Square Minus-One

Published August 17, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     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 2^nd and 4^th Tuesdays of the month.  Maybe we can work our way back up to Square One if we try.

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

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.

           

Good News

     There is good news to report from Lindsay, my adopted home town – more, in fact, than has been making the pages of the newspapers.

 

      I have been thinking a lot about what makes for good news. The sun came up this morning. That’s good news in two ways.  It’s “good” because it’s beneficial: this thing we need even more than food and shelter, this thing we count on so desperately that we take it for granted, has happened yet one more day.  It’s also good because it’s true.  It doesn’t matter which day you read this, it is still true.  If it were false – if it hadn’t happened – you wouldn’t be reading this.

 

      So truth, as well as benefit, are criteria for good news.  I think “wholeness” is a third: a sense of being complete (as much as someone can know the whole story at any given time;) a sense of being thorough, examined from all sides.  Not just the sunny side; not just the dark side.  Both sides.  News from only one side of a story is a half-truth, which leaves much too much room for truth’s opposite.

 

      There was good news to report from the Oct. 27^th Lindsay City Council meeting, but all the papers missed it.  The forces behind the current city administration had taken advantage of the power of the so-called social media (which, with its lack of accountability, might better be called “anti-social,”) to spread the rumor that the city council wanted to shut down the McDermont Field House.  The rumor, of course, pinpointed the three councilmembers who have been charged with everything from dysfunctionality to conspiracy (not to mention the false charge and arrest for felony embezzlement of Councilman Mecum a year and a half ago,) which was not good news under any of my three criteria, above.  That’s what I mean by lack of accountability.  It was bad.

 

      How this bad news got converted into good news had a touch of gospel in it.  Our mayor, Ramona Padilla, with all her education, compassion and humanity, took that bull by the horns and said, essentially, “We are not going to be gored by this.”  She called it by its true name – a falsehood, a rumor intentionally spread to make real conversation impossible about the problem of making McDermont a financially responsible part of this city – and then asked each councilmember to say whether or not they had ever mentioned the possibility of closure.  Not one had.

 

       By taking control of that ill wind at the very beginning of the meeting, she turned what could have been just another public brawl into a real community conversation about the problems and opportunities of that facility.  It went on for almost an hour, which was not bad since it was at least five years overdue, if not ten.  She took full advantage of the collection of interested people who had gathered to protest, and turned them into willing participants in shaping our future, looking for ways to make that albatross fly. (Albatrosses can fly, you know – they don’t have to just hang around your neck.)

 

      Did you read that story anywhere?  I didn’t.

 

      And what a lost opportunity that was.  Here the real media could have carried some good news, something readers are always clamoring for.  Instead, they have chosen to characterize the current struggle to make better budgets, better rules, better public relations, better balances of power – they are characterizing this as dysfunctional, as “not able to agree on anything.”  It’s the same blindness that characterized past councils’ rubber stamp work as progressive.  It’s bad news.

 

      Bad enough to make me not want to read the newspaper.

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

Trudy Wischemann is a born reader who writes for a life, not a living.  You can send her your observations of good news c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

Sacred Elephant

Published Sept. 30, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     There was no physical violence at the Lindsay City Council meeting last week, but a subtle kind of civil war did break out.  I think it was healthy, and long overdue.

     Two issues were discussed:  broken sidewalks and increasing the sales tax, seemingly unrelated.  But a third raised its ugly head, this community’s elephant in the room:  McDermont Field House and its little sister, the Wellness Center.

     There is no question but that these two facilities have added to the community’s quality of life in some ways.  However, they have seriously detracted from our financial well-being, and that’s the part no one wants to talk about, at least not the city’s staff.  And no one probably would talk about it, except that the chronic budget deficit they’ve created constantly “forces” us to take action against the working poor.

     Let’s start with the sidewalks.  About twenty people came to Tuesday night’s meeting who had received threatening letters from the city about fixing their sidewalks.  They live on Sweet Brier Ave., the street that leads to McDermont from Tulare Road.  It’s an old neighborhood with old sidewalks on a narrow street lined with modest houses and small yards.  Until McDermont was constructed, it was also quiet, with little traffic.  Now it is busy, parking is congested on ordinary days, non-existent on days with big events.  Residents complain of having to clean up their yards of vomit and urine as well as fast food trash after those events, not to mention suffering the noise from them.  And now they have less than 60 days to fix the sidewalks that have needed repair for decades.

     Several Sweet Brier residents spoke of relatives living on other streets who have had their sidewalks fixed by the city free of charge, the result of some of this town’s transportation fund improvements.  “That doesn’t matter,” city staff said in effect, “we’re forced by state law to impose this on you now because we are being forced by the actions of an undesirable individual to make them ADA compliant.”  The staff’s shameless attempts to place responsibility for their action (sending the letters) on the squeaky man in the wheelchair, rather than take responsibility for their inaction (i.e., neglecting the city’s infrastructure while they built this castle in the air,) was disgusting.  

     Moving on to the proposed sales tax increase, they said, in effect “ It won’t affect you much, because people in other cities like Tulare and Porterville, even Dinuba, already pay higher sales tax, and you do, too, when you shop there, so no biggy.  We’ll have to spend about $30 K to do it right,” (those sidewalks on Sweet Brier are estimated to cost about $50K total,) “and of course it’s totally up to the voters to approve it (which, by the way, they refused to do in 2008, but that was probably because we didn’t pitch it right.)”  After a brief pause to catch their breaths, Mr. Zigler politely concluded “We’re looking to Council for direction.” 

     The Council gave them direction: they said No Way.  In a vote requiring 4 yesses, they got only two (Salinas and Kimball,) while Sanchez and Mecum turned thumbs down.  The dollar amount the staff had estimated the increased sales tax would produce was between $188K (for .25%) and $378K (for .50%.)  Based on figures from 2013, (the most recent available,) these numbers may overestimate the dollars to be generated, given the decline in Lindsay’s business climate over the last 2 years.

     Had the staff proposed the tax increase for a specific purpose, however (as many of those cities with higher sales tax have done,) say, fixing the sidewalks in the poorest neighborhoods, it might have been a different story.  But considering that we still subsidized McDermont $225K annually from the General Fund – a quarter of a million dollars yearly – you can see why the Great White Elephant was called out for review.

     And that’s when the fighting broke out in the audience between the beneficiaries and the victims.  Most of the people who now must come up with hundreds of non-existent dollars to fix sidewalks cannot afford to participate in McDermont’s benefits or those of the Wellness Center.  The opportunity costs of building these two behemoths have caused our financial crisis and now have come due.  The city staff is wanting to slough the burden to those least able to bear it, whether that be for fixing sidewalks or the higher costs of gasoline, medicine, toilet paper and toothpaste – what few taxable items we are still able to purchase within these city limits.

     When we find a city manager who can see through the eyes of the poorest residents and construct solutions to help us all rise together, then we’ll have a city worth supporting.  Until then, our job is to keep naming the elephants in the room, sacred or otherwise.

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

Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes and sings.  You can send her your elephant sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.