Save the Park: Stop the Road...

"What’s happening to my park?" asked a man I met at a Lindsay city council meeting. He’s lived here all his life, loves that park, grew up in it, and was alarmed seeing the demolition.

I told him the plan to eliminate the interior roads so that people can no longer drive in and unload everything they need for their parties. I told him my conclusion, from months of studying their plans, is that the design is intended to make it harder for the ordinary people of this town, who need that space, to use it, making it more attractive to middle-class people who might be uncomfortable sharing open space with elderly farmworker gentlemen who meet to play cards and multi-family gatherings with 30 children, 14 teenagers, 4 sets of parents and three grandmothers. "I don’t want that to happen," he said.

Then I told him about the road. "They plan to build Sierra View Ave. right through it, cutting off the Community Center grounds from the park." Then I told him how we’re going to pay for it with our road tax dollars that should be spent fixing our long- neglected neighborhood streets. "The real purpose is to build the road for the subdivision just to the north that the developer was supposed to pay for originally. It was one of the conditions in the subdivision map approved in 2005 by four of our current city council members," I told him. That made him mad.

How we came to be the payers is a story I’m still unraveling from a stack of public records provided by Gerard Samulsky, our whistle-blowing former building inspector who watched this master plan unfold. What I can show is that the city staff were playing a shell game with the state and federal funding agencies who provided so much money for these "improvements." When you map out where that money went, it is in a box north of Tulare Road between Sequoia and Orange Street, benefiting the properties of two council members, one developer and numerous city employees.

Our council members have not been ignorant of the true purpose of these "improvements." They have served as the Redevelopment Agency until last Tuesday night, when it was dissolved in accordance with Gov. Brown’s new law. As members of the Redevelopment Agency, they have been privy to property transactions, grants and loans, conditions on those monies, and most of all, the intent of the projects. This council is in full agreement with the original purpose of the master plan: to procure large amounts of state and federal funds designated to serve our lower-income population, and spend them on projects intended to attract middle-class folks.

So this is what I told him. We can save the park and stop the road, but we have to act. Come to the council meetings. Sign the petitions floating around town. Subscribe to this newspaper for further updates - only $25/yr!

But most of all, let your caring loose. Share it with your friends and neighbors. That’s how we’re going to get this community back.