Dear Editor,

The Nederland Board of Trustees and Mayor voted to use your tax dollars to give away your public land for free to a corporate business. Worse, they didn’t want you to know about it.

On February 20, 2024, the Nederland Board of Trustees voted to adopt Ordinance 859, giving away free public Land valued at approximately $640,000 to a private corporation known as “Teens Inc” with the intent of building a childcare center at 750 W. 5th St., Nederland. The Nederland Board and Mayor deliberately chose this route rather than to send the issue to a public vote, disenfranchising Nederland voters from making their own decision, ultimately bypassing our democratic process. Why would they do this? The board felt that a public vote wouldn’t go in their favor, so they decided to make the choice for you. In April, a group of petitioners circulated a petition around various Nederland neighborhoods acquiring close to 100 signatures to force the town to send this matter to a public vote. As one of the petitioners, I can tell you that we were greatly disturbed by the board’s eagerness to bypass the democratic process, ultimately designed to disenfranchise the registered voters of our town. Unfortunately, we’re at a time in our history where our governments feel as though they can make our decisions for us if it benefits their political agendas or personal career aspirations. We must send a message to our local politicians that they cannot cut us out of making our own decisions about our public land.

1) The referendum petition required that the town send this matter to a public vote, which is currently scheduled to occur on July 30th. The petition language, that was printed in Resolution 2024-21, linked below was intentionally misworded to confuse voters.

2) The Resolution states: “Whereas, the Board of Trustees determines that it is in the best interest of the Town to promote voter participation and cost efficiency in the special municipal election and finds that conducting a special election as a mail ballot election will advance these goals.” Dear readers, please know that this is completely false. Not only did the Board choose not to move this issue to a vote in February, we had to force them to hold a special election vote by circulating a legal petition, approved by the town. They didn’t want you to vote!

If you haven’t heard about this proposal, Teens Inc. is asking the Town to provide more free land to their corporation so they can build a 14,000 sq. ft. commercial building on .44 of an acre of land in a small, residential neighborhood. Voting against this measure secures your rights as Nederland taxpayers for the Town to be more fiscally responsible, and to secure the democratic process.

Jon Allen

Nederland