Plans to build a Social Security Administration field office in east Visalia are teetering on the brink of collapse after a neighborhood informational meeting Tuesday night degenerated into chaos for the La Jolla-based developer in charge of the project. ...
Asked if the Social Security building would go up even if residents and the city oppose it, Metz said: "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." ...The session exploded into a free-for-all after local architect Lyle Munsch of Visalia-based Canby Associates, who has been working on plans for the Social Security building since February, tried to describe the building's design and aesthetic qualities.
"I don't care if Picasso paints a bucket of garbage, it's still a bucket of garbage," resident George Landis said.
Landis' sentiment was echoed by others, who shouted down Munsch, forcing him to discontinue his presentation. ...
Representatives of the GSA and Social Security Administration were invited to the meeting but did not attend.
Can someone who lives in that part of the world explain this to me? I think that the residents of most cities would welcome a Social Security office. Are they worried that poor people might visit an office in their midst?
2 comments:
I don't know anything about that area but I think yeah, they don't want poor people in their neighborhood. It's also extra traffic and office buildings are ugly with the parking lot, dumpsters, etc.
Don't know much about the controversy. However, I've been in the Visalia SSA office. It was pretty dreary, not unlike many SSA offices. Visalia is a Central Valley of California, Tulare County. It is a small city, surrounded by raisin growers, dairies and cotton ranches, to name a little bit of the local farm industry. Many small towns in the county are primarily Hispanic farm workers. There is a state prison in the south part of the county. Hot summers. The downtown area has a few nice stores and restaurants. It sounded like it was the architecture that was the problem, not the SSA office which is already downtown.
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