Third in a series. 

Re: “Rose Studies Council Members’ Minds”

When he was on the City Council in the first years of this century, Steve Rose said that some of his colleagues, indeed a majority, shied from approving affordable housing because they feared a backlash from the electorate.

A timely observation since this very week the present Council, not financially positioned to fulfill a mandate and build affordable housing, approved “indefinite” funding of the city’s Rental Assistance Program, the next best choice.

“About the year 2004,” Mr. Rose recalled, “there was the Olson Group’s project on Grandview that would have removed one of the two trailer parks. It would have replaced the park with about 150 affordable units.”

Eleven years later, Mr. Rose, the first ex-Councilman to favor ending term limits, remembered the community’s response to the vote:

“Mixed.”

“That lost on a 3 to 2 vote. Alan Corlin and I were in the minority. Albert Vera, Carol Gross and Gary Silbiger were against it.”

(To be continued)