It
was a busy week in Lake Woebehere, my adopted home town. The Lindsay City Council filled the vacancy
made by Steven Mecum’s resignation with Brian Watson, assuring Councilmembers
Kimball and Salinas that whatever they and the city staff want, they will
have.
The Council also ratified the
mistake they made when they appointed Bill Zigler to fill the city manager
vacancy when Rich Wilkinson flew the coop with severance pay Pam Kimball
arranged back when they used him to fill the vacancy Scot Townsend made when he
flew the coop. Bill Zigler, who once
filled the position of Lindsay’s city planner, having no training or experience
in planning, is now our permanent city manager with no training or experience
except that which he’s received as interim, not to mention lacking the personal
integrity required to make government transparency possible.
So I guess you could say we’re back
to square one, although I don’t know what date I’d put on that square. The dreamy, smoke-and- mirror days of Scot
Townsend’s regime are gone, with the hope of Lindsay’s revival stuck in the mud
of reality his plans left us. Much of
the scheme remains, however, and will need to be watched if we’re not to be
plunged further backward.
The next four months before the
election will be interesting, if for no other reason than to watch Brian Watson
recuse himself. Mr. Watson lives in the
house Jim Hunter bought from Signa Ellerding, the once-beautiful property on
Parkside just north of the park and community center that Hunter subdivided to
build three new houses which miraculously became homes to some of the city’s
new employees the Townsend administration flew in from Utah to man the new
McDermont facility. Jim Hunter also obtained
the land across from that house and had planned to build a large,upscale
subdivision to fill the space between the redeveloped park, the Wellness Center
and the new elementary school. That
subdivision, had it been completed by Mr. Hunter, at least would have provided
the curbs and sidewalks to the elementary school the city eventually had to
provide at taxpayer expense after 3 years of kids walking in mud.
Before he was appointed to Mecum’s
seat, Brian Watson suggested to the Council that he had a solution to a problem
of which the Council might not be aware:
the fact that few teachers in the Lindsay Unified School District
actually live in our town. Actually,
they’d heard it before. When Jim Hunter
lived in town, it was proposed that the reason for this non-resident teaching
cadre was the lack of decent housing for them to purchase, and that providing
more decent housing would return us to our former glory days when most teachers
lived in town. I don’t know if anyone
has asked the teachers why they prefer to live elsewhere; in my view, the Q:A
was entirely self-serving. But that was
the plan.
Mr. Hunter was also involved in
building the townhouses just south of the new Wellness Center on former
hospital district land which had to be converted to Section 8 housing which the
city had to turn over to the county because Lindsay was incapable of operating
it within the law. In fact, they barely
finished building it. I mention this
simply because it’s hard to remember everything that went on during that
whirlwind time.
In the meantime, nothing has been
done to preserve the historic quality or economic viability of Lindsay’s
downtown and much has been done to erode it.
The plan to put a Dollar General store on the southeast corner of the
roundabout has returned, same developer, same beneficiaries, same lack of
traffic or economic analysis to determine whether this site or business is
appropriate. That might sound like a
boon to you, but that location is unlikely to stimulate customers to venture
two blocks south to the main street where a handful of businesses have been
gallantly trying to keep us anchored to that stretch.
And in the meantime, what once was
Kisling’s Auto Parts and is now Napa, the last locally-owned auto parts store downtown,
is going out of business. When I went to
commiserate, the young man at the counter said “It’s sad, really sad. But Lindsay is just drying up.” Four years ago, had the City considered my
request to change the location of the proposed Dollar General store to a more
central location, such as the Stamper Motors site that is now infinitely
available having had the ancient brick building demolished by a Thanksgiving
weekend fire in 2014, perhaps the increased business traffic could have saved
Napa. But that’s water under the
bridge. By the way, have you heard that
Hanford plans to build a McDermont-like facility? That should be fun, competing for events with
a city that size.
So that’s the news from Lake
Woebehere, where the residents need to get stronger and more vigilant in
monitoring city hall if we want any of our authentic community to remain. Meet me in the council chambers at 6 p.m. on
the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month. Maybe we can work our way back up to Square
One if we try.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.
Deep thanks to Colleen Childers all these years for her support and her
love of Pepper’s Market, now MIA. Send
your thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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