I'm watching the city government channel tonight and following the voting results in today's referendum on developing downtown Clearwater.

With 33 of the 50 polls reporting it is not good news for the City Officials:

Question 1: Should the city lease land at $1 a year for 99 years to the out of town Developers?

Answer: (as of 9PM) NO (overwhelmingly no)

Question 2: Should we spend $15 million on a new library?

Answer: Yes (by a wide margin)

Question 3: Should we swap land with the Calvery Baptist Church so they can move out to the outskirts of the city?

Answer: Yes (by a wide margin)

These were the three questions to be decided and the answers mean big trouble for the city managers because the new library and the land swap were tied in with question number one.

Now that the people of Clearwater have said they want to invest in a new library, will the city actually build one? The developers had a specific site they intended to use and the plans called for making the ground floors into retail shops. Bear in mind that the developers felt they HAD to build a new library because their plan called for the destruction of the current library to make apartments and condos next to FLAG. The developers could at least put stores into the public library they construsted so it wouldn't all be "wasted space" to them. Now the city has to tell the people that "well, shucks, we don't really want a new library."

As for the land swap with Calvery Baptist, that means a historic, beautiful old church would be sitting empty as the members of that church escaped the proximity of the Sea Org and built a new church far away from L. Ron Hubbard Square. More empty space.

One of the people on tonights cablecast of the results is the Assistant City manager Bob Keller who last week called me a bigot at a development meeting because I dared to ask a question about Scientology. He is crestfallen at the results. Perhaps he should start to consider the real impact the cult has made to the downtown.

Of course, The Scientology Precincts may have not been counted yet. We may see a sudden reversal as the entire Sea Org votes en masse...and that would be a story in itself.