Silver Linings

Published in edited form April 22, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     We’ve entered Orange Blossom Week with no orange blossoms left on the trees, a combination of the drought-induced early bloom and the late timing of the event (caused in part by trying to avoid conflict with Easter.)  It struck me as odd until I remembered silver linings.

     The whole idea that there are silver linings to even the darkest storm clouds is really a biblical concept:  that in dire conditions God may be sending a hidden blessing.  Reading Habakkuk this weekend, I discovered that the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was God’s winnowing hand, a way of recovering His people from their lust for other gods and the domination of the common people by the sin-filled, greedy Jewish elite.

     An orange grower friend called last week to catch up. Living outside the boundaries of the Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District, he pumps groundwater to irrigate his trees. In normal years all he has to worry about is the winter recharge of his wells, Edison rates, and the lifespans of his pumps.  This year his worry is doubled by the possibility that neighbors, again having no surface water deliveries from the district, will draw down the aquifer and leave his pumps high and dry.  

     “The bloom was light,” he added, contemplating the possibility that there may not be enough crop to warrant irrigating beyond keeping the trees alive.  “That could be a silver lining,” I thought to myself.  Then he said “But I see the baby oranges already.”  I knew immediately that this true farmer will do everything he can to get those oranges to maturity and to the packinghouse, where my neighbors will find work this winter and be able to keep living here.

     The drought itself may have a silver lining.  I find myself holding my breath a lot, too aware (thanks to my education) that our population is well above the natural carrying capacity of this land and that the physical, political and social infrastructure we have created to amend that natural capacity is fragile.  In many places it is broken, perhaps beyond redeeming.

     That awareness has made me super-conscious of my domestic water use.  I find myself dedicating more of my day conserving the water I use and hauling the best of the used water outside to my plants and trees. “Run once, use twice” has become my new motto. These efforts have a silver lining: they connect me to this little piece of land I live on and give me a supportive role in its life.

     It has also led me to look for models of how we here in California might begin to resolve some of the raging conflicts over water supply and use.  Most people who think this drought is man-made look to Sacramento as the location of the evil-doers.  But if they  look west, like where my walnut grower friend who sits on the board of the Tulare Irrigation District looked, discovering a 40-acre “pump farm” where Boswell is pumping Tulare ID’s conscientiously-recharged aquifer with 29 huge pumps running 24/7, they will see that we have neighbors to blame (or at least hold accountable) in this shortage.

     In the early 1990’s, in a similarly-raging water war in Idaho, a woman named Janice Brown, who ran a trout-fishing motel on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, teamed up with Dale Swenson, the head of the local irrigation district, to form the Henry’s Fork Watershed Council.  The council brought together all the competing interests to learn to manage the flows of the Henry’s Fork for the benefit of all.  The first two years were fearful.  But by the late 1990’s, more than 150 people participated in the coalition, including river-runners, loggers, farmers and land managers, and the coalition had reached a point where it stood for equitable use of the river’s flows for all the economic sectors involved.  (Visit www.henrysfork.org to view their continuing efforts.)

     For those of us served by the Friant-Kern, who live outside the watershed where the majority of our water has come for 60 years, this concept may be more difficult to fathom.  But the need is there.  Maybe the silver lining of this drought is that we will begin to acknowledge the conflicts over water development and use, and begin finding solutions - together.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a faithful water and community development researcher who writes.  You can send her your silver lining stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Fooled

Published in edited form April 15, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I’m going to blame it on the orange blossoms.  I got fooled into thinking the Lindsay city manager, Rich Wilkinson, had a change of heart or at least saw the handwriting on the wall about his role in stripping the public of their rights to participate in our city council meetings.  Two weeks ago, when I wrote optimistically about the restoration of those rights, I must have been high on blossom-perfumed air.
    
     For three years I have been recommending that the language he removed regarding public participation be restored to the agenda packet cover sheet.  There was one place on the agenda itself where three words needed to be reinstated, but the major sentences he obliterated were found on the cover sheet, which says across the top “Welcome to your Lindsay City Council Meeting,” followed by this statement: 
     "Whether you are attending this meeting because of general interest or because an item of special interest to you is to be reviewed, your presence is an important means of helping ensure and informed public and responsible Municipal Government."

    

     The cover sheet goes on to describe the city council and its role, the city manager’s job, the timing of council meetings and types of actions that occur, the processes for making suggestions, inquiries and complaints to city staff as well as the rules for citizen participation in meetings.  Except for the website, it is the only place where the city communicates to the residents their rightful place and responsibilities in maintaining the community.

     When I was called down to Rich’s office, as if I were the offending party, I had noticed that the purpose of the meeting was called “the agenda.”  I assumed, wrongly, that this was just shorthand for the project of restoring our rights.  But after his vacation, when he finally communicated some of the language he proposed in response to my complaint, it became clear that not only was he not restoring language to the cover sheet, he was doing away with the cover sheet altogether.

     Naturally, I asked why.  “No other cities have a cover sheet,” replied the faithful Maria Knutson, assistant to the city manager.  I called the mayor, who did not find much merit in that reason, either.  I am still waiting for a resolution to this question.

     Are you tired enough of all this?  It seems so small on the surface, like a gnat on the windshield.  But this unaccountability, this refusal to bear responsibility to the people who pay his enormous salary, who rely on him to maintain a law-abiding staff as well as the entire department of public safety, is the tip of a big and dangerous iceberg.

     Friday the Lindsay police arrested a young man, 24, in some kind of fracas, location not identified. In the squad car, on the way to his booking, he died.  The sheriff’s department will conduct an investigation, but who are they going to ask?  That young man cannot speak for himself.  He cannot say he should have had an ambulance instead of a squad car; his family cannot know where or when a mistake was made.  And at this moment at least, the only opportunity anyone has to voice their concerns to our elected officials in public is three minutes during the public comment period, during which no one, council or staff, has to answer your questions.

     Don’t be fooled.  Help your city council members establish the need for accountability from our city manager/chief of public safety.  We will not have real public safety until we do.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy Wischemann is a wordworking realist who writes.  You can send her your stories of public endangerment c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

On Restoration

Published April 1, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


“Must I restore what I have not stolen?”  Psalm 69.4, Jewish Publication Society
    
     For three years I have been working to restore rights for public participation in our Lindsay city council meetings that were stripped from us, invisibly and unaccountably, after the February 14, 2012 meeting. 
    
     I did not do the stripping; it was done by the city clerk at the request of the city manager, who apparently was responding to then-mayor Ed Murray.  But it was done in response to my attempts to use the rights outlined on the council agenda packet cover sheet, so I have felt responsible.  I was ignorant:  I could not imagine either that my efforts would be seen as threatening or that such wanton disregard for public rights would result.  So, on behalf of all of us who might want to participate and a more democratic community that could result, I have kept trying to get those rights restored.
    
     Some small progress is being made.  Our current mayor, Ramona Padilla, placed an item on the Feb. 24, 2015 agenda to consider restoration of the language regarding public participation on the agenda packet cover sheet.  She had requested the city manager, Rich Wilkinson, to provide that language in the agenda packet.  Unfortunately he provided wording for only one of the three rights he removed.  The discussion between council and staff  revealed conflicting ideas about what rights the public should have to participate, and the city manager was instructed to explore what other cities allow.  The fact that the City of Lindsay once accorded these rights didn’t seem to matter.
    
     March 9th I got an email saying Rich Wilkinson would like to meet with me regarding the agenda.  We had our meeting on the 12th.  He said he wanted to know what would satisfy my concerns, and that the language couldn’t just be restored for a long list of reasons I cannot remember.  I told him how I perceived it:  that it was an act of violence against the public that still needed healing.  I said that those words were removed in order to squelch public participation, and that putting them back would be a sign to the public that we aren’t having that kind of governance anymore.  He said he’d never heard me say it so clearly before.  I didn’t say that obviously we still have that kind of governance, despite the increased responsiveness of our current city council.
    
     I told him it’s not the language that’s so important – it’s the rights:  the right to ask that an item be removed from the consent calendar for discussion in public; the right to ask questions and make comments on agenda items when they are being discussed during the council meeting; and the right to place an item on the council agenda.  We had all those rights prior to Valentine’s Day, 2012, although few of us knew them, and when those of us who did know tried to exercise them, we often were denied.
    
     We worked over the three rights to find potential language to represent them; he said he’d email a draft to me the week after his vacation.  After we’ve reached a consensus, he’ll pass it by the city attorney for his approval before submitting it to the council.  He hoped we’d have it ready by the April 28 meeting.  I think it’s possible we’re on our way to a more open, more respectful form of governance.  I just hope this isn’t “April Fools.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher/advocate who writes.  You can send her your public participation stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.