NEST to hold Earth Day protest at Elk Grove Mayor's event

Neighbors Ensuring Stonelake will protest at the Dollar Tree strip center on Elk Grove Boulevard where
Mayor Steve Ly will be the featured guest at a meet and greet event. |  

The Elk Grove community group Neighbors Ensuring Stonelake Transparency - NEST - is holding a protest at an event being attended by Elk Grove Mayor Steve Ly.

To commemorate the annual worldwide Earth Day celebration, NEST will be demonstrating at 5:30 p.m. along Elk Grove Boulevard in front of the Thai Chili restaurant in the Dollar Tree strip center. The event is being hosted by the Asian Chamber of Commerce and described as a meet and greet with Ly, who is in his second two-year term as mayor.   

In their press release announcing the demonstration, NEST says "a group of concerned Elk Grove residents and members of N.E.S.T. will gather in honor of Earth Day to show opposition to Mayor Steve Ly for supporting the California Northstate University (CNU) for-profit hospital project.  A CNU hospital and/or a biotech district of pharmaceutical manufacturing in West Elk Grove would be a threatening presence next to the Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.  N.E.S.T. will continue to oppose Mayor Ly until he formally recuses himself from consideration of the CNU hospital project."

Since CNU's December 2018 announcement of their proposed $750 million, 400-bed hospital additional information has been revealed by numerous public documents requests. Most notably it was learned that CNU's president and CEO Alvin Cheung and Elk Grove economic development director Darrell Doan had discussed the city being a possible financing source for the project.

For NEST, this is the second protest organized at events featuring Ly. On February 22, NEST held a demonstration in front of CNU's facility on West Taron Drive on the city's west side where Ly was celebrating his November reelection over opponents Tracie Stafford and Elk Grove city council member Darren Suen.

At that event, Ly's part-time city-paid assistant and independent political consultant Ty Sorci had an encounter with protesters that several deemed as threatening and inappropriate. Sorci reportedly took pictures of several children who were accompanying their parents.

After the complaints surfaced, Sorci was separated from his position as a part-time taxpayer paid employee to Ly.