Final Day of In-Person Voting for Uptown Community Planning Group — Tuesday, March 11

By Mat Wahlstrom / Special to the OB Rag

Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 11, the Uptown Community Planning Group (UpCPG) that was chosen to replace Uptown Planners, will hold the final in-person voting for its first regular election.

Readers of the OB Rag may recall that the last time we visited the city’s shenanigans in Uptown was September 2024. Back then, the City Council had to take time out to retroactively bless the malfeasance and fraud committed by Vibrant Uptown, their handpicked YIMBY usurpers.

Despite Vibrant Uptown’s efforts , the composition of the final board was roughly split between their endorsed candidates and those not beholden to their pro-developer agenda. Understandably, this led to conflicts that should be understood as natural and part of learning to operate under new rules.

But for YIMBYs, anything less than lockstep agreement with their groupthink is unacceptable. This brings us up to the events preceding this election.

First, one of the Vibrant Uptown founders and their shrillest voice admitted in public comment at the October UpCPG meeting that they had all intentionally manipulated the election to prevent yours truly from getting elected to the Hillcrest renter seat. And further, this person swore that she would do everything in her power to prevent my ever serving on UpCPG.

This was on top of two additional reps, from the Hillcrest Business Association (HBA) and BikeSD, having election challenges filed against them that they were not qualified for the seats they “won.” These were eventually dismissed as “honest mistakes” that they were allowed to correct after the challenges had been filed.

More recently, it was revealed that another person, for the Hillcrest property owner seat, was never qualified to serve. So intent was Vibrant Uptown to have anyone but an actual Hillcrest homeowner as well as renter from serving, they apparently worked with the HBA to draft a person from the HBA’s property management company and lied about it.

One of the reasons alleged by the City Council for choosing Vibrant Uptown was that they were convinced that their public outreach plans would be superior to Uptown Planners. One would think then that there would have been significant candidate outreach and election notices.

However, the two people who volunteered to run UpCPG’s Outreach Committee were the HBA rep and a spokesperson for the current mayor. No one except those they wanted as candidates were contacted to run; and there was no electoral outreach except on HBA- and Vibrant Uptown-affiliated social media in favor of their endorsed candidates.

Otherwise, only those who regularly attend UpCPG meetings were made aware that an election was even happening.

Adding to this injury, the HBA and the Gloria spox ran a tag-team blitz on Facebook, heaping insults on the Election Committee and blaming it for not doing the job assigned to them and projecting accusations of election fraud. (Meeting minutes show that the Outreach Committee repeatedly refused to participate in coordinating getting out notice; and the Election Committee could not do anything without their help.)

These two also engaged in vile character assassination of non-Vibrant Uptown-endorsed candidates. And outrageously, they have repeatedly called for people to email the Planning Department and the mayor to complain that UpCPG “doesn’t represent the community” — the same bogus claim that got us into this mess.

Clearly taking a page from Trump, Vibrant Uptown has done all this so they have excuses at hand if they lose or can attempt to assert a legitimacy they don’t deserve if they win.

Except they were too clever by half.

Their actions provoked a general outcry and calls for censure if not outright removal of these two instigators. Apparently they were unaware that their drama violated not only UpCPG’s new bylaws but also the City Council policy governing all community planning groups.

Rather than risk what they could get away with it, which suddenly didn’t look likely, everyone involved quit before they were fired while taking to social media again to claim this was in protest. (But not before taking UpCPG’s website access and online account credentials with them, leaving UpCPG with no way of reaching the general public.)

Where does that leave UpCPG now? Maybe, just maybe, in a better position than before.

There are only a few candidates in this election cycle who are aligned with Vibrant Uptown. One of them is again running against me for the Hillcrest renter seat, a do-over made necessary by their previous antics.

You may not be surprised to learn my opponent has run an email operation using UpCPG address lists improperly taken from UpCPG, or that he identified the physical address for this “campaign” as his office in University City where he is a property manager for a major real estate developer.

But with any luck, those associated with Vibrant Uptown will become a distinct minority on the board — just as they are among the public at large.

The UpCPG bylaws allow for the board to consider appointing qualified replacements. This will avoid the previous requirement for holding special elections, the chaos of which was exploited by Vibrant Uptown allies to paralyze Uptown Planners.

Perhaps, despite worst efforts to the contrary, Uptown will again be represented by its residents rather than lackeys of pro-developer interests. And in the current, dark days for democracy in our country, that is a small but real consolation.