I See by the Papers...

"This is a grotesque charade!" shouted William Smith, a lawyer prone to spicing his remarks with exclamation points.

He was at City Hall for a 1977 public hearing about a $4 million loan being given to the Santa Rosa Redevelopment Agency. Smith was demanding how and when the money was to be spent. The city was supposed to be repaid either by property taxes or a future bond.

The acting chairman for the Agency, Ted Grosman, gave a curt reply. "Your request will be taken under advisement and our staff, after research, will respond to it," he said, adding it could take a week or more.

"If no one in this room knows when you are going to spend the money, then you must have an incompetent staff," Smith declared.

"We have no intention of answering your questions without more research," said Grosman.

"Research?" Smith yelled, according to the Press Democrat. "Why do you need to research it? You must all be bloomin' idiots!"

Grosman told Smith he was "harrassing the agency." It was around that point when someone called the police.

The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.

- Jeff Elliott