Seeing No One

Published Nov. 30, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


    “Seeing no one,” said our new mayor, Pam Kimball, last Tuesday night, “we’ll skip the rebuttal and move to the vote,” which came out 5:0, predictably approving the item. 

     It was a public hearing on a tax-exempt bond issue that was barely discussed and which I did not understand.  No one spoke in favor of, or against the idea, which caused Pam to lower her gavel.  In fact, no one came to the meeting even to ask a question about it.  It was just like old times.

           

     There are other familiarities. It was the last meeting of Rosaena Sanchez, who chose not to serve another term.  Despite being the elected Councilmember to receive the highest number of popular votes in at least two decades (745 to Pam’s 549, which made her third-place in 2012,) Ms. Sanchez had to acknowledge herself, thanking the citizens for what she’d learned serving on the dais.  Her sentiments were barely acknowledged by the other council members, who appeared not sad to see her go.           

     With Rosaena’s departure, starting Dec. 13^th  the Lindsay City Council will be majority appointees:  people chosen by the Council itself to fill vacancies made by those who left.  In fact, the only two elected Council members, Pam Kimball and Danny Salinas (who received only 385 votes in 2014), served multiple terms as appointees before actually facing an election.  We are back to having a hand-picked Council, insiders all.

           

     Another similarity with the past:  changing rules for public participation.  When Ed Murray was mayor, you never knew whether you’d be able to speak, even during the public comment period, or whether he’d decide that what you had to say was not pertinent to the Council’s business and cut you off with the pound of his gavel.  Asking a question during the meeting was almost impossible.  But when Ramona Padilla became mayor, I began the long process of establishing rules for public participation so that people could know what they could say when, and begin to take their rightful place in these public meetings.             

     With Ramona’s departure and Pam’s elevation to mayor, I knew we would have trouble keeping those rules in place.  Having served as mayor-pro-tem under Ed’s mayorship several times, Pam has no problem filling his shoes.  In both November meetings she quickly dispatched what little public participation could have occurred by me and my attorney regarding the third attempt to build a Dollar General store on Art and Leonor Serna’s lots near the Roundabout.           

    

     At the November 8^th meeting, Mayor Kimball tabled the agenda item rather than discuss it, without even exploring what our concerns might have been.  In the two weeks between that meeting and last Tuesday’s, we received more of the supporting documents from the Dollar General project, which only increased our concerns. We submitted these greater concerns in writing before the Nov. 22^nd meeting and prepared to discuss them with Council and Staff.

           

     Pam chose, however, to limit our participation in person to either the public comment period or during the agenda item.  She then asked Assistant City Planner Brian Spaunhurst to make the staff’s presentation of the project, and she and the other council members smilingly followed along as he painstakingly read each document from the Nov. 8^th meeting, which took at least half an hour.  Staff presentations normally take 5 minutes at most.  When it came our turn to speak, she limited each presentation to five minutes and asked that we present only new information.  These changes in the rules were clearly devised to inhibit discussion of the issues, not to flush them out.

           

     We were there to discuss the apparent problems with traffic safety and congestion thanks to the Roundabout, which appear not to have been adequately considered in the project evaluation.  Yet not one council member took the opportunity to investigate our concerns either during the meeting or afterward.  They instantly and easily rubberstamped the Dollar General project, which elated the Sernas and their realtor.  No one was embarrassed.

           

      “Nobody comes to the Lindsay City Council meetings,” editor Reggie Ellis once shouted at me when I complained about our town.  Those of us who can comprehend the business of city councils should be embarrassed about that fact, especially after the economic antics of the Townsend administration were discovered by a handful of concerned citizens who stuck their necks out and started going to those meetings.  

           

     But the real culprits are the so-called elected officials of this town, who have the responsibility of seeing that the administration operates for the benefit of its residents, not for the benefit of special interests, including individual property owners.  Seeing no one, they think they know what this community needs.  But if they do not operate the public meetings in such a way that public participation is respected and encouraged, no one is exactly who they’re going to see.  It’s on their heads.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte public participant who writes.  You can send her your traffic concerns c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.  Thanks to one of my favorite RN Market customers for reading this column and asking what I think about our new mayor.

 

little luxuries

Published September 14, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Last week I stopped in at one of my favorite cheap chain stores, the kind where nothing is over one dollar.  I try to keep my purchases there to a minimum, but when I need a little freehanded spending, the kind that makes me feel like I really do belong in American society, it’s the place to go.  That’s where I find the little luxuries that add spice to my life without making it impossible to pay my water bill.

           

     One of the things I brought home from that little splurge was a jar of raspberry jam.  It was a squared-off jar like some of the classy imported jams arrive in, holding 12 oz. of deep ruby red fruit, with the words “world class” and “premium product” on the label.  The label, when I finally got around to reading its backside over my first cup of coffee the next morning, also informed me that it was a product of Egypt, imported indeed.

    

     And that’s when the shame moved in.  One dollar American paid for a glass jar with a metal lid, raspberries, sugar, and pectin; it paid for the energy and labor for processing, and even more for shipping half-way around the world.  What could the Egyptian berry farmers have received for their fruit in this product, or the sugar producers?  The jar manufacturers, the jam makers, the longshoremen loading cases of jam aboard ships?

           

     And what American product did my purchase displace?  The fine jam makers in Fresno County may get $2.50 or $3.00 for their jars of jam produced only an hour away.  Why would I not pay $2.00 more for this little luxury to keep my neighbors in business, reduce (or at least not contribute to increased) greenhouse gases, global warming, pollution of the oceans?  I didn’t even need a new jar of jam:  I found two in the cupboard when I got home.

            And this is the issue I tripped over as I girded up once again to protest the proposed location of a new Dollar General store in Lindsay:  I’m up against the wall of my own buying behaviors.  I know what it could mean to Lindsay’s buying public to have something like a general store back in town, especially one with discount prices where you can snag little luxuries for yourself with the justification of getting a real bargain.  How many of us in our now-not-so-prosperous town can afford to pay full price for things, at least in our minds?  And if it eventually drives stores out of town with higher prices for the same goods made in China or Thailand or even Egypt, like Rite Aid or Art Serna’s hardware store, can we ourselves be blamed?  We only bought one little jar of raspberry jam for ourselves.  Each one of us cannot bear the responsibility for a marketing system gone mad through global trading.  Heck, at least the raspberry growers in Egypt made something instead of nothing in this transaction.

      In many ways the race is already lost, at least for the moment.  Those of us who would, if we could, vote anti-trade in November’s election in honor of the jobs lost to foreign countries in years past, will be standing in line on Dollar General’s opening day, waiting to dive in for the bargains from this globalized fact of life.  I will have eaten all my raspberry jam and begun to save thumb tacks or paper clips in the convenient little squared-off jar, hoping to remember all that little luxury has cost us.

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Trudy Wischemann is a native-born bargain hunter who writes.  You can send her your stories of little luxury hunting c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

Napa No More?

Published in shorter form August 31, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     I have a short-handled hammer sitting on my desk, with the receipt from Lindsay’s Napa Auto Parts underneath it.  It’s holding down more than the receipt:  it’s holding the memory of all the community life I have experienced in that place of business which, unfortunately, is about to disappear.  

     I bought it last week when I went to ask Jose Godoy if the rumor the store is closing was really true.  Jose has been ordering auto parts for me for 12 years, and I could tell from his face, even before he finished helping the customers in front of me, that it was.

     “So what can I help you with, Trudy?” he asked for the hundredth and maybe last time.  I had come wishing I could help him, though I felt helpless enough to cry.  For all the times they have befriended me, he and Joe Lopez (aka “Little Joe”), and their former boss, Bob Kisling, I am clearly in their debt.  “August 31^st is our last day,” he said.

     That part of town has become pretty lifeless in a retail sense, ever since the thrift store, Keys Upholstery and the body shop moved that once inhabited the brick buildings across the street.  Then the discount goods store to the south folded up its tent, and the Stamper Motors building burned, leaving a garish scene of charred devastation for months and months.  It’s not hard to see how business on that block could take a hit.  I sadly paid for my hammer, which will remind me of them every time I see it, and went home.

           

     The next night I found myself at the Lindsay City Council meeting doing battle with the plan to develop a Dollar General store on the southeast corner of the roundabout.  When they first proposed building it on Hermosa, it was a block east, on the southwest corner of Hermosa and Mirage.  They intended to demolish the former Central California Citrus Exchange Building, and they’d hired a residential building appraiser to write a report saying the building was in such horrible condition it couldn’t be saved, hoping to ward off any protest over the loss of this historic architectural resource.  By the grace of God we were able to make the folly of that plan clear, and eventually the building was purchased and restored in four short months.  Let us just say that the City staff was engaged in serious misrepresentation of the building’s true condition in the effort to get Dollar General located on that street.

           

     The plan then shifted then to the west side of that block, proposing to demolish the former Flying A station that had been Ed’s Auto for 3 decades until he sold the business to Miguel Chavez, who operated it as M & J’s Auto Repair.  We opposed that plan in defense of Miguel’s business and also for the inadequate planning assessment, including the obvious traffic problems of cars backed up into the already hard-to-navigate roundabout and 70-foot delivery trucks blocking traffic on Hermosa.  Just as we prepared to go to court on the matter, Dollar General pulled out.  But last week, just two+ years later, after driving Miguel to move, then dismantling the historic Flying A station and demolishing the old Pepper’s Market building, they brought the same plan back.

           

     Everyone I tell about this plan says “That’s not the right place for it.” Instinctively people know what it will do to traffic, but I think they also are responding to the decentering of downtown.  This plan is an effort to make Hermosa the new main street, which has the distinct potential to cause the former downtown brick buildings to be abandoned by businesses trying to survive, hoping to catch the new wave before they drown.  It’s a perfect example of 1960’s strip mall development that emptied downtowns across the country, a planning mistake we’ve been trying to overcome for at least 3, if not 5 decades.

           

     Tuesday night at the council meeting I proposed modifications to the new/old site plan that would make the parking lot entrance a little further from the roundabout, and other changes that could make the roundabout intersection more public-friendly.  But I also reminded them of another site that supposedly was considered when Dollar General first proposed building in our town.

           

     It’s that now-empty parcel of land across from Napa’s building, the old Stamper Motors site.   The fire that demolished that building occurred Thanksgiving weekend 2014, about 6 months after Dollar General pulled out of Lindsay, avoiding our lawsuit.  Although it took many months for the site to be cleared of rubble, it has been waiting patiently for redevelopment.  And after Tuesday’s council meeting, in the middle of a good night’s sleep, I realized that’s where the placement of a Dollar General store would do the most good for reviving the downtown.

           

     I took this fresh-born idea to Jose a day later and asked “Do you think having that store across the street would help your business here?”  You should have seen his face.  Hope filled the room.  It not only would bring new customers to an old part of town that could use them, it would also eliminate the roundabout traffic jams and delivery truck issues we identified Tuesday night because the site is near the oldest, easiest truck route in town.

           

     So add your prayer to God’s good grace if you feel the same.  It will take something like an act of Congress to get this project to relocate – but that’s what I thought when we were trying to keep them from demolishing the Citrus Exchange Building.  That gleaming little building reminds me to not lose hope.  Maybe we can keep Napa Auto Parts after all.

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Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher and rural advocate who writes.  Thanks to new councilman Brian Watson for his interest in building standards and revamping truck routes in town.  Send your community redesign ideas to P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

True Community

Published August 24, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     “What is your vision for Lindsay?” asked the new editor of this paper, Paul Myers, last week when I met with him and former editor Reggie Ellis, now publisher.  It was a fair question, and one that made me think, especially as I prepared to make objections to the new (same old) Dollar General site plan review that was presented to the City Council for approval at the August 23rd meeting. 

       My first words in reply were, in fact, objections to the vision of Lindsay’s past and present administrations and the forces of urbanization.  Call me crazy, but I wish we could retain something of what it means to be rural:  a local economy generated by and serving those who live here, with authentic social and political structures that encourage and teach the newcomers to this country how to be members of this place while embracing and serving those who entered long ago.  I wish we could re-envision the value of the lives of those who make their livings growing and harvesting the fruits of this land, and celebrate those things in our cultural events.   I wish we could respect the limitations of this semi-desert land we inhabit and not just mine its groundwater and the government programs offered in the spirit of equality. 

       Despite the odds, what I wish we could become is true community, with an emphasis on the “true.”  Falsehood is one of the things we have been fighting since the triple-stacked loans were discovered around 2009, those loans intended to get 50 or more low-income buyers into homes of their own that went instead to 13 city employees.  What stunned us most were the lies the city staff had told themselves justifying the stacking, staff who still hold paid positions there now.  I can’t even remember the term they used for this “creative” packaging, the self-deception was that appalling.  

       Lest you think something’s changed, let me dump a few dates on you.  On July 12, Councilman Mecum resigned.  On July 18, the application for the Dollar General site plan review was signed by property owners Serna and Llewallyn, complete with unsigned engineered drawings and maps and a categorical exemption from the CEQA process which addresses none of the concerns we raised in our lawsuit two years ago.  This past Friday, when I walked into the city clerk’s office to find out the status of the new Dollar General plan, Brian Spaunhurst, the planning assistant working under Bill Zigler, was preparing the document for this week’s council agenda.  Two years ago, after the developer pulled out of that project, we had requested that we be informed if that project was resumed, a request which obviously had been ignored. 

       Let me say that I’m not opposed to having Dollar General in town, except for the fact that the profits will be siphoned off to DG headquarters, there will be few employees with non-existent benefits, and their building designs are straight out of the 1960’s, complete with no windows.  I’m also a little concerned that it will drive its main competitor out of town, which in my mind would be Rite Aid, and that would leave us with no pharmacy. 

       I am opposed to having Dollar General at this site.  Located on the southeast corner of the roundabout, the blank backside of the building will be turned toward Hermosa, a major thoroughfare.  Located there, the increased traffic is a potential threat to foot traffic and other drivers, including the Dollar General delivery trucks, which will be making left-hand turns across Hermosa where cars are just exiting the roundabout.  I am also opposed to the way the CEQA process, which in a true community would allow us to consider these factors publicly, is being violated.  But Bill Zigler wants it there.  He’s worked hard to make this happen, and that’s what he’s going to get come hell or high water. 

       “In true community,” wrote Parker J. Palmer, that Quaker sage on community and education, “we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives….Community will teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears to hear the fullness of God’s word for our lives.”   

       In true community, it matters what other people think, especially those who live there.  Someone hired to manage the interests of that community should work to reconcile the conflicting interests of its members, not override them – especially someone who does not live there and thus does not personally bear the consequences of his actions.  So call me crazy, but I’ll keep working for true community, thank you, despite the odds.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural community researcher who writes.    You can send your stories of community bravery and betrayal to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  Thanks to Nancy and David Vega for their friendship and feedback.