For the Third Time.....

Last week’s lunar euphoria didn’t last long. By the time the paper came out, the second recall effort had been skunked by city hall. The first time, the recall proponents might have shared some of the blame for not cleaning up confusion created by the county elections office. But this time it was pure engineering by the powers that be.

The plan was hatched at Carmen Wilson’s desk. Carmen, who was designated the recall’s "appropriate elections official" in a turnabout decision by the county (part of the original confusion,) changed her definition of "days" from "business" to "calendar" without notifying the proponents while keeping council members on schedule. On Oct. 26, when the citizens were ready to file the proof of publication and blank petitions two days early (counting business days,) they were deemed two days late using calendar days and declared invalid.

Three times, when confronted with the change by proponent Yolanda Flores, editor Reggie Ellis and myself, Carmen’s response was "I never said it was business days." When each of us protested and reminded her of our individual conversations on that point, she replied "I don’t recall that conversation" each time, as if already on the witness stand.

Having researched the question of "days" in early September, anticipating exactly this problem, I reminded Carmen of the information from the Secretary of State’s office I showed her then: a press release of the timeline from Gov. Gray Davis’s recall issued by Sec. Kevin Shelley using calendar days, and the phone number for Robbie Anderson, the SOS’s expert on local recall elections, who said "everyone knows in government documents if it doesn’t explicitly state "business" days, it’s "calendar." "Did you leave me a copy?" she asked, looking slightly frantically at her desk where I had laid it weeks earlier, as if I might pull it from the pile of papers there. "I think so," I responded affirmatively but backing off, not willing to frighten her more than she was.

Back in September when I produced my evidence, Carmen listened politely, but said she was going to use "business" days instead because then we wouldn’t have to worry about holidays and weekends making it more difficult.

So what happened? Why would she change to a timeframe that makes her job harder? Why would she risk her job with such a fabrication? Possibly her job was at risk if she didn’t. Or maybe she thinks her job is at risk if the proponents are successful in replacing the current council, which is probably true now.

But one thing is clear: whether she acted on her own, at the advice of the city attorney, and/or in concert with the council, Carmen Wilson is not serving objectively as the elections official and should be replaced. We may have to replace the city council in order to have that happen, but fortunately the third effort is already underway. And as everyone knows, the third time’s a charm.

The Cow's Moon...

The last few mornings I’ve been awakened by glimpses of the moon rising in its last phase over the tail end of Elephant Back. It’s the golden sliver like cows jumped over in the nursery rhyme of my youth, and my mother’s youth and who knows how many other generations.

I hadn’t realized how unfamiliar I was with this phase until this morning. I’m the kind that watches for the first new sliver to appear silver in the evening sky, and take hope from it as it builds toward fullness. Then, as it begins to flatten out, my hope does, too, as if the down side of the cycle represented some kind of decline in life’s quality. In my work, I’m more familiar with beginnings than endings.

But Friday’s good news of the county’s approval of the signatures on the recall Notice of Intent gave me sudden hope in endings: the end of Townsend’s dynasty that began to crumble when he fled this community, the end of business as usual at city hall. The hope for a community where people walk tall because they’ve helped in building it instead of having something handed to them. Walking through a community landscape that reflects their values of hard work and good reward rather than the shiny dazzle of a tourist trap. A community where the town folk and the country folk remember their connections and can celebrate them.

Oh, it can be very scary when hope shows up, especially in an ending. In a short while, the moon will seem to disappear and the nights will be totally dark but for the stars. But that’s when the real work will occur: when the sympathies that have been lying dormant for years become activated, when the animosities and injuries from the last ten or twenty years convert to alliances and commitments for a new future for this town. Oh, the possibilities are endless with this waning moon.

I was given an extra dose of hope by last week’s article on Manny Jimenez, the UC Small Farm Advisor who just received a Peace Prize for his work in Woodlake. The California Wellness Foundation’s recognition that Jimenez’s work with youth had provided an alternative to violence by "teaching them about responsibility, leadership, confidence and respect through gardening," struck me as an important difference in approach from what we’ve employed in Lindsay. Through McDermont, we teach kids the importance of play and competition, while Manny and his volunteers teach kids to work and cooperate, providing something of value for the whole community. It’s worth comparing more closely.

Here is my greatest hope in the recall effort in front of us: that we might defrag the consolidation of power that has occurred since we became a charter city, and return that power to the hands of people who really live here. It might seem like a big job, but there’s that waning moon....

Footnotes on Anger.....

"Anger is an index of our discontent that needs to be heeded and carefully channeled. We should find the difficult middle way between uncontrolled anger, which erupts in violence and oppression, and suppressed anger, which may result in silencing individuals to avoid confrontations, ultimately amounting to a greater violence to all involved." Baltimore Yearly (Friends) Meeting, 1988.

There’s a great deal of anger flowing around our little town of Lindsay. From the citizens’ side, I can attest that the source is long-suppressed anger with the lid blown off by the findings of the audit. Even citizens who were not involved before have become angered by the revelations of waste, fraud, and the plain ignorance of those who led us to this place. The citizens’ speech has more power now, and they continue to make their points known.

Most of the council members appear to be taking it personally, as anger directed against their persons rather than their behavior, not as anger directed against their actions or inactions, which it truly is. Mayor Murray was even quoted in the Recorder as saying that the citizens are spitting hate. And yes, it is hard to keep the venom out of these statements, especially when nothing seems to have changed despite Wilkinson’s declarations that they have.

One of the things that continues under Wilkinson’s command is retaliation for criticism. This newspaper has suffered loss of all advertising from the City and McDermont; Wilkinson is reported to have said that anyone walking into his office with a copy will be fired. The day after we published HomePage #144 ("On Hate and Love,") I experienced attempts of police intimidation and City harassment at one place of employment. But at the last city council meeting (Oct. 11,) we got another reason to fear: the amendment of the city’s business license ordinance.

Yolanda Flores, one of the more dedicated citizens working for reformation, picked up on it. "I noticed on the agenda that you are amending an ordinance on business license violations," she began, speaking in a clear, strong voice. The amendment that passed 5-0 adds criminal penalties and fines up to $1,000 for being out of compliance with the ordinance, including being late on payment of each year’s fees. The public hearing on the amendment was unattended, not challenged by one member of the business community or anyone else.

"Perhaps we thought that since all these business loans are being forgiven," she said referring to the microenterprise loans that were given to McDermont employees when their Proteus contracts were up, "fraudulent home loans are being ignored, and pending foreclosures stalled," referring to the blatant housing boondoggle that Scot Townsend constructed to try to make his brethren rich, "that maybe, just maybe this city would work (with us on) business license fees. I guess I was wrong. I am not one of the privileged."

She noted that her family’s business is $280 in arrears on its license, then began detailing the retaliation they have suffered for her participation in the citizen uprising of the past year.

"Before I decided to speak out we were doing business with the city. The day I took a stand and became vocal against waste, abuse, fraud and corruption is the day that this city stopped doing business with us."

"This city administration and city council members and their families have continued (to make) slanderous statements against me and my business, including last year’s email blasts to boycott our business because I dared to question the Great Scot Townsend."

"I have said nothing until now. First, because I know what this city - prior and current administration - did to Gary Babcock when he became concerned over illegal employment practices and started whistleblowing. This city has also continued slandering and attacking the credibility of Tim Daubert by viciously spreading rumors that he was not a Vietnam veteran. Why? Because this man had the courage long before we came along to question this city."

"Retaliation is a strong word...but that is exactly what has been happening between this city and my business and many that have had the courage to speak out. Yet you ignore the people that have brought this town to the brink of bankruptcy, sometimes even defending them! Has anything been done about the fraudulent home loans? Has anything been done about fraudulent business loans? Where are this city’s priorities? Maybe what this administration wants to do is sweep everything under the rug, hoping that its citizens will forget." She concluded firmly "You are wrong."

Knowing Yolanda, you can take that to the bank. Yet watching the Council, I have little hope that our continuing 3-minute speaking engagements are going to turn them around and head them off in a better direction.

In my small volume of Quaker thought, where I found the opening quote, I found another that seems helpful. "Some people can’t understand why their actions hurt others; explanations confuse them, but saying what it is they shouldn’t do can be helpful."

What shouldn’t the city council and staff be doing now, in the eyes of the citizens? It shouldn’t be persecuting the few businesses that have survived. It shouldn’t be pursuing more grants and loans when our indebtedness is so large and our financial situation so shaky that one wrong move could put us into bankruptcy. It shouldn’t be paying exorbitant salaries to unqualified city staff. It shouldn’t keep hiring new employees without competitive job searches to find the most qualified people we can afford. It shouldn’t be retaliating against citizens exerting their rights to free speech and a say in the future of this community. It shouldn’t keep trying to cover up past mistakes so that we can "go forward" in exactly the same wrong direction we’ve been going for years.

And here are a few of the things the Council should do. It should issue a formal apology to the citizens of the town for its ignorance and/or negligence in oversight. It should issue a formal expression of gratitude to the citizens who have brought this situation to light at great expense and risk to themselves. It should, as the Times-Delta recommended, hire a real city manager to put us on the right track. It should be asking the businesses that have survived what the City can do to help. And it should be weeding out those staff members who have been part of the disastrous party of the last 8 years and replacing them with people who intend to serve the public.

What is the "greater violence to all involved" that accrues from suppressed anger? Loss of democracy is my first response. In this particular case we have also suffered loss of loved landmarks and landscapes and a sense of place. We now inhabit a less egalitarian townscape than before the carpetbaggers came to town, creating city-owned commercial environments out of public spaces that some, but not all, can enjoy. I think you can count the loss of self-esteem for not speaking up against things we didn’t want as a form of violence, the senses of guilt and complicity that come from keeping silent.

And what will be the result if this evidence of malfeasance is allowed to just pass, to disappear? The prospect that the people whose voices have been suppressed will now pay monetarily for the malpractice of those we paid dearly to keep us quiet - that is an act of violence that is hard to accept.

And here is a thought for the City fathers and mothers who feel so abused by this unsuppressed anger (again from my Quaker journal:) "When people are unkind to you, listen for the portion of truth your friends might not articulate."

So let me ask you, dear readers, what are you doing with your discontent? Are you heeding it, or letting it stay suppressed? Would you be willing to give it some credence, maybe even honor it? Would you be willing to join us at the city council meetings, simply to bear witness to the process? Would you be willing to put a bumper sticker on your car that says "Hope for a New Lindsay"?

These things could help. It is time to push for change.

Love, Trudy

Winds of Change....

“It is ignorant money I
declare myself free from, money fat
and dreaming in its sums,
driving us into the streets of
absence, stranding the pasture trees
in the deserted language of banks.”
-- Wendell Berry

Feel that wind? That’s change coming.
“Change is hard,” mumbled Lindsay City Manager Rich Wilkinson during his staff report at our last council meeting. He had mentioned that some citizens were concerned about the removal of the roads from the interior of Lindsay’s city park in the plans for its reconstruction starting this month.

The implication is one we’ve all heard before, that progress comes at a price, and one of the normal costs is discomfort from sheer change. Another assumption behind that statement is that change is good, that the benefits naturally outweigh the costs.

But I think that’s questionable. Not all change is good, especially that imposed from the outside. The Dust Bowl migrants didn’t feel the change forcing them to uproot from their farms and turn into landless peasants in their own, rapidly modernizing country was good, any more than the landless peasants in Mexico who now have to pay drug cartel brutes instead of mere coyotes to carry them over the borderline is good. Nor can we who receive these migrants consider that change good. We pay the costs those migrants have paid in other ways, some in the lives of our own children.

But change that comes internally, even if it is triggered by an external factor, can be effortless and highly beneficial. I’ve been feeling one coming with regard to HomePages, but until Reggie called asking if I might be able to shorten up, I hadn’t identified what it was. As the news has grown, so has the need for space for it. What I’ve been writing, especially the last few months, are more position papers than useful editorial statements of column length. At the same time, I’ve felt that where this writing should be aimed is developing legal briefs and research reports to government agencies. Time for a change.

So I’m going for 500 words, shorter and sweeter, more concise. Luckily, in writing editorials for the Times-Delta and Recorder last week, I learned that sometimes less is more.
Much can be said in 500 words. Wendell Berry, the poet above, said it all in 33. A song can do it in 10: “This land is your land, this land is my land...” In Spanish, it only takes 8: “Esta tierra es tuya, esta tierra es miya...”

Feel that wind through the window Reggie opened? We’re moving from Pages to Notes, with FootNotes for longer pieces on this blog. Many thanks to those people who have read HomePages and let me know. If you want to help support this paper and keep Lindsay’s change in the news, pamper yourself with a subscription.

See you next week.

Civil Procedures....

“Paper cannot wrap fire.”
- Old Chinese Saying

The newly-completed audit of Lindsay’s financial and material life is a stack of paper beautifully bound in the Brown Armstrong Accountancy Corp. covers, dark green and firm. The numbers inside are given meaning by words, a limited but revealing problem/answer conversation between the auditors, who are experts in the legal aspects of the management of civic resources, and our own city staff, whose expertise lies elsewhere. It says a lot.

But the audit is the tip of the iceberg. It did not discover all of the malfeasance, just enough to put us over the brink. The problems underlying the audit, the problems of ignorance and arrogance, of graft and corruption, of cronyism and nepotism among the small inside circle who think They Are Lindsay - those problems are fire in the belly of many of this community’s residents.

A lovely man stopped me in the library last Tuesday, the day of the city council meeting, and asked the essential question: What is going to happen? Is anyone going to be held responsible, or are they just going to get their hands slapped and go on? It is the essential question. If we leave it in trust with the current city council and their hand-picked staff, that’s all that’s going to happen.

Before he asked the question, however, he started by introducing himself as a man who grew up here as a boy, whose parents came to Tonyville in the 1920s. He himself left for 30 years, then came back after retiring from the San Diego Zoo. He was soft-spoken and respectful, chose his words carefully, seemed thoughtful and compassionate. Not a rabble rouser, just a concerned citizen who is finding out, like many of us, that our situation is so much worse than we’d imagined. I invited him to come to the city council meeting that evening, but he declined, saying like so many of us, that he didn’t know if he could understand what goes on.

If he had come, he’d have seen the firestorm the council was expecting two weeks before. Then (at the September 13 meeting,) six uniformed officers were on duty. Three were stationed inside the council chambers, two guarded the only door, and another kept watch in the overflow room and escorted citizens there who wanted to speak to the chambers at the proper time. But on Sept. 27, only Lt. Clower was on duty, assisted by two other officers who escorted the visiting accountant to his car after his presentation and then left.
Although there was considerable input from the citizens who have been organizing the recall effort (including myself regarding inappropriate items in the consent calendar that needed public discussion,) the real volcanoes were two men not associated with the recall effort. One was a former insider, Girard Smolsky, one of the two building inspectors who were fired in December (although Girard was able to hold on to his position until he could retire in June having 10 years with the city.) The other was an outsider, Thomas Young, the auditor from Brown Armstrong who has been in charge of this project. Though both men spoke as respectfully as possible given the circumstances, there was fire in their bellies, too, and it erupted at moments where the truth had no alternative but to come out.

The audit points to lapses in accountability, but Girard knows where the bodies are buried. “I just want you to know,” he began “that I’ve been contacted by the DA’s office and that I am cooperating fully.” He then gave a quick summary of his involvement with most of the redevelopment projects as an indication of the volume and spread of his knowledge. “I inspected those houses with the fraudulent loans,” he said and other projects that have been identified as wasteful or “non-compliant” in the audit.

And then his fire broke loose, and he said “And this conflict of interest stuff - it’s everywhere. Every one of you has conflict of interest,” pointing to the council, and then to some staff. “And most of you don’t even live here,” he added, naming staff names. “You take your big salaries and go home somewhere else.” Then he regained some of his composure, and just as his 3 minute limit was being called, he concluded “I just didn’t want you to be blindsided, but you’ll be hearing from the DA soon.”

The auditor, Thomas Young, was noticeably agitated even during his short presentation for the Redevelopment Agency meeting prior to the public comment period. He spoke seriously about the negative quality of this audit: that there was enough missing information to prevent his firm from being able to issue an opinion whether the audit and financial statements are true representations of the City’s financial condition, and that from what information was provided, the City is clearly a going concern. “Whether you will be pushed into Chapter 9 or not is totally dependent on what the lenders do,” he said firmly. When one council member asked what other cities do in this situation, he replied “We don’t find this in other cities. This is very unusual.”
In name of democratic process, the City had invited members of the public to submit written questions for the auditor at that meeting. Three of us did. But rather than digesting the questions and summarizing them, or even assembling them into a list, they just handed him copied pages and asked him to answer. “How do you want me to do this?” he asked, incredulous. “Just read them out loud and give your answers,” they said.

There were seven pages of questions, three handwritten and my four, closely-spaced typed ones. Most of our questions were lawyerly, looking for the truths underneath the figures, and they placed him in the most difficult position a person could be in: having to speak truth to power and guard his (powerful) client’s privacy privileges at the same time. I have never seen anyone sweat so admirably in my whole life.

His fire broke loose when he came to the question about the Hippo Slide, and whether that was the only wasteful expenditure they found, or just an outrageous example. “It’s just an example!” he blurted out, then said “I could go on and on. McDermont - there’s waste of $500 thousand, and the downtown...,” referring to the micro business loans. Then he stopped, looked down at the papers on the podium, and went back to the questions.

Another question was (and I only know this because it was mine): “Do you think the City staff and Council fully understand the threat of repayment provisions of grants if we do not comply with the regulations attached to them? Do you think we might have more rude awakenings ahead like the misuse of TCAG Measure R funds created? Could one of these push us over the edge of insolvency?” To which he replied with steam as well as fire “Absolutely!”

Then he settled back down to the job at hand, which was getting this over with and getting out of there as soon as possible. The council asked a few questions, including when the next year’s audit (for 2010-2011, already behind us) would begin, which will not be until Jan. or Feb. of 2012. And then the two officers escorted him to his car. I hope he made it home alright - we need people like Thomas Young in this world.

Between them, Girard and Thomas delivered a one-two punch to the Council that left Mayor Ed reeling. He stumbled through the rest of the agenda, which included approval for the application for an Air Quality grant to purchase of 3 more hybrid police cars, scrapping 3 Crown Victorias as part of the bargain. What they didn’t discuss is whether the city has other vehicles that are more used and more polluting than the three planned for demolition. (Actually I think someone tried to ask that question, maybe Danny Salinas, but it went nowhere.)

When I questioned Chief Wilkinson about the requirements on the grant and whether they included Fair Employment Practice regulations (which he appears not to understand even in the slightest,) his eyes took on a kind of gleam and he assured me everything was fine. Later he announced the appointment of a new (interim) assistant city manager, whose name I did not catch because he mumbles. Did anyone see the job announcement for that position?

Let us go back to the question from the lovely man in the library. Is anybody going to be held responsible for the past misuse of funds? Here’s another one: Is there any way to get the city to stop spending our money on whatever fancy tickles their eye? I think there is. It’s called Civil Procedures Code 526a.

I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do with this, but I just want everybody to know that there might be some recourse, and some way to regain some of the money that has been squandered without paying for it through our taxes for the next three decades. I’m just going to quote it in full. Read it slowly - if you mind the commas and keep track of the clauses, you’ll be able to see what the law has provided for the likes of us.

“526a. An action to obtain a judgment, restraining and preventing any illegal expenditure of, waste of, or injury to, the estate, funds, or other property of a county, town, city or city and county of the state, may be maintained against any officer thereof, or any agent, or other person, acting in its behalf, either by a citizen resident therein, or by a corporation, who is assessed for and is liable to pay, or, within one year before the commencement of the action, has paid, a tax therein. This section does not affect any right of action in favor of a county, city, town, or city and county, or any public officer; provided, that no injunction shall be granted restraining the offering for sale, sale, or issuance of any municipal bonds for public improvements or public utilities.

An action brought pursuant to this section to enjoin a public improvement project shall take special precedence over all civil matters on the calendar of the court except those matters to which equal precedence on the calendar is granted by law.”

It is true that the audit could be used to keep the City’s spendthrift, self-interested plans between covers. But it also can be used to document a past history in which much of city’s spending was not only fiscally irresponsible, but socially irresponsible to the majority of the town’s residents. We didn’t need new French Colonial street lights and signs that look like they’re fresh from the Caribbean; we didn’t need a brand-new Wellness Center or a three-story indoor sports complex that only people from afar can afford. We didn’t even really need a new library or lighted palm trees that change colors every 15 seconds. And we really didn’t need to be rewarding those people with outrageous salaries who tried to make over this town in their own image.

There are civil procedures for people like us. Let us use them.