Friday,
when I looked at the agenda for Tuesday night’s city council meeting and saw
the continuing blockages to open government, the words “How long, Lord, how
long we gonna have to ...” seeped into my head.
What was interesting was that it was
Wilma McDaniel’s voice I heard, reading one of her poems on a tape I have
somewhere, mimicking a black woman’s Biblical complaint as she stood in around
waiting to be picked up after a long day picking grapes, with blisters on her
feet and a baby in wet diapers. I can
only find scraps of the other words she used in the poem, but the picture it
painted is as clear in my mind as a Paul Buxman farmscape.
Writing this column before the
meeting, which you will be reading after it occurs, is always an interesting
project. What they (meaning whoever put
the agenda together) have planned to occur at the meeting (in this case, the
approval of two items in the consent calendar that I think, in the interest of
open government, should be discussed in public before being approved or
rejected,) could actually change if enough people showed up at the meeting and
requested discussion. It’s even possible
they might do it if I’m the only one asking.
It’s also possible they’ll go right on an approve the entire consent
calendar as they have so many times before, no matter what I say.
Two and a half years ago, one member
of the public could request the removal of items from the consent calendar for
discussion. No one had done that in so
long it didn’t matter, until residents began raising questions about the home
loan program. Then, under Mayor Murray’s
leadership, they eliminated that right along with two others, seriously
constraining citizen participation in city council meetings. Since Mayor Padilla took the center chair I
have been asking for the restoration of those rights, without real response.
The two items “they” want approved
without discussion that I think need to be aired are 1) the resolution
“requesting action by Congress on Drought Legislation,” and 2) the approval of
the contract for the new city attorney.
The first is a list of eight
“WHEREAS”s, including one which states “just as the City and its residents have
been forced to adopt progressively aggressive conservation measures to adapt to
the current period of drought.” Come on.
There’s maybe 10 more dry lawns besides mine in the whole town. They just passed mandatory conservation
measures last month under pressure from the governor, after months of not
promoting voluntary measures. Nobody in
Lindsay is suffering. Our farmers are,
but not us in town.
My complaint about the second item,
the contract for our new city attorney, is simply technical. During closed session at the last meeting,
the Council apparently made a decision about two things: not renewing the contract with Julia Lew’s
firm, and who to choose instead, yet they reported at the end of that session
there was nothing to report. They chose
Mario Zamora, a Lindsay boy, without even interviewing any of the other
candidates, and while I can assure you from first-hand experience that Mr.
Zamora is a pretty spiffy lawyer, I’d hoped we’d take a break from insider
recruitments.
How long, Lord? Maybe only until November.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a prayer advocate who votes.
You can send her your prayers c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or
visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there.
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