Published in slightly edited form March 27, 2013 in The Foothills Sun-Gazette
"We need more businesses downtown! Why are you trying to stop this store? All you do is complain. If you don't like it here, maybe you should leave. I think you need to grow up!"
The older woman had come to the podium at the March 12th Lindsay city council meeting to speak during the public comment period, and she had turned to face me directly, where I was sitting in the front row. Mayor Padilla kindly reminded her that she should address the Council, not the audience, and she turned her heat back to the microphone.
It was a humbling experience, to be yelled at like an unruly teenager by someone who may have less years than I have. I was glad I was sitting between two men, both a little larger and a little older than I am, all of us wedged into those theater-like chairs from a time when bodies came in somewhat smaller sizes.
An hour later, the Dollar General proposal would be removed from the agenda at the request of the applicant, tabled to the April 9 meeting largely due to the efforts of myself and my attorney. Since that day, we have been working relentlessly to figure out what would be best for Lindsay, the whole community and the downtown, given what knowledge exists about developments of this kind and what tools are at hand to shape them.
It is because I love Lindsay and the small town environment it provides me and the rest of this community who love it, too, that I'm giving every spare minute to this question. After weeks of wrestling with it, I know that a Dollar General store downtown would serve many of our residents. I also know it will take away business from many local shopkeepers, and I don't know who will fail as a result.
The location and the design elements could make a big difference. Although our city planner uses words like "interconnectivity" and "walkability" to describe the way Dollar General will support the downtown, it appears to me that his plan is actually oriented toward supporting the McDermont complex instead, pulling activity northward, away from downtown.
The issue is whether residents coming to Dollar General to shop will just pull into the spacious parking lot, get their goods and go, or whether they'll use that trip to stop in at the hardware store and maybe meander further along Elmwood and Honolulu to see what the other shops have. My position, knowing myself, is that if I've parked on the street and walked along the sidewalk to get to the Dollar General store, I'm more likely to keep walking afterward than if I've pulled into their parking lot. When I've parked in somebody's parking lot, out of respect for the business as well as pure habit, I'm more likely to get back in my car and go rather than leave my car there whle I walk around town shopping at other businesses. Parking in a public space changes that completely.
There are other elements that could make a difference: orienting the building to face the street, positioned on the sidewalk with parking (and a back entry) behind; display windows and doors along the public sidewalk, inviting people to come in; hiring practices that place local people in the sales positions rather than ever-changing strangers from outside. Windows that let in natural light to sense what time of day and weather make a more humane shopping and working environment than these windowless box stores that shut out everything. Right now I'm arguing for an exterior facade that ties into the brick buildings downtown rather than the Spanish-style architecture mimicking city hall because it's a way of honoring the business community it seeks to become a member of, rather than the government entity giving it access to our local buying dollars.
In a fine article describing the explosion of dollar stores in this region (Sun-Gazette, Feb. 27, 2013,) John Lindt wrote that these stores are being placed in communities that have never been served by national chains before. That's true of towns like Farmersville, Ivanhoe, Goshen, maybe even Woodlake, but not for towns like Lindsay, Dinuba and Exeter. In their heyday, they were a mixture of national chains like J.C. Penney's, Mode-O-Day, Western Auto and Sprouse-Reitz and the independent cafes, shoe stores, dress shops, stationery and furniture stores that developed right alongside. A healthy small town has both, and they provide a rich environment for raising families that offers models of individuals' entrepreneurial skills and connectedness to the national economy and culture.
I recognize that what the dollar store phenomenon connects us to is an economic reality of the schism in our culture: the disappearing middle class, the engorged ranks of the people falling below the poverty line, and the enormous economic power of the tiny minority at the top. It's not pretty, but I don't blame that on Dollar General. The question is whether we are community enough to require them to join us in rebuilding our town by altering their designs in ways that will support rather than erode our central business district, or whether we'll just let them scrape off what little cream there is. Please join me in asking for their assistance.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer and researcher who has been estimating and defending the value of small town environments all her life. You can send her your thoughts % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment here, below.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Some Walls
Published in edited form in the Foothills Sun-Gazette, March 20, 2013.
Tulare County's own Randy Sharp was in Lindsay on Saturday, providing a lovely, homey concert at our community theater. Making a living as a songwriter most of his career, he sang a long, engaging list of his works. His clear, sweet voice carried his words and melodies, backed up by his dynamic guitar playing. He's a thinker and a lover, and the night out was pure pleasure.
He taught me something as I sat there taking in his music. The theater's house lights were fully on: apparently there's no rheostat, no way to dim them. They're either on or off, and Randy preferred the less glamorous full light because he felt he could better communicate with his audience that way than sitting there alone in the spotlight, talking and singing to the dark.
Sometimes writing this column is like that: very solo, no way to see the audience until the concert's over. The paper comes out, the house lights come back on, and then I get to wonder how it went. If I didn't have my job at the market, I wouldn't get to hear the applause. For years I wrote thinking no one was listening.
Recently I've heard some boos, even caught a couple of rotten tomatoes. That's ok, at least we're communicating. Anyone who wants to hear my rebuttal to their arguments will have to look below at the entry preceding this one, however, because I'm not wasting any more trees on those words. What they're really complaining about is that I've been keeping the house lights up on this city's activities, and they prefer working behind the scenes, then performing in the spotlight where the flaws are hidden.
Take Bill Zigler's most recent folly, promoting a Dollar General store downtown on the site of the beautiful, historic Central California Citrus Exchange building. Last September the Council directed Zigler to look elsewhere for this project: three of the five, including Mayor Murray, were dead set against that location and the proposed demolition of the building. Regardless, in January Zigler came back with a re-designed Spanish-style store front on the same site and the pronouncement that the Exchange building does not have historical significance. And just in case someone might still want to restore it, they had an inspection report done that supposedly showed the building is in such poor condition that it would be financially prohibitive to save it.
This plan has so many planning flaws, not to mention potential economic impacts, that I called in some reinforcements. While they worked on the legal requirements of CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act that governs all planning proposals,) I went to work researching the historical significance of the Exchange building and examining Ziglers historial and inspection reports. Zigler's historical survey was done by his young assistant planner who knows nothing, apparently, of the importance of Sunkist Growers to this community, and the inspection does not estimate even one red cent of potential repair expense. Those "studies" are just walls thrown up to protect a project even Mayor Murray did not want.
It appears to me that Mr. Zigler, once again, is serving special interests at the community's expense. The city attorney appears to be in on the game plan: her advice to Council to close the public hearing on this project even before bringing it to a vote was another wall thrown up to keep out any new evidence on the adequacy of Zigler's environmental documents. That is what the Council has been told it is voting on, and the inadequacy of those documents is what we are showing.
A brave Council would re-open the public hearing and investigate the real motivations behind Zigler's plan before proceding, lest we become saddled with more of Zigler's Follies. If there's any hope for love at all, some walls - these walls - must fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a writer who thinks more truth can be found in words attached to music than in words alone. You can send her your thoughts on the Dollar General plan % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 - or leave a response here!
"If there's any hope
for love at all,
some walls, some walls
must fall."
Randy SharpTulare County's own Randy Sharp was in Lindsay on Saturday, providing a lovely, homey concert at our community theater. Making a living as a songwriter most of his career, he sang a long, engaging list of his works. His clear, sweet voice carried his words and melodies, backed up by his dynamic guitar playing. He's a thinker and a lover, and the night out was pure pleasure.
He taught me something as I sat there taking in his music. The theater's house lights were fully on: apparently there's no rheostat, no way to dim them. They're either on or off, and Randy preferred the less glamorous full light because he felt he could better communicate with his audience that way than sitting there alone in the spotlight, talking and singing to the dark.
Sometimes writing this column is like that: very solo, no way to see the audience until the concert's over. The paper comes out, the house lights come back on, and then I get to wonder how it went. If I didn't have my job at the market, I wouldn't get to hear the applause. For years I wrote thinking no one was listening.
Recently I've heard some boos, even caught a couple of rotten tomatoes. That's ok, at least we're communicating. Anyone who wants to hear my rebuttal to their arguments will have to look below at the entry preceding this one, however, because I'm not wasting any more trees on those words. What they're really complaining about is that I've been keeping the house lights up on this city's activities, and they prefer working behind the scenes, then performing in the spotlight where the flaws are hidden.
Take Bill Zigler's most recent folly, promoting a Dollar General store downtown on the site of the beautiful, historic Central California Citrus Exchange building. Last September the Council directed Zigler to look elsewhere for this project: three of the five, including Mayor Murray, were dead set against that location and the proposed demolition of the building. Regardless, in January Zigler came back with a re-designed Spanish-style store front on the same site and the pronouncement that the Exchange building does not have historical significance. And just in case someone might still want to restore it, they had an inspection report done that supposedly showed the building is in such poor condition that it would be financially prohibitive to save it.
This plan has so many planning flaws, not to mention potential economic impacts, that I called in some reinforcements. While they worked on the legal requirements of CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act that governs all planning proposals,) I went to work researching the historical significance of the Exchange building and examining Ziglers historial and inspection reports. Zigler's historical survey was done by his young assistant planner who knows nothing, apparently, of the importance of Sunkist Growers to this community, and the inspection does not estimate even one red cent of potential repair expense. Those "studies" are just walls thrown up to protect a project even Mayor Murray did not want.
It appears to me that Mr. Zigler, once again, is serving special interests at the community's expense. The city attorney appears to be in on the game plan: her advice to Council to close the public hearing on this project even before bringing it to a vote was another wall thrown up to keep out any new evidence on the adequacy of Zigler's environmental documents. That is what the Council has been told it is voting on, and the inadequacy of those documents is what we are showing.
A brave Council would re-open the public hearing and investigate the real motivations behind Zigler's plan before proceding, lest we become saddled with more of Zigler's Follies. If there's any hope for love at all, some walls - these walls - must fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a writer who thinks more truth can be found in words attached to music than in words alone. You can send her your thoughts on the Dollar General plan % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 - or leave a response here!
Friday, March 22, 2013
Diluting the Fire
Journal entry, March 11,2013
Last week, while cooking under the influence (CUI), I added a whole canned chipotle pepper to my pork sirloin/yellow bell pepper stir fry. I have been adding extra ingredients to the mixture ever since, trying to dilute the fire.
It's a little like trying to shed light on who's shaping Lindsay's future. Get too close, and it's like biting into a whole chipotle all by itself.
Take, for example, Janet Kleigl's letter to the editor in March 6th's Foothills Sun-Gazette. Pricked by my defense of the new councilmembers' attempts to introduce the concept of fiscal responsibility to the staff regarding the use of loan money to repave a parking lot, Janet took 16 column inches describing the inaccuracies that plague my writing and chastised the paper for printing them. Yet Janet was not at the council meeting where she said the 2-2 vote on that project was taken, which it was not. Danny Salinas, who was running the meeting because Mayor Padilla was absent due to the death of her sister, feared that he might have a 2-2 tie and decided to continue the vote to the following meeting rather than have the measure defeated. Because she was not there, Janet also did not hear any of the discussion of the concerns expressed by the two new council members who might have voted "No" if given the chance, and she did not address their concerns in her letter, although they had been sufficiently explained in Councilman Mecum's letter to the editor the week before. She wrote about the two new members as if they'd been insolent, unthinking children. That arrogance, unfortunately, was one of the hallmark characteristics of her administration of the school district.
In her letter, Janet accused me of not contacting her regarding the acquisition of the property on which the new high school was built. I didn't. I contacted the former owner, Mark Arredondo, who loved his lovely orange grove and modest ranch-style home nestled among the stately trees. When I spoke to him, as the trees he loved were dying because there's no point in irrigating a grove on its way to being bulldozed, he was so demoralized by the way Janet and her crew of arm benders had come to him that I feared for his health. They explained that if he didn't sell to them, they'd simply take it by eminent domain. Mark died before he ever got to occupy the new farm he bought with the money the school district finally provided - more than a year overdue - for the purchase of his property. Janet suggested that I got my information through the rumor mill, but in fact it was first-hand testimony of a primary - and unwilling - participant.
And in fact that farm was irreplaceable. Mark purchased it from Bob and "Mama Tiger" Kiersey, who had hired a friend of mine to farm their land. When my friend was investigating the grove's history to document damages from the 1990 Freeze for insurance purposes, he had discovered that much of the grove he tended had actually been planted by the original owner, G. Stockton Berry, the inventor of the steam harvester. Along with Capt. Hutchinson, Stockton Berry was a major influence in pioneering production agriculture around Lindsay, and thus responsible for the town's development. The land is (or was) deep, well-drained alluvium formed by Lewis Creek, a soil type we have in very limited quantity.
Unfortunately, I also know the inspector who did the property assessment of Mr. Arredondo's place for the school district. He didn't find the historic information my friend did, and he didn't recognize the priceless soil and so the true value of this property was undermined. Many of the trees the school district bulldozed were over 100 years old and still producing well. That fact alone is testament to the fertility of that soil. Unfortunately, during construction of the new high school the soil profile was completely destroyed and now that precious dirt is nothing more than underlayment for asphalt and concrete, buildings and playing fields.
Trying to turn my criticism of certain City staff for having trouble telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on my head (I said they regularly misspeak,) Janet said I misspoke when the staff told the council they'd solicited public input on the park redesign. It was at the Jan. 10, 2012 meeting; I was there, she wasn't. In her sixth paragraph she even misquotes me, a somewhat shameful thing for a former teacher and school district superintendent to do. I was maintaining (in the portion she left out) that the park design was finished (Sept. 2011) before the events occurred where they say they received public input (Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012.) Janet mentions two different meetings she attended where public input was received from as many as 10 different people (that's 0.001% of the population, by the way,) but she doesn't give the date. Sorry, Janet, but that's a strike.
Which brings us to the swings. I challenged the staff's promise "there will be swings," in a column which came out the day after (and which was written several days before) the staff's first announcement that swings were on order. After promising the people from the Dolores Huerta Foundation "there will be swings," the staff had ordered playground equipment which did not include swings and declared it final. Additionally, nowhere on the plans for the park is the location for swings identified. When I asked Maria Knutson (assistant to the city manager) where the swings, now reported as "coming," would be located, she had no idea where they would be placed or what kind of swings they would be. "I hope they're not baby swings," I said. "I hope they're big enough for me." I'm hoping I don't have to drive to Cutler Park to swing once again, the only place left I know where an adult bottom can fit into the swing fixture and remember what it was like to dream.
As I've walked around talking to people about the city's plans and problems, many of you have expressed your reluctance to express yourselves before people who really don't care what you think. I know what you're talking about, because I'm constantly having that shoved in my face, even while describing what seems to me to be really important aspects of the quality of our lives in this town, and then getting torched. You could help dilute the fire by adding extra ingredients to the mixture: your opinions about the quality of our lives, and what makes living in this town peculiarly special. Add your voices to the mixture, add your sweet selves to the count, and pretty soon we'll have this fire out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a small town girl who was raised without a small town. You can write to her with your small town dreams % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247
Last week, while cooking under the influence (CUI), I added a whole canned chipotle pepper to my pork sirloin/yellow bell pepper stir fry. I have been adding extra ingredients to the mixture ever since, trying to dilute the fire.
It's a little like trying to shed light on who's shaping Lindsay's future. Get too close, and it's like biting into a whole chipotle all by itself.
Take, for example, Janet Kleigl's letter to the editor in March 6th's Foothills Sun-Gazette. Pricked by my defense of the new councilmembers' attempts to introduce the concept of fiscal responsibility to the staff regarding the use of loan money to repave a parking lot, Janet took 16 column inches describing the inaccuracies that plague my writing and chastised the paper for printing them. Yet Janet was not at the council meeting where she said the 2-2 vote on that project was taken, which it was not. Danny Salinas, who was running the meeting because Mayor Padilla was absent due to the death of her sister, feared that he might have a 2-2 tie and decided to continue the vote to the following meeting rather than have the measure defeated. Because she was not there, Janet also did not hear any of the discussion of the concerns expressed by the two new council members who might have voted "No" if given the chance, and she did not address their concerns in her letter, although they had been sufficiently explained in Councilman Mecum's letter to the editor the week before. She wrote about the two new members as if they'd been insolent, unthinking children. That arrogance, unfortunately, was one of the hallmark characteristics of her administration of the school district.
In her letter, Janet accused me of not contacting her regarding the acquisition of the property on which the new high school was built. I didn't. I contacted the former owner, Mark Arredondo, who loved his lovely orange grove and modest ranch-style home nestled among the stately trees. When I spoke to him, as the trees he loved were dying because there's no point in irrigating a grove on its way to being bulldozed, he was so demoralized by the way Janet and her crew of arm benders had come to him that I feared for his health. They explained that if he didn't sell to them, they'd simply take it by eminent domain. Mark died before he ever got to occupy the new farm he bought with the money the school district finally provided - more than a year overdue - for the purchase of his property. Janet suggested that I got my information through the rumor mill, but in fact it was first-hand testimony of a primary - and unwilling - participant.
And in fact that farm was irreplaceable. Mark purchased it from Bob and "Mama Tiger" Kiersey, who had hired a friend of mine to farm their land. When my friend was investigating the grove's history to document damages from the 1990 Freeze for insurance purposes, he had discovered that much of the grove he tended had actually been planted by the original owner, G. Stockton Berry, the inventor of the steam harvester. Along with Capt. Hutchinson, Stockton Berry was a major influence in pioneering production agriculture around Lindsay, and thus responsible for the town's development. The land is (or was) deep, well-drained alluvium formed by Lewis Creek, a soil type we have in very limited quantity.
Unfortunately, I also know the inspector who did the property assessment of Mr. Arredondo's place for the school district. He didn't find the historic information my friend did, and he didn't recognize the priceless soil and so the true value of this property was undermined. Many of the trees the school district bulldozed were over 100 years old and still producing well. That fact alone is testament to the fertility of that soil. Unfortunately, during construction of the new high school the soil profile was completely destroyed and now that precious dirt is nothing more than underlayment for asphalt and concrete, buildings and playing fields.
Trying to turn my criticism of certain City staff for having trouble telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on my head (I said they regularly misspeak,) Janet said I misspoke when the staff told the council they'd solicited public input on the park redesign. It was at the Jan. 10, 2012 meeting; I was there, she wasn't. In her sixth paragraph she even misquotes me, a somewhat shameful thing for a former teacher and school district superintendent to do. I was maintaining (in the portion she left out) that the park design was finished (Sept. 2011) before the events occurred where they say they received public input (Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012.) Janet mentions two different meetings she attended where public input was received from as many as 10 different people (that's 0.001% of the population, by the way,) but she doesn't give the date. Sorry, Janet, but that's a strike.
Which brings us to the swings. I challenged the staff's promise "there will be swings," in a column which came out the day after (and which was written several days before) the staff's first announcement that swings were on order. After promising the people from the Dolores Huerta Foundation "there will be swings," the staff had ordered playground equipment which did not include swings and declared it final. Additionally, nowhere on the plans for the park is the location for swings identified. When I asked Maria Knutson (assistant to the city manager) where the swings, now reported as "coming," would be located, she had no idea where they would be placed or what kind of swings they would be. "I hope they're not baby swings," I said. "I hope they're big enough for me." I'm hoping I don't have to drive to Cutler Park to swing once again, the only place left I know where an adult bottom can fit into the swing fixture and remember what it was like to dream.
As I've walked around talking to people about the city's plans and problems, many of you have expressed your reluctance to express yourselves before people who really don't care what you think. I know what you're talking about, because I'm constantly having that shoved in my face, even while describing what seems to me to be really important aspects of the quality of our lives in this town, and then getting torched. You could help dilute the fire by adding extra ingredients to the mixture: your opinions about the quality of our lives, and what makes living in this town peculiarly special. Add your voices to the mixture, add your sweet selves to the count, and pretty soon we'll have this fire out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a small town girl who was raised without a small town. You can write to her with your small town dreams % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Poor Planning
Published in the Foothills Sun-Gazette March 6, 2013
"Activists seek to save 'historic' Lindsay building" ran Lew Griswold's headline in Sunday's Fresno Bee. He's referring to me and my attorney friend Richard Harriman, who's become very good at taking Valley cities to court for poor planning.
The 'historic' building is the classic Central California Citrus Exchange building on the corner of Hermosa and Mirage. At last Tuesday's city council meeting, the city planner asked the council to approve the demolition of that building and the construction of a Dollar General store on that corner, along with an extra parking lot on Elmwood to accommodate the store's delivery trucks. A public hearing was held on that proposal as well as the construction of a Family Dollar store on Hwy 65 just south of the curve, and various citizens questioned the wisdom of both proposals. But wisdom isn't behind either project. Poor planning is.
I hadn't been an activist on this issue when I got up that morning. I was focused on restructuring the railroad committee on council procedures that the city manager had wangled at the special meeting in January. Beyond establishing rules for citizen participation in council meetings that actually value citizen input, creating a planning commission is another way to do that. Lindsay is the only city in the area without one, and many of the mistakes this staff has made redesigning our town can be blamed on that. But the city staff didn't want public participation, and still doesn't, and that's why there's no planning commission.
Another good reason for having a planning commission is that it gives people, including the newspapers, a chance to find out what's in the works before it goes to the Council for approval. Until I looked at the council agenda that morning, I had no clue they wanted to bring in two dollar stores, and that fact alone lit my jets. But what made me take to the streets was the realization that it was suddenly the one and only chance to just say "no" to this crazy proposal.
I was aware that Pam Kimball had spearheaded a search for an alternative buyer for the building back in the fall, and I tried to help in that effort. I don't want to see that building go down: it represents what was good about Lindsay and could be again if we woke up to the importance of our agricultural base. It still serves beautifully as a landmark entrance to the downtown area despite the city's efforts to redefine us.
So that afternoon I went to many of the small business owners who would be impacted by the competition, and asked what they thought. No one wanted it, but when I described where it would be located, they said "There? Not there!" Many intelligently asked "Why not out at the old Lindsay Foods site?" Good question.
In the document the council was supposed to approve last Tuesday night, there is no analysis of the traffic impacts, much less the economic impacts on the downtown businesses, most of which are just getting re-established after the kibosh the downtown renovation put on their incomes. Dollar General has delivery trucks with 53' trailers that the plan proposes will come from and leave to the south on Elmwood Avenue, right through the heart of the business district which the city planner has tried to make so "pedestrian friendly." If the new business succeeds, it will drive out many of those small businesses downtown, making more empty buildings along the glamorized sidewalks (not to mention ruining livelihoods.) If it fails, it will be an empty 9,100 sq.ft. box store with a Spanish facade. It's a lose-lose proposition.
But the City will get a new parking lot out of the deal. Twenty-three spaces, to be exact, just one block away from the oversized McDermont Field House where they didn't plan for traffic or parking, or question whose quality of life they would destroy by going into the sports arena/event facility business there. Where they eliminated street parking and created a traffic bottleneck with the Roundabout, which has impacted the businesses at all four corners. I watched a lost semi go through the Roundabout two weeks ago, climbing curbs on both sides. Then it pulled a U-turn and went back through, repeating the maneuver. It managed to make it through without causing an accident, but it's really good there were no pedestrians that day.
Fortunately, Mr. Harriman was able to explain what the city planner's document lacked in language that the city attorney, if not the council, understood. She recommended the council close the public hearing but not vote until she could make sure that all the i's were dotted and the t's crossed. But it's a bigger deal than that. It's about good planning that serves the community, not poor planning that deranges the community in the service of a good-looking resume.
We all know what poor planning is: it's what happens when you don't take enough things into consideration and, as a result, what you hoped would happen goes south. That's what we've got here with the Dollar General proposal, and it's time we stand up and tell them we'll have no more of this, thank you very much.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer with graduate education in environmental planning from UC Berkeley, where Lindsay's city planner could have learned a thing or two. You can send her your thoughts on poor planning % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA 93247
"Activists seek to save 'historic' Lindsay building" ran Lew Griswold's headline in Sunday's Fresno Bee. He's referring to me and my attorney friend Richard Harriman, who's become very good at taking Valley cities to court for poor planning.
The 'historic' building is the classic Central California Citrus Exchange building on the corner of Hermosa and Mirage. At last Tuesday's city council meeting, the city planner asked the council to approve the demolition of that building and the construction of a Dollar General store on that corner, along with an extra parking lot on Elmwood to accommodate the store's delivery trucks. A public hearing was held on that proposal as well as the construction of a Family Dollar store on Hwy 65 just south of the curve, and various citizens questioned the wisdom of both proposals. But wisdom isn't behind either project. Poor planning is.
I hadn't been an activist on this issue when I got up that morning. I was focused on restructuring the railroad committee on council procedures that the city manager had wangled at the special meeting in January. Beyond establishing rules for citizen participation in council meetings that actually value citizen input, creating a planning commission is another way to do that. Lindsay is the only city in the area without one, and many of the mistakes this staff has made redesigning our town can be blamed on that. But the city staff didn't want public participation, and still doesn't, and that's why there's no planning commission.
Another good reason for having a planning commission is that it gives people, including the newspapers, a chance to find out what's in the works before it goes to the Council for approval. Until I looked at the council agenda that morning, I had no clue they wanted to bring in two dollar stores, and that fact alone lit my jets. But what made me take to the streets was the realization that it was suddenly the one and only chance to just say "no" to this crazy proposal.
I was aware that Pam Kimball had spearheaded a search for an alternative buyer for the building back in the fall, and I tried to help in that effort. I don't want to see that building go down: it represents what was good about Lindsay and could be again if we woke up to the importance of our agricultural base. It still serves beautifully as a landmark entrance to the downtown area despite the city's efforts to redefine us.
So that afternoon I went to many of the small business owners who would be impacted by the competition, and asked what they thought. No one wanted it, but when I described where it would be located, they said "There? Not there!" Many intelligently asked "Why not out at the old Lindsay Foods site?" Good question.
In the document the council was supposed to approve last Tuesday night, there is no analysis of the traffic impacts, much less the economic impacts on the downtown businesses, most of which are just getting re-established after the kibosh the downtown renovation put on their incomes. Dollar General has delivery trucks with 53' trailers that the plan proposes will come from and leave to the south on Elmwood Avenue, right through the heart of the business district which the city planner has tried to make so "pedestrian friendly." If the new business succeeds, it will drive out many of those small businesses downtown, making more empty buildings along the glamorized sidewalks (not to mention ruining livelihoods.) If it fails, it will be an empty 9,100 sq.ft. box store with a Spanish facade. It's a lose-lose proposition.
But the City will get a new parking lot out of the deal. Twenty-three spaces, to be exact, just one block away from the oversized McDermont Field House where they didn't plan for traffic or parking, or question whose quality of life they would destroy by going into the sports arena/event facility business there. Where they eliminated street parking and created a traffic bottleneck with the Roundabout, which has impacted the businesses at all four corners. I watched a lost semi go through the Roundabout two weeks ago, climbing curbs on both sides. Then it pulled a U-turn and went back through, repeating the maneuver. It managed to make it through without causing an accident, but it's really good there were no pedestrians that day.
Fortunately, Mr. Harriman was able to explain what the city planner's document lacked in language that the city attorney, if not the council, understood. She recommended the council close the public hearing but not vote until she could make sure that all the i's were dotted and the t's crossed. But it's a bigger deal than that. It's about good planning that serves the community, not poor planning that deranges the community in the service of a good-looking resume.
We all know what poor planning is: it's what happens when you don't take enough things into consideration and, as a result, what you hoped would happen goes south. That's what we've got here with the Dollar General proposal, and it's time we stand up and tell them we'll have no more of this, thank you very much.
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Trudy Wischemann is a writer with graduate education in environmental planning from UC Berkeley, where Lindsay's city planner could have learned a thing or two. You can send her your thoughts on poor planning % P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA 93247
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