Mongolian Grill on right track, City Council stuck in the past

Its a shame the city turned down the Mongolian Grill’s permit to operate a 18 and over dance club. For a city that fought for a UC, it is not seeming very UC friendly. In fact this move showed the power Thomas the police chief has over the council. Heaven forbid police would have to do a little more work. Maybe if they spent less time complaining about their pay they could focus on doing their jobs instead of trying to prevent Merced from becoming a college town.

Of course this city council with our realtor mayor and majority vote probably doesn’t care about much other than ways to promote their profession of selling houses.

The future is coming, time for Merced to embrace it; I applaud the Pine cone Mongolian Grill for trying to move this city in the right direction. Next time they should attempt to get more community support. I think if more where aware of this appeal more people could have shown up in support of the club.

Sun star ran cover for the city council by calling their decision to allow 18 and over events with out alcohol a compromise. A compromise would be a trial run that is highly monitored. We all know that a club can’t profit from an event with out the alcohol sales.

These hypocrites need to be replaced; great thing about the UC is the more college educated people will come to this community. Maybe with this influx of educated people we can find a mayor / mayoral candidate with more than a few city college courses under their belt, or heck maybe a college degree.

The planning commission with planners that have college degrees approved the permit for the club, maybe if our city council also had college degrees they could have made an educated decision. Of course they did take the advice of a police officer, I’m sure his AA must make him seem like a genius. (I don’t know about officer Thomas’s education he might have more but I doubt it.) Of course he is an expert in police work, but the fear he might have to work harder when these types of clubs come to town is not an excuse to prevent the progression of Merced becoming a college town.

This type of club works in most college towns, San Luis Obispo has two, Chico has them, and many other college town do as well. If we can keep the student dollars here in Merced we will all benefit as a city. But if they always have to go out of town for entertainment why should we expect them to spend any money here. Instead of the “Shop Merced” campaign it should be “Shop and have fun in Merced” campaign. But if the city won’t let our student guests have fun here we might as well have had the UC placed elsewhere.

Next time an entrepreneur / Business person wants to move Merced towards becoming a college town we must support it as a city. The mayor and the council work for us, lets tell them where we want our city to go. If the don’t do what we the citizens want we should fire them by not re-electing them again.

This is our city, we fought for the UC, now lets fight for the future of our city.

Lex