control speed,” and “following too closely”— not because of Glade’s design. These objective facts, provided by our own public safety staff, are available online at Colleyville.com during the 10/21/2014 pre-council meeting (item PC-2) as well as during the recent 3/17/2015 pre-council meeting (item PC-2). Links to videos from these meetings are available at the bottom of this letter. At the March 16th pre-council meeting, our public safety and works officials also shared that accident rates in Colleyville are dramatically down so far this year — particularly on Glade. As with any road, accidents are likely and sadly inevitable; unfortunately, government can’t prevent all accidents, injuries, and traffic deaths. But the causes of accidents on Glade have nothing to do with the current road configuration or the resolution you’ll vote on. Your decision to vote FOR or against Glade is not a vote around public safety. The honest truth is that, understandably, nothing anyone has proposed addresses the “driver inattention” cause of accidents. So, we must not allow a few politicians demagogue a false narrative for their own political gain. Colleyville deserves better.

Giving our Citizens a Voice The reasoning behind this ballot initiative is to give affected residents — and all Colleyville citizens — a voice in this redevelopment project. If elected council members had originally listened to what affected residents wanted and made simple compromises (as the residents were willing to do), this ballot resolution would not even be necessary. Because city politicians sadly ignored their own citizens, we are now having to deal with the lies from the same few and an effort to split apart our community. The resolution I am asking you to vote FOR was the only available option for residents, whom city politicians scorned and have even mocked. One can only speculate as to these politicians’ motives (personal and professional). The fact remains — support FOR Resolution 1 will allow for better alternatives to be deliberated in an open and public forum. Over 1000 residents signed the petition to Protect Glade Road for a simple reason — to put the issue in the hands of voters. Citizens across Colleyville are FOR resolution 1, property rights, and improving Glade as attested to by the diversity of the resolution’s petition signers; this issue isn’t just about individuals who live along Glade — over 80% of the resolution’s signers do not live on or within a block of Glade Road. Even still, a council member has called these concerned citizens (including many who have their property at risk) “special interests” and has accused them of “hijacking” the city’s plans for the road. It is disgraceful and offensive that some politicians against Glade have chosen to make personal attacks on their own constituents simply for trying to influence a policy solution rather than leaving the fate of their own neighborhoods in the hands of a few, long-term politicians committed to transforming Glade into a commercial cut-through corridor. Only arrogant politicians, who have forgotten their duty to represent the interest of the people impacted by their policies, could take such a position and willfully manipulate an issue this important simply because citizens have the courage to threaten their agenda.

www.voteforglade.com

Pol. adv. paid for by Chris Putnam Campaign

Page 4 of 4

Property Rights Matter Defending your private property from the forceful taking of government does not make you a “special interest.” Homeowners have every right to push back against such government overreach. It’s the government’s duty to protect individual property rights, not to threaten them. It’s important to be mindful that next time it could be your property the government wants to exploit, and that is a very real possibility for many Colleyville residents if the current Master Plan of those against Glade is realized. Cities go to great lengths to protect their eminent domain privileges over citizen property; broad allowances for eminent domain are in our city charter for that reason. Many of us already personally know this and have been victims to such through the city’s nonsensical “Sidewalks to Nowhere” policy. The most recent tactic by the few politicians against Glade to confuse voters is the suggestion in a mailer that the threat or use of eminent domain would not be required on Glade. As a council member, I personally lobbied our council on multiple occasions to take the threat or use of eminent domain off the table regarding Glade. They never agreed, because it will be impossible to implement their plan against Glade without taking private property. We likely would have avoided this resolution altogether if the threat or use of eminent domain would have been taken off the table by those against the Protect Glade resolution. Again, citizens willing to compromise, while the politicians ignore them. Let’s take a stand for our property rights throughout the city and vote FOR the resolution.

We are all Glade Road. We are Colleyville. We must celebrate that residents are participating in our city’s governance. Our political leaders should listen to them instead of attacking them. Citizen and business-owner feedback and participation are critical in helping city officials make logical, fiscally-responsibly decisions that benefit the entire community while at the same time protecting the property rights of residents who are vested in our community’s success. Community participation was critical to us finally making the right decisions on Highway 26’s redevelopment, and I am confident our residents will make the right choice FOR Glade when they fully understand the issue including the costs and the impacts that the proposal against Glade will have on their fellow neighbors. When you vote in this election, please focus on the bigger picture — not only FOR Glade Road itself — but also FOR the future of Colleyville. How you vote will affect how our city government makes decisions and respects citizen input in the future. Your vote FOR Glade is about asking city hall to listen to residents better and to be more accountable to the people that they serve. So let’s fix Glade, respect our property rights, and save taxpayers time and money. Let’s vote FOR Resolution 1. For Colleyville, Chris Putnam | Colleyville City Council, Place 3 www.voteforglade.com Pre-Council Meetings (Items PC-2): http://is.gd/2x94tj | http://is.gd/bXlIlc Sidewalks to Nowhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUW11mD5s7s www.voteforglade.com

Pol. adv. paid for by Chris Putnam Campaign