National impeachment push announced

NEW YORK — Impeach the president now, before a new war is started was the message underlining a meeting of 18 national peace and impeachment groups in New York on Feb. 17, according to organizers and participants.

The next two months will see a flurry of impeachment actions nationwide. The groups who took part in the meeting endorsed initiatives ranging from town meeting resolutions to holding mass demonstrations.

Represented at the meeting were The World Can’t Wait, organizers of the Vermont Town Meeting Day impeachment resolutions, Cindy Sheehan — Camp Casey, Gold Star Families for Peace, After Downing Street, Hip Hop Caucus, Progressive Democrats of America, ImpeachBush.org, ANSWER, Code Pink, Democrats,com, Climate Crisis Coalition, Green Party, Traprock Peace Center, Consumers for Peace, Just Foreign Policy, and A 28, as well as individual writers, producers and activists.

A march on the Pentagon is scheduled for March 17, calling for an end to the war and impeachment. Last week, representatives from 60 college campuses conferred to organize students to come out in large numbers. On April 28, additional impeachment demonstrations and actions will take place across the country.

This follows on the heels of protests and walkouts on several college campuses last week, one involving 400 University of California at Santa Barbara students blocking a freeway ramp. In Washington and in Vermont, impeachment resolutions were introduced in the state legislatures. In New Mexico, an impeachment resolution was passed out of the first of three committees on its way to the House floor.

The Vermont Town Meeting impeachment resolution campaign was recognized and efforts are underway to bring Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire towns on board.

The groups also endorsed a series of impeachment town meeting to occur across the country. These will range from debates and discussions to actual citizen hearings with witnesses, testimony and voting for (or against if they so decide) articles of impeachment. These articles would then be sent to Congress.

The Hip Hop Caucus, Books Not Bombs, and Iraq Veterans Against the War announced a national tour of rallies and events, targeting younger citizens in urban communities and on college campuses to take action against war. The tour is currently scheduled for 12 cities between March 19 and April 21 and is still adding dates to the schedule.

Saturday’s meeting was part of The World Can't Wait's emergency conference to impeach Bush for war crimes, hat was held in several locations in New York.

“How to” manual on growth centers approved

MONTPELIER – The Vermont Downtown Development Board recently adopted the application manual for the new Growth Centers Program, which is intended to speed up the permitting process for development in areas where growth is both desired and appropriate.

“This is really a tremendous resource for communities,” said Kevin Dorn, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development and chairman of the Downtown Development Board. “It’s a ‘how-to’ manual for municipalities who want to take advantage of the Growth Center Program.”

The Growth Center Planning Manual, written by a team appointed by Housing and Community Affairs Commissioner John Hall and Peter Young of the Natural Resources Board and led by consultant PlaceSense, is both an application form and detailed primer on the process, including handy checklists.

The growth centers program provides incentives to support municipalities that plan for growth to occur in a densely developed, compact area rather than creating sprawl.

It was passed by the Legislature in 2006 and signed into law by Gov. Jim Douglas.

The growth center must be large enough to accommodate 50 percent of expected growth over the next 20 years, and the development needs to include a mix of residential, retail, office, service, civic, and industrial uses or potential.

Towns must plan for the public infrastructure and services to support the growth such as roads, water and sewer systems, while identifying and avoiding or mitigating impacts on natural resources.

Among the benefits are less stringent mitigation requirements for primary agricultural soils impacted by development in the Act 250 process, and priority consideration for various state funding programs such as affordable housing, planning, sewer, and brownfield redevelopment grants.

The program is administered by an expanded Downtown Development Board, which had already adopted interim rules for towns that had begun the planning processes required.

Posted February 19, 2007

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