“Wow – things are really blowing up in Lindsay,” a woman said to me at church Sunday. “It’s artificial, man-made,” I replied, trying to explain what I see as a set-up. She asked for no more information.
The previous Sunday, another woman had said “What a mess. I think we ought to get rid of them all except for Pam Kimball.” Ah, yes, I thought to myself, the one who leaked all this to the media, starting with KTIP radio. PK the Other Redhead.
Councilman Steven Mecum was one of those “charged” with conspiracy by Chief Wilkinson (his preferred identity.) Mecum explained beautifully why he wasn’t talking to the media, and didn’t think other councilmembers should be, either. “This is pending litigation, (from) closed session discussions, and personnel issues all rolled up in one …. I don’t have any way to explain this…without breaching one of these three things.” You can be sure he would have been charged with that, too, if he’d been the one leaking information.
No, there’s no end to the excitement in Lindsay. It comes at a bad time for me, because we’re about to have our citizens’ rights restored to participate in city council meetings without a note of fanfare. I failed to get the original language restored to the agenda packet cover sheet and agenda, but with the help of Mayor Padilla we’ve managed to save that cover sheet from going into Wilkinson’s round file. At least now there’s still a place where the public can go to find out what – and who - these meetings are for.
Unfortunately, the language restoring our rights is restrictive and uninviting. But I decided not to waste any energy trying to get a friendlier version for now. Right now that language reflects Wilkinson’s true feelings about public participation, seconded by Councilman Salinas. I’ll work for better language when we get city staff who really would welcome public input.
I’d like to put in a good word for Mayor Padilla at this point. At the last minute of that discussion, almost like an afterthought, she asked Wilkinson to have the cover sheet translated into Spanish as well. It took him three “Huh?”’s to finally hear her request, but then he conceded. If we don’t see that version in the next three months, we’ll ask again.
Actually, we might consider renaming the town “Volcano.” I realize there’s already a town in California with that name (Amador Co.), as well as dozens of Sierran peaks, lakes, canyons and falls. There was even a town called Volcanoville in El Dorado County with a post office until 1953. So we might want to distinguish it from those names somehow.
A couple of weeks ago, an old friend reminded me of a grade school companion of ours: John Staatz, the smartest boy in our class. “Do you remember the volcano he made?” she asked. Growing up in the shadow of Mt. Ranier, we were assigned to build model volcanos as a class project in the fourth grade. I only remembered the failure of my volcano, I’m afraid to say, a complete dud. But in suggesting a name change, that’s actually the image I had in mind. How about “Volcanoland”?
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Trudy
Wischemann is a bad volcano maker who’d rather write than switch. You can send her your eruption sightings c/o
P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment
below.
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