Two Tanks

Published Aug. 12, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I hope some of you appreciated our trip up Rocky Hill last week, a little break from thinking about the City of Lindsay.  For me it helped bring things back into focus: they’ve been moving so fast, I was seeing double.
    
     Take the two tanks of gas that had to be dropped from Bill Zigler’s contract as interim city manager, for instance.  Such a modest request from such a modest person, small compensation for what will be a significant increase in his responsibilities. Who would oppose such a paltry request?
    
     Clearly Mr. Zigler had calculated the two tanks as an approximation of what his increased expenses might be for these additional responsibilities, and we can admire his conservative math.  Politically, however, it was an enormous miscalculation, because that qualitative number stuck out like a sore thumb and revealed what no one would have seen before then:  the $400/month vehicle allowance that he already gets even though he doesn’t bring his car to work a majority of the time.  He rides his bike from his home in Exeter.  How can he use his car for work if it isn’t here?
    
     Councilman Mecum was the one who spotted it, blew the whistle and dropped a red flag on that play.  He would pay for it later in the white man’s news, as he often does for taking the side of the peoples’ purse.  “What’s this ‘two tanks of gas’?” he asked, pointing to its absurdity as a budget line item.  “Two tanks for what, a Volkswagon? an F-16?” 
    
     He was discussing substituting a reasonable mileage compensation arrangement to replace the vehicle allowance when he was cut off by Councilwoman Kimball.  Pam informed Steve this wasn’t the right time to be questioning contracts.  She was wrong: the two-tank addition was a change from the contract that had been worked out in closed session the week before.  The city manager’s contract is the only one the Council gets to approve, and an open, honest discussion about how we should compensate our city employees was in the public interest.  She cut it off.
    
     Backpeddling, Zigler withdrew the two-tank request and reminded the Council this was the contract they were offering him, not the other way around (as if those two tanks were their idea.)   His guile annoyed Councilwoman Sanchez, who voted no with Councilman Mecum, tying the vote 2-2.  This delayed the approval of the contract until the following regular meeting, where it was discussed behind closed doors.  Hopefully the Council at least considered Mecum’s mileage compensation idea then for future use, because afterward Zigler’s contract was approved 4-1 with the flat $400/month vehicle allowance intact, no vehicle use or mileage accountability required.  I hope $3,600 is enough to cover Bill’s bicycle repairs over the next year.
    
     This man, Bill “Bike Lane” Zigler, is the same man who convinced Mayor Padilla two years ago to sign a resolution asking CalTrans to change the alignment of Highway 65 to correct for indelicate entrances to Country Waffles and the Super 8 Motel.  CalTrans’ response was to move the take-off point of the new route to the south of town so that it will now bypass Lindsay completely 1/2 mile to the west. 
    
     Mr. Zigler was excited by the prospect of opening land for commercial development along the new route.  However, even Danny Salinas, who originally had supported the CalTrans resolution, saw that it’s the kiss of death for the development we now have.  Yet they hired this man to run our town - for the interim.
    
     May they show greater judgment in choosing someone qualified for the permanent position.

(Footnote:  Since submitting this piece for publication, I have learned that I made two substantial errors which I would now like to correct.  First, Councilman Mecum said "F-150," not "F-16."  The principle is the same, but my mind took his question to a logical extreme.  Second, apparently Mr. Zigler did not know the two-tanks provision was in the contract, so he couldn't have concocted the idea.  According to Finance Director Tamara Lakin, it was a residual from Mr. Zamora's merger of the city manager contract with Mr. Zigler's contract for department head of Planning and Economic Development.  Mr. Zamora had not been approved to make such a merger, and apparently Mr. Zigler had not read the contract carefully, so I don't know who's really to blame for that faux pas.  My assumption that Mr. Zigler had devised the two-tank number may have been logical but it was unfounded.  My concern about the vehicle allowance stands, however.)

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer trained in environmental planning who is aghast.  You can send her your thoughts on public process c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or visit www.trudysnotesfromhome.blogspot.com and leave a comment there.

Heart of the Mountain

Published Aug. 5, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I’ve been grateful to have some extra work in Exeter this month.  It gets me out of town, which is great for anyone, but especially for community watchdogs.  Provides perspective, if you know what I mean.

     I take the backroads most of the time.  Travelling from Lindsay to Exeter, I take Parkside up to Myer, down to Spruce, crossing the canal twice.  At Spruce I either stay on Myer, going past the Sun-Pacific packinghouse with its decent rail crossings, or turn right and go north to Firebaugh, taking my chances crossing the tracks near Cosart’s Shop.  Either way, I’ve travelled through the countryside between our two towns, passing homes and businesses, fields and groves belonging to members of both communities.  It’s a way of staying in touch with the rural landscape – the people and land - that I love.

     But the highlight of the trip is going past the Source of it all.  It’s the northernmost half mile of Parkside, heading up the steep incline of Rocky Hill, staring straight into its heart.  The hill was formed by a small pluton (a polyp of magma that rose through the earth’s crust toward the surface.)  That molten rock intruded the sediments of Valley fill and cooked them to a fine-grained fare-thee-well, producing the smooth slopes surrounding the hill’s bouldered, granitic core. 

     This heart doesn’t throb.  Its stillness is part of its beauty, broken only by echoes bouncing off the rounded rock surfaces - echoes of crows calling, hawks whistling, small rocks falling, the audible signs of nature at work.  There are visible signs as well, from the microscopic breaking of mineral grains as the rocks’ surfaces weather, to the soil scarps left behind when gravity pulls another massive boulder down to a new level.  Many things grow in the cracks, from mosses and lichens to blue oaks, delighting lizards, snakes, birds and mammals of many sizes.

     It was the first landscape feature I was introduced to by Tulare-born geographer Bill Preston when he began showing me around his beloved Basin, and it has been a touchstone for me ever since.  Before I found the house I would buy in Lindsay, I dreamed I was riding my bike up Parkside to visit Rocky Hill’s heart, seeing myself below from above, as if suspended from ravens’ wings.  Since moving here I have dreamed myself floating above that slope several times.

     When my car isn’t running well, I can take a less strenuous route to work, sticking to the flats.  But I miss the holiness when I do.  On my way to Quaker Meeting one Sunday morning during a dense Tule fog, the entire hill was invisible.  Going up that last half mile of Parkside, I felt like I was leaving the earth’s surface, driving straight into nothingness.  Then the dark outline of the heart appeared like a premonition or a promise.  It took my breath away.

     I think one of the things we love about mountains is the effect of their presence on us.  I grew up in view of Mt. Ranier, a dormant volcano in Washington, which was so majestic and awe-inspiring I felt I belonged to it, despite the fact it might blow its top.  For the whole family, a good day weatherwise was described as one where “You could see the mountain today.”  When I was 17 we left it and moved to Maui, where Haleakala (which had already blown its top) sortof took its place.  But from my 20^th year until my 43^rd, I had no mountain, no centerpost to keep me grounded to the earth.

     From the end of my front sidewalk in Lindsay I have a distant view of Rocky Hill.  I’m comforted by having that peak nearby, one with an igneous heart.  One made from the earth’s blood rising to the surface, reaching for air and maybe even admiration.  Maybe love.

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Trudy Wischemann is a geomorphically-inclined writer who respects forces that can’t be seen.  You can send her your mountain love letters c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.