Candidate for
Council Member; City of Burbank

I’m going to tell you a brief story. It’s the one defining event in my life that convinced me the need to get involved in local politics was more important than anything else. It’s a story about home. A story about family. A story about people like you and me.

I grew up in Virginia. I moved here just over a decade ago. I visited my friends and family the following year and realized this is where I belong now, this is where I need to make my life. Burbank, California. Though I kept in touch with my friends and family on a close basis, writing, phoning, e-mailing, I did not return to my home state for nearly ten years.

Finally, late last year, after the death of a relative, I returned for the funeral. What I found there appalled me.

I returned home to discover that my home no longer existed. My house had been demolished. My old neighborhood razed and the families displaced. In its place were new, bland, high-cost condo complexes.

Were it not for the fact that lives were destroyed in the process, I would have said that newer, better housing was a good thing for my old neighborhood. You see, it was low-cost housing. A lot of houses were run down, ugly, less than ideal. The majority of the people who lived there were poor. Some on welfare, some unemployed. But every one of them lived there, in their homes with their families, in their neighborhood. Some for thirty or more years.

The biggest problem was that the land these people lived on was seized through imminent domain by the city government. The city decided that poor people didn’t need to live there anymore. They took the land, gave the people there a paltry amount of money for their troubles and sent them on their way. They took their homes, tore them to the ground and built high-priced condos.

I moved away from my old hometown but I never forgot the people I grew up with or the neighborhood I grew up in. We were “have-nots” who managed to thrive in our way. We made good lives for ourselves. People there had done so for a long time and though I moved on, I hoped that the people I knew and the lives we had lived would endure. I took comfort in the fact that my house would always be there, that my neighborhood and the hard-working, decent people who lived there would go on, that the way of life we fostered would go on.

But it was not to be. A greedy, thoughtless, cold city council destroyed that dream. They eradicated a way of life. But the one thing they could not kill was my hope. My hope that my neighbors and friends would endure, that they would go on, that they would put down new roots as I had, that the lives we led would go on.

I vowed that day I would never let it happen again. Never again would I allow those consumed with greed, hatred and deceit destroy the lives of my friends, my family, my city. Today I act on that commitment.

My name is Jesse L. Byers. I’ve lived here in Burbank for over ten years. I’ve made this city my home, its streets my neighborhood and its citizens my family.

I’m asking for your vote to help put me on the Burbank City Council so that I might help this city be a better place for all of us who live here, for all of us who intend to raise a family here, for all of you who are already bringing up children here.

There are over 100,000 citizens residing in this city. Each and every person adds their personality and hopes and dreams to the city. Their dreams for a better future for themselves and their children. Each and every one of them want a better place to live. Each and every one of them wants to believe in Burbank again. Each and every person who lives here and puts their tax dollars, their roots, their hopes and dreams and hearts into this city make this city what it is. Every single one of the more than 100,000 people who live here ARE Burbank. And you have the right to have someone speak for you who cares about you and about what you believe in. I believe that person is me.

I am Jesse L. Byers. I’m asking you to vote for me. To let me be your voice on the Burbank City Council.