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A petition requiring candidates for office in Worcester to supply naturalization papers as proof of citizenship was met with strong opposition at a Worcester City Council meeting Tuesday night.

“This was strategically placed right before an election,” Worcester Mayor and City Councilor Joseph Petty said on the meeting. “It could have been placed a year ago. It could have been several months ahead. It seems to have been planted tonight, so we can all talk about it.”

He continued: “Unfortunately sometimes people believe this rhetoric, but I won't allow it.”

Worcester City Council voted unanimously to table the petition, stopping it from moving forward.

The Law already states that to run for office you need to be a registered voter, which requires citizenship. However, that’s petition The motion, submitted by the Worcester Republican City Committee, requested additional documentation.

The petition states that candidates who weren’t born within the United States but have turn out to be naturalized American residents must “present under oath to the city clerk naturalization papers or other legal documents as proof of citizenship” before they might be approved to run for office .

In its submitted justification, the committee stated: “Citizens of other countries should not impose tax, zoning, housing, infrastructure and education policies on American citizens.”

The committee also explained that the petition was submitted to acquire “FREE” press and promoting for the group.

“As you know, we live in a country based on the rule of law,” Mary Ann Carroll, chair of the Worcester City Republican Committee, said on the meeting. “I am here tonight to ask for your help in ensuring that the laws of our country, our state and our city are followed regarding candidates for election in the City of Worcester.”

Carroll added, “This is not a cumbersome additional step” to require naturalized residents to supply additional documents to prove their citizenship. “It only excludes people who are excluded by law.”

Carroll was within the minority when he spoke in favor of the petition. In the nearly two-hour public speech in the course of the meeting, only three out of 54 people spoke in favor of it.

Most said the petition was stuffed with bigotry, xenophobia and scaremongering.

“This is a trick,” said Fred Taylor, president of the local NAACP chapter, during a virtual call to the meeting. “A ploy to sow division, a ploy to incite hatred, a ploy to deter future candidates. “Hate has no place in the city of Worcester.”

Two city councilors are naturalized residents: District 5 member Etel Haxhiaj from Albania and member Thu Nguyen from Vietnam.

Haxhiaj said she was targeted online by individuals who demanded she hand over her naturalization papers and photos of her obtaining American citizenship.

“I am here to stay and I have nothing to prove to those of you who want to divide us,” Haxhiaj said on the meeting.

She continued: “Extremist ideas will not go unchallenged. It’s time for you to retire them and throw them in the trash where they belong.”

FREMONT – Unless a last-ditch effort is made to maintain the doors open, the county-run Irvington Library is about to shut at the tip of the month.

Library advocates have collected nearly 1,000 signatures to stop the closure, arguing that the branch provides essential services to South Fremont residents. But the county remains to be pursuing a plan to shut the power on July 31 and move certain services, akin to book pickup and the 3D printer space, to the central city library. Book lockers for dropping off books and a mobile bookmobile, a mobile library cart, will proceed to supply some library services near the Irvington branch, officials said.

“All the elementary schools and people who live in the neighborhood have to drive to Fremont to use the library,” said Anitha Shankar, a neighborhood resident who initiated the petition. “They should build more facilities and offer more free events for the kids instead of taking them away.”

Deb Sica, Alameda County's deputy librarian, said in an email that the county “has determined that the building, a temporary structure owned by the City of Fremont, has reached a point where it can no longer provide a sustainable space for library services.”

The city “intends to evaluate future recreational programs at the site,” she said. The library opened in 1971 and has “rarely been open more than one day a week” since 1997, Sica said. After the coronavirus pandemic, it reopened as a “limited makerspace with a small tool lending library and a reduced book collection,” she said.

“Popularity was not a deciding factor. The main reason for the closure is that the building can no longer sustain library operations,” Sica said.

Shankar argues that the branch is popular. Her two children have waited in line for greater than two hours lately simply to get free tickets to library events akin to a bubble show and a bird show. She said a mobile library and book lockers usually are not enough to fulfill her needs or those of her petitioners.

“At least in downtown Fremont, the facilities need to be expanded as the number of people, children, increases,” Shankar said. “We want the children to make friends at the library, meet new people and see our neighbors there.”

The constructing at 41825 Greenpark Drive was staffed by three regular employees who might be relocated to other facilities to assist with future library services in South Fremont. Other services formerly available in Irvington, akin to the tool collection, makerspace and 3D printer, might be moved to other libraries. The county may also expand the available makerspace within the principal library and create the Archimedes Makerspace, Sica said.

Two automated self-service book lockers may also soon be available in South Fremont on the Wally Pond Irvington Community Center and the Warm Springs Community Center to “provide modern and convenient options for picking up and returning books,” Sica said.

“We look forward to providing library services to South Fremont in new and exciting ways,” Sica said.

One of the library's advisory board members, Felix Lechner, recently resigned over the choice to shut the library, telling the town council at a public meeting that the advisory board was never informed of the closure. He told the council he had “lost the trust of this respected body.”

In an interview, Lechner said he was not against the closure, acknowledging that the constructing was over 50 years old and “something had to happen.”

“I found it unusual that the library commission was not consulted when the library was closed,” said Lechner. “I don't think the city administration was as caught off guard as I was. I think there were discussions in the city that I didn't know about.”

City Councilwoman Teresa Cox, who represents the South Fremont district where the library is situated, said she was “deeply saddened” to listen to of Lechner's resignation and has been in close contact with Shankar and the petitioners searching for to stop the library's closure. Cox's aunt, Effie Lee Morris, was the primary black president of the Public Library Association.

“I'm not just a city councilor. I grew up in libraries,” Cox said.

She said she asked the petitioners to send her some ideas about what they think should occur on the Irvington branch after it closes later this month.

MILPITAS – Plans so as to add tons of of recent reasonably priced housing projects to a south Milpitas neighborhood are facing resistance from locals who say such developments would disrupt their community.

More than 550 community members living near Landess Avenue – west of Interstate 680 – have signed a petition and urged the City Council to reject plans to rezone the avenue as a mixed-use district. The proposed designation – NCMU – would allow for the development of business, retail and reasonably priced housing units alongside existing businesses.

The move, in response to the town, is meant to offer a possibility to redevelop older industrial properties and implement state and city-led plans to construct hundreds of recent apartments in Milpitas by 2031. But Landess petitioners claim the town has not adequately analyzed the impact of the NCMU change and are concerned that a possible influx of recent residents will impact local resources.

The rush for housing coincides with Milpitas, like dozens of other Bay Area cities, moving forward with the Housing Element – a housing plan submitted to the state every eight years that lays out how cities will create a certain variety of apartments at different price points. Milpitas is required to construct 6,713 latest housing units by 2031.

To meet housing needs, the Bay Area, which incorporates nine counties, is anticipated to construct greater than 441,000 latest homes by 2031, a 15 percent increase within the region's total housing stock. Counties must also provide about 40 percent of that housing for low- and really low-income families.

Landess Avenue is just not the one area in the town slated for NCMU zoning. there are three other throughout North and Central Milpitas. The NCMU areas were identified by the town in 2021 and chosen based on aspects comparable to available land area. The council will consider whether to approve the zoning at its August meeting.

Landess is currently lined with quite a few restaurants, a small plaza with several stores and empty parking lots. The surrounding neighborhood consists primarily of single-family homes and schools. The applicants say it’s unclear how the town will handle the potential congestion of colleges, hospitals and roads. Local roads are already overloaded with traffic from ongoing construction projects across the Great Mall area – which is just a number of miles from Landess.

NCMU's zoning plans allow a maximum height of 75 feet, or six stories, raising privacy and safety concerns amongst some residents.

“I am currently next to the NCMU premises,” said petition organizer Manali Desai. “It will be a six-story building next to my home and community. I don't know what will happen to our privacy and safety, that is my biggest concern.”

In an announcement, City Manager Ned Thomas said staff was aware of the petition and recently held public meetings to reply questions and “address inaccurate or misleading statements of information in the petition,” comparable to referring to the NCMU as a project fairly than a zoning category.

According to the town, properties inside city limits are assigned a selected zoning category, which comes with its own standards and guidelines for certain permitted developments.

All future development projects within the NCMU zone must undergo a “comprehensive public review process that provides residents and business owners with multiple opportunities to voice their opinions,” Thomas said. The city's review and approval processes also include a “full analysis of potential impacts on traffic, parking, open space, noise, aesthetics, housing and schools.”

New homes in the world mean more customers, but construction nearby could impact people's shopping experience, he said.

“We understand these requirements,” he said recently in the shop, “but they will have a massive impact on us.”

Opponents of Mayor Sheng Thao filed recall petitions on Wednesday. If confirmed, the progressive mayor could face a brand new election lower than two years after taking office.

The group, calling itself Oakland United to Recall Sheng Thao, said it submitted 40,000 signatures to remove Thao from office. The once-rare political maneuver is gaining traction in California, where voters in Alameda County sought to recall District Attorney Pamela Price in November.

The Oakland group would wish 24,644 valid signatures from city voters – or 61% of the entire signatures submitted – to force the recall of Thao, who received 39,000 first-place votes in a razor-thin 2022 election that relied on ranked-choice voting.

Election officials are expected to start counting valid signatures this week.

Alameda County Elections Supervisor Tim Dupuis said in an interview that his office could have 60 days after receiving the petitions from the town clerk to finish validation of signatures.

City Clerk Asha Reed could also order Dupuis to conduct a random sampling of the petitions collected to estimate what number of are more likely to be valid, a process that might invalidate an election entirely, trigger an automatic vote or prompt officials to start a manual count.

If Thao were forced to run again in November, it could should happen before August 9, the deadline for putting proposals on the identical ballot because the upcoming presidential election.

The recall campaign, led by retired Alameda County Judge Brenda Habin-Forte, has pilloried Thao, accusing her of being too soft on crime, poor stewardship of public funds and an ineffective leader.

“As much as so-called 'progressives' show virtue in supporting the working class, it is disappointing to see them not only ignore our voices, but also constantly mock and ridicule us,” Habin-Forte said Wednesday in a press release announcing the signatures. “Now, it's time for a long-marginalized community to finally speak up for itself and speak out,” she added.

She repeatedly hit back at her critics, stressing in a press release on Wednesday that her office supports outside investments, including the redevelopment of the Coliseum in East Oakland and the brand new Ballers baseball team within the west of the town.

Thao also noted that her revival of the town's Operation Ceasefire program, which had declined in the course of the pandemic, contributed to a citywide decline in crime in 2024 in comparison with the identical period last yr.

The recall campaign, meanwhile, has questioned whether Thao's victory within the 2022 election adequately reflects the need of the voters, as she defeated her opponent Loren Taylor by just 0.5% within the election through which ten candidates competed for one in every of each voter's five ranked-choice votes.