O Little Town

Published Dec. 20, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     The gingerbread woman reappeared when I opened some boxes of ornaments this weekend.  I wanted to do a little light-handed decorating, at least in my kitchen window, my hearth. I pulled back the tissue paper wrapped around her plump little body, saw who it was, and tenderly wrapped her back up, deciding against that trip down memory lane.  Then I found the little wreath I’d hung to frame her years before, and my hands decided to go back after all, back to the time when she meant something real to me.

           

     I’d written about this cheerful kitchen angel in this column, so I dug up the piece from the notebooks where I’d once kept them organized. What I discovered when I re-read it surprised me.  In the first week of Jan., 2011, I was still in love with my community, tender toward its complexities, not yet tortured by them.  It felt good to remember.

           

     The gingerbread woman reverie was triggered by community pain I was just coming to know thanks to my new job at RN Market.  A much loved woman, Inglatina Huerta, had been killed on her way to work around 5 a.m. on New Year’s Eve Day.  She had a head-on collision with the son of one of Lindsay’s first families, who was coming home from a party. The story I heard is that he was not tested for alcohol.  An Hispanic woman on her way to work, killed by a white boy on his way home from a party and not made to bear any consequences: it was an old story that could have happened anywhere.  People suffered in silence.  That’s how we do it here.

           

     People had just begun to not suffer in silence two months before, when the revelations about high salaries Lindsay’s top employees were being paid splattered against the reality that a high percentage of the town’s residents have trouble paying their water bills.  In mid-October 2010 about a thousand people met in the high school gymnasium for a highly-guarded city council meeting, purportedly to hear their complaints.  At first I was reluctant to get involved, so I simply wrote about it.  The first families fought back.  In the columns before the gingerbread woman, I was just beginning to feel the effect of moving socially from one side of the community to the other, and still holding some middle ground.

           

     That was before the housing fiascos were revealed, and before the effects of Rich Wilkinson’s appointment to city manager could be accumulated.  It was before coming to the podium during public comment period at city council meetings and discovering we had to fight for the right to speak, before the plan to demolish the Citrus Exchange building, and before the lawsuits we filed to try to keep that from happening.  Back then I was afraid of losing my sense of home in this town through the act of protesting. I didn’t know that loss would occur inside of me.

           

     “It’s just love,” the gingerbread woman had told me about Inglatina’s accident and all the pain and silent discord that followed.  “Grief is the price we pay for love,” I’d quoted a fellow Quaker then.  It’s hard to remember.  But as we, against the dark, deck our homes with the lights of life and share our wonder about a birth on the wrong side of the tracks in Bethlehem 2017+ years ago, maybe perspective will come.  All this fighting is just about love for a little town.

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

 

           

Triple Crown

Published June 10, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

            I didn’t get to see the Belmont Saturday, but I cheered when I heard the winner.  I’ve watched that race on TV many times in my life, hoping to see it won by a horse who’d also taken the Derby and the Preakness.  I’ve always been disappointed, but understandably.  In my girlhood I learned from reading Walter Farley novels that it takes a horse of giant magnitude ridden by a jockey of enormous sensitivity to win on the medium, short and long hauls of racing.  In witnessing this triumph, everyone wins.

            We’ve had a sort of Triple Crown victory in Lindsay this last week.  For everyone who thought it was a bad idea for the community, appointing Rich Wilkinson as interim city manager to the vacancy left by Scot Townsend four and a half years ago, Rich’s sudden, sure departure was a great relief.  For those of us who were jerked into action four years ago by his permanent appointment to that position, compounded by remaining chief of public safety and the outrageous terms of his contract, his severance agreement is small, but real, vindication.

            But the real victory is that the three newest city council members have survived, integrity intact.  They survived despite refusing to give that spoiled baby everything it wanted, despite doing their jobs which, according to him, made his working conditions unendurable. With grace, humor and sheer conviction that the community’s interests were not being served, they held their ground.  Despite being convicted of conspiracy in the media and in the council chambers by those outraged at having the mythic status quo challenged, they held the rail.  On Wednesday, June 3rd, with Rich Wilkinson’s name no longer on the door, their noses crossed the finish line first, with Danny and Pam ‘way back in the pack.

            I didn’t see that finish, either - at first.  I was focused on the form of Rich’s departure, not the content.  I saw the slime-bag strategy, the horrendous self-interest masked as injury, the offense constructed to cover the indefensible defense.  In my eyes, it was ugly.  In my eyes, it was yet another instance of the way it’s always been continuing into the foreseeable future, never changing.  I protested the special meeting where it happened on that basis.  I was defeated in spirit when it was over, bad-spiritedness appearing to win over the public interest once again.

            But Ramona, our beautiful Mayor Padilla, provided a sentence that eventually allowed me to see the bigger picture.  “Sometimes you have to cut off the hand to save the arm,” she told me after the meeting.  At first I didn’t understand who’s hand, who’s arm.  With the apparent effectiveness of Rich’s strategy screaming in my head, I felt amputated.  In my eyes we paid him ‘way too much to be here, to create unholy relations inside city hall and out, and now they were giving him the public’s money to leave, en route to a new home in Missouri and, rumor has it, a new job.  I felt like sending Missouri a sympathy card as well as an apology.

            Ramona saw the value and the necessity of getting this situation changed, value beyond money.  The arm in her metaphor is the community.  With these three council members still in their seats, there is now hope for a real change: representation of this community’s majority, not its small minority.  Witnessing this triumph of democracy, everyone wins.  Everyone.

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Trudy Wischemann is a horse lover who writes.  You can send her your exciting race stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Conspiracy Theory

Published June 3, 2015 in slightly edited form in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


    Off work late, I walked in to last Tuesday’s Lindsay City Council meeting and did not find an empty seat.  I was impressed until I realized it was the same old crowd:  friends and family of city staff and Councilmen Kimball and Salinas who are rallied whenever there is an apparent threat to the status quo.

    

    I missed the fireworks, but they’d come to berate the three council members, including Mayor Padilla, for their parts in the alleged conspiracy against Chief Wilkinson.  Some demanded their resignations.  The mayor handled the challenges with grace and dignity, despite the hostility of some of the comments.

    
     Where the protestors got the information to support their positions is worth asking.  I doubt that it was from reading the deposition, where the so-called conspiracy was said to have been discovered. Frankly, I doubt if many even read the news articles reporting this issue, which show some of the complexity involved.  I think most people got their opinions straight from the horse’s mouth. 
    
     If they’d read the deposition, they might have been singing a different tune.  I finally got my hands on a copy.  There are a few sentences toward the end that could lead a sane person to wonder if there might have been some cooperative effort on the part of the three.  But the only way you could find a conspiracy, in my never very humble opinion, is if you were hunting for it. 
    
     The most important parts of the deposition have been left uncovered.  The picture of the working environment under Wilkinson that emerges is one where verbal abuse reigns, where there is no consistency in personnel treatment, where rules are broken or not followed and the penalties are paid by the employees while the management goes scot-free.  This may be the rule rather than the exception in business, but in government we have rules against this.  When those rules are broken, the governing body has a responsibility to respond.
    
     Bryan Clower’s complaint may be one of the few formal ones filed against Wilkinson and his department, but informal complaints have flown around town since before he was appointed city manager.  I hear them all the time, and sometimes they give me nightmares.  Then there are actual victims:  one man’s missing finger and debilitating limp; another’s confiscated evidence; another’s 20+ months in court defending against a false charge; recently, a young man’s unexplained death in an LPD squad car, not to mention the unarmed girl shot dead in her bathroom.  I’m barely scratching the surface.
    
     And then there’s Councilman Mecum’s unwarranted arrest last year for “felony embezzlement,” a highly-trumped-up charge over a pink slip.  “This is the third time they’ve tried to get rid of me,” he said Tuesday night, quite a record for someone who’s only half-way through his third year on the council.
    
     Here’s my theory:  if there’s any conspiracy in Lindsay, it’s against the three council members who have been charged with wrongdoing in order to inhibit or stop their attempts to do right.  “Right” is changing the status quo from a city that squanders its resources and runs in the red to a community where ordinary people can look forward to a decent, if quiet, future.  In  my opinion, Wilkinson is a wolf in sheep’s clothing crying “Wolf!” and pointing to the sheep dogs, hoping to grab his $216,000 prize for “serving” the community and head for the Ozark hills.
    
     I think we need to shepherd these Council members who are taking our future seriously. Come support them in defense of our flock.   Help fill the seats at the next meeting, Tuesday June 9^th at 6:00 pm.
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Trudy Wischemann is a close reader who writes.  You can send her your public safety nightmares c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Volcanoland

Written for the May 27 edition of the Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “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.

 

Overcast

Published May 20, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I have been thanking God for this month’s overcast days, for blowing March’s winds our way, even if two months late.  You know what they say about His winds.  The clouds give us a ray of hope, even when they produce scant rainfall.  Hope may be how we get through this drought.


     It looks like He’s chosen this month to blow some socio-political storm clouds over Lindsay as well.  Last week’s top headline story in this paper, “Lindsay lawsuit alleges Council conspiracy,” showed photos of the 3 Councilmembers accused of conspiring against our poor beleaguered 3-hatted City Manager, Rich Wilkinson.  Although the story contained important information for those who have been following this city’s progress closely, the headline was misleading and a disservice to the community.  In fact, the lawsuit is not alleging conspiracy, the City Manager is.  But after seeing the paper, a neighbor wailed “Nothing’s changed,” in total despair. 


     Actually things have changed, and that’s what’s produced the thunder and lightning.  Those three members have been questioning budget commitments from the past, looking for a way to operate this city in the black and also to direct the community toward a more sustainable future.  That can’t be done without threatening the staff’s previously unchallenged authority.  The truth is, it’s a new day for the Lindsay City Council, and the staff, particularly the city manager, doesn’t like it. 


     Until the election of Council members Mecum and Sanchez in 2012, the City Council, including Pam Kimball, Danny Salinas and Ramona Padilla, served simply as a rubber stamp for the staff’s projects and programs.  The City of Lindsay was “staff-driven,” in community development lingo, and that’s how we got into the deep-debt-do-do that still plagues our budget.  Over the past year, Ramona Padilla has become more aware of the costs of being staff-driven, and has taken steps to return some of the decision-making power to the Council, our elected representatives.  We all should applaud her for that, as well as Rosaena Sanchez and Steven Mecum for stepping up to the plate in the first place.


     It would be understandable that Rich Wilkinson wouldn’t like the new situation.  But he claims he “can no longer effectively and efficiently carry out my duties without interference or interruption from these council members.”  Now, of course, the sting that supposedly has “damaged” this employer-employee relationship is the statement by former Lindsay Police Lieutenant Bryan Clower in the deposition taken by City Attorney Mario Zamora in the lawsuit Clower has filed against the City and Rich Wilkinson for wrongful termination and breach of contract that he (Clower) was encouraged by these three members to file the suit.  Wilkinson does not address the damaged employer-employee relationship that caused Clower to find himself suddenly unemployed by the City of Lindsay.  Nor does he seem to realize that the “close friends” relationship he thinks he once had with Clower, including vacationing together as he said he and Bryan did, might have been problematic if not inappropriate.


     I sense that what’s blocking the sun in Lindsay is not cloud cover but smokescreen, a way for Wilkinson to extract his exhorbitant 18-month severance pay from the City of Lindsay.  Councilwoman Pam Kimball worked hard to arrange that when he was hired permanently in 2011.  Here in Lindsay, we need to learn to read between the lines, and not be afraid of a little rain.  We’ll get this community back yet.

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Trudy Wischemann is a native from the Pacific Northwest who always has a rain jacket handy.  You can send her your wailings and wonderings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

Fooled

Published in edited form April 15, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I’m going to blame it on the orange blossoms.  I got fooled into thinking the Lindsay city manager, Rich Wilkinson, had a change of heart or at least saw the handwriting on the wall about his role in stripping the public of their rights to participate in our city council meetings.  Two weeks ago, when I wrote optimistically about the restoration of those rights, I must have been high on blossom-perfumed air.
    
     For three years I have been recommending that the language he removed regarding public participation be restored to the agenda packet cover sheet.  There was one place on the agenda itself where three words needed to be reinstated, but the major sentences he obliterated were found on the cover sheet, which says across the top “Welcome to your Lindsay City Council Meeting,” followed by this statement: 
     "Whether you are attending this meeting because of general interest or because an item of special interest to you is to be reviewed, your presence is an important means of helping ensure and informed public and responsible Municipal Government."

    

     The cover sheet goes on to describe the city council and its role, the city manager’s job, the timing of council meetings and types of actions that occur, the processes for making suggestions, inquiries and complaints to city staff as well as the rules for citizen participation in meetings.  Except for the website, it is the only place where the city communicates to the residents their rightful place and responsibilities in maintaining the community.

     When I was called down to Rich’s office, as if I were the offending party, I had noticed that the purpose of the meeting was called “the agenda.”  I assumed, wrongly, that this was just shorthand for the project of restoring our rights.  But after his vacation, when he finally communicated some of the language he proposed in response to my complaint, it became clear that not only was he not restoring language to the cover sheet, he was doing away with the cover sheet altogether.

     Naturally, I asked why.  “No other cities have a cover sheet,” replied the faithful Maria Knutson, assistant to the city manager.  I called the mayor, who did not find much merit in that reason, either.  I am still waiting for a resolution to this question.

     Are you tired enough of all this?  It seems so small on the surface, like a gnat on the windshield.  But this unaccountability, this refusal to bear responsibility to the people who pay his enormous salary, who rely on him to maintain a law-abiding staff as well as the entire department of public safety, is the tip of a big and dangerous iceberg.

     Friday the Lindsay police arrested a young man, 24, in some kind of fracas, location not identified. In the squad car, on the way to his booking, he died.  The sheriff’s department will conduct an investigation, but who are they going to ask?  That young man cannot speak for himself.  He cannot say he should have had an ambulance instead of a squad car; his family cannot know where or when a mistake was made.  And at this moment at least, the only opportunity anyone has to voice their concerns to our elected officials in public is three minutes during the public comment period, during which no one, council or staff, has to answer your questions.

     Don’t be fooled.  Help your city council members establish the need for accountability from our city manager/chief of public safety.  We will not have real public safety until we do.

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Trudy Wischemann is a wordworking realist who writes.  You can send her your stories of public endangerment c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

On Restoration

Published April 1, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


“Must I restore what I have not stolen?”  Psalm 69.4, Jewish Publication Society
    
     For three years I have been working to restore rights for public participation in our Lindsay city council meetings that were stripped from us, invisibly and unaccountably, after the February 14, 2012 meeting. 
    
     I did not do the stripping; it was done by the city clerk at the request of the city manager, who apparently was responding to then-mayor Ed Murray.  But it was done in response to my attempts to use the rights outlined on the council agenda packet cover sheet, so I have felt responsible.  I was ignorant:  I could not imagine either that my efforts would be seen as threatening or that such wanton disregard for public rights would result.  So, on behalf of all of us who might want to participate and a more democratic community that could result, I have kept trying to get those rights restored.
    
     Some small progress is being made.  Our current mayor, Ramona Padilla, placed an item on the Feb. 24, 2015 agenda to consider restoration of the language regarding public participation on the agenda packet cover sheet.  She had requested the city manager, Rich Wilkinson, to provide that language in the agenda packet.  Unfortunately he provided wording for only one of the three rights he removed.  The discussion between council and staff  revealed conflicting ideas about what rights the public should have to participate, and the city manager was instructed to explore what other cities allow.  The fact that the City of Lindsay once accorded these rights didn’t seem to matter.
    
     March 9th I got an email saying Rich Wilkinson would like to meet with me regarding the agenda.  We had our meeting on the 12th.  He said he wanted to know what would satisfy my concerns, and that the language couldn’t just be restored for a long list of reasons I cannot remember.  I told him how I perceived it:  that it was an act of violence against the public that still needed healing.  I said that those words were removed in order to squelch public participation, and that putting them back would be a sign to the public that we aren’t having that kind of governance anymore.  He said he’d never heard me say it so clearly before.  I didn’t say that obviously we still have that kind of governance, despite the increased responsiveness of our current city council.
    
     I told him it’s not the language that’s so important – it’s the rights:  the right to ask that an item be removed from the consent calendar for discussion in public; the right to ask questions and make comments on agenda items when they are being discussed during the council meeting; and the right to place an item on the council agenda.  We had all those rights prior to Valentine’s Day, 2012, although few of us knew them, and when those of us who did know tried to exercise them, we often were denied.
    
     We worked over the three rights to find potential language to represent them; he said he’d email a draft to me the week after his vacation.  After we’ve reached a consensus, he’ll pass it by the city attorney for his approval before submitting it to the council.  He hoped we’d have it ready by the April 28 meeting.  I think it’s possible we’re on our way to a more open, more respectful form of governance.  I just hope this isn’t “April Fools.”

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Trudy Wischemann is a community researcher/advocate who writes.  You can send her your public participation stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

Three to Two

Published in slightly edited form Feb. 18, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
 
- - for Ruby and Serafin
 
    The people of Lindsay scored a large win at last week’s City Council meeting.  It was a playoff between Rich Wilkinson’s pocket and the Council’s growing sense of fiscal responsibility to the residents.  After a hard-fought ninth inning, the Council voted 3:2 to reject Wilkinson’s bid, and the people moved into first place for the first time in decades.
 
    The next morning, before the sun turned the clouds crimson and the sky aquamarine, I dreamed I was telling Ruby about the meeting.  You remember Ruby.   For decades she served this community behind Checkstand 2 at RN Market, always warm and gracious with a gentle laugh. A redhead, she also had a decent fire in her, a sense of right and wrong that really wasn’t negotiable.  When she was revealing that fire, her eyes would glisten.
  
   In my dream, her eyes were glistening.  Before she moved to live with her daughter, she read this paper.  Even after she retired she’d tell me how she appreciated what we were doing, trying to get this city back on its democratic feet.   I always felt blessed by her appreciation.  In many ways, Ruby kept me going.
  
   I saw Serafin twice during the day of the meeting.  You remember Serafin – Mr. Rivera.  He’s the one who stood before the City Council in that crowded high school gymnasium on a mid-October evening in 2010, when the people rallied for the first time in decades to cry out in rage at the salaries that were being paid to our small town officials.  He’s the one who said, first in impeccable Spanish, then in impeccable English, “I don’t think you know what it’s like to lie awake nights not knowing how you’re going to pay your water bill.” 

      Unfortunately the Council missed his point completely, and went on to explain how the water bill has to be that high because it’s what it costs the city to provide those services.  Only later, after the first decent audit in decades, was it discovered that some of the high salaries had been paid for out of the water fund.  Mr. Rivera also reads this paper, and his appreciation for what we are doing, trying to get this city back on its democratic feet, has also kept me going.  Seraphim marched with Cesar.  I feel blessed just seeing him.  Pray he gets over the last remnants of this winter’s flu.

      Some on the Council are not missing his point any more.  At the meeting, when Wilkinson’s contract came up on the agenda, Councilman Mecum led off, staking a claim to our turf.  “The people elected me to represent their interests, and there is nothing in this contract that serves the residents.  It’s off the table as far as I’m concerned.”  Shortly thereafter, Councilwoman Kimball moved to approve the contract. 

      Mayor Padilla then said she had more questions, and opened a discussion about many of the contract’s provisions.  Councilwoman Sanchez also had questions, which were interrupted by Councilman Salinas seconding Kimball’s motion to approve, essentially calling the motion to a vote.  He was surprised when it was defeated 3:2.  After further discussion, Mayor Padilla kindly explained her position to Rich and the rest of the room:  “No disrespect intended, but you’re just too expensive for us.”

     There also was much discussion about Wilkinson’s “succession plan,” which was conceived to explain the need for his new contract.  “I’m not your man,” he said strongly, referring to his unwillingness to serve as finance director in the event one is not in place when Tamara Laken retires sometime this year.

     We know, Rich.  That’s why you don’t get the big bucks.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who is grateful to be able to serve the people of Lindsay.  You can send her your democracy-restoring ideas c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

leftovers

Published Feb. 4, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I woke up with popcorn hulls stuck between my teeth one morning this week, leftovers from my bedtime snack the night before.  I hadn’t gotten up to brush or floss, I just crashed and left them there for tomorrow. 


     “What a perfect metaphor for the City of Lindsay,”  I thought to myself.  Watching their posturing, hearing their words, reading their statements leaves the same feeling in the pit of my stomach as the hulls leave on my gums.


     In a recent article in this paper, Mayor Padilla was quoted as saying “We hope to reach out to those who are discontent or have been discontent with the city before.  We hope to bring those people in and maybe draw some attention to the fact that we are working really hard to heal those relationships.” (Jan. 7, 2015.)   I don’t know if she was thinking of me, but last week’s double city council meetings did little to reduce my ongoing discontent.


     Monday, Jan. 26th, they held a special meeting that started at 4 p.m. in a conference room, not the regular council chambers.  The agenda was 1) the presentation of a succession plan for the pending retirement of finance director Tamara Laken and the return to one hat for Rich Wilkinson as Director of Public Safety; 2) long range financial planning and mid-year budget update; 3) 2015/2016 goals and objectives of the city council; 4) discussion of submitting an RFP for an update of the city’s general plan; and last, but not least, 5) the approval of a city representative on the “One-Voice” trip to Washington, D.C. by TCAG.  There were no supporting materials on the website, and the Councilmembers received none before the meeting.  As a member of the public, if you read only the agenda, you would not have known the scope or content of this meeting.


     The agenda for the following day’s regularly scheduled council meeting was paltry by comparison.  It contained a normal consent calendar (including approval of a cost overrun on a street project, which shouldn’t be normal but is;) the closing of a public hearing on a conditional use permit that wasn’t ready to go; a public hearing on a variance of a lot line set-back on one property, and council reports.  In terms of the public’s interest, the material discussed at Monday’s special meeting was far greater than Tuesday’s, which easily could have been handled by a planning commission if we had one.  Farmersville has one.  (Farmersville also paid $16K to find a professional city manager.  It seems like we could do as well.)


     I can hear them now, saying “We’ve always had these special meetings starting at 4 pm in January - that’s the only way we can get this important work done.”  What they mean is that this work is too important to risk having public scrutiny, much less public input.  One kudo goes to the Council for requiring the staff to repeat this important information at a regularly scheduled meeting.  Until we have rules that allow for real public participation, however, the chance that the public will attend is small.


     Three years ago this month, current city manager Rich Wilkinson removed language from the agenda packet describing the rules for public participation in these meetings.  He did so at the request of then-Mayor Murray, without Council discussion or approval.  Two years ago this month I asked Mayor Padilla to restore this language and begin to take other steps to encourage our real participation in these meetings.  One year ago this month I repeated that request.  We are still waiting, reasonably discontent.


     In order for relationships to heal, changes must be made.  As long as we have staff in charge who do not want public input, and a council willing to comply with their behavior, this city will continue to fester.  It’s time to do some serious flossing.
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Trudy Wischemann is a negligent tooth-brusher who writes.  You can send her your clean-up stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

Uncovered

Published Dec. 17, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


Dear Friends and Neighbors,


     Since Thanksgiving I’ve had difficulty writing, not only this column but anything else.   At first I thought it was just my transition from worker to self-employed.  But as the days passed, I realized my muteness was caused by a sense of being uncovered.


     To be “covered” can mean a lot of things.  We use the word to describe everything from having insurance or a financial backer to having a roof over our heads or a tarp on the car.  Protection from the elements, whether natural or man-made, is the usual implication.  To be uncovered, then, is the removal of some layer of protection we consider normal, expected.


     The fire in Lindsay two days after Thanksgiving which destroyed the century-old brick building that once housed Stamper Motors left me feeling that we, as a community, have become uncovered.  The transition to our current state, in which the city’s fire protection is supplied by the police department, began many years ago when the police and fire departments were merged into one department of public safety under the leadership of Rich Wilkinson and Scot Townsend.  Despite protests by fire protection professionals and a grand jury investigation, that merger led eventually to the cross-training of policemen for fire work and the loss of professional firemen.


     Although there have been other examples of problems created by this double-duty arrangement, November’s fire was the handwriting on the wall.  According to one eyewitness, only two officers were on duty when the fire was called in.  It takes two people to man a fire truck, so both were employed fighting the fire and no one was available to direct the traffic that naturally began accumulating at the scene.  By the time two more officers responded to man the ladder truck (almost an hour after the fire started,) the streets were clogged with cars.  It took twenty minutes for the ladder truck to reach the fire two blocks from the station.  By that time the flames had stopped licking the skies behind Webb-Sanders Funeral Home, but the fire burned for hours, filling the streets downtown and lungs of every resident within a quarter mile with black smoke that lingered for days.


     I can hear their protests now:  this is the best we can do in a small town with an impoverished population, shrinking tax base, increasing absentee ownership, whatever other definitions of handicap that have become normal to many rural communities across the nation.  When people hear the name “Lindsay,” they no longer think of it as the center of Tulare County’s orange production or remember it as “a nice town, a great olive.”   They think of it as a farmworker town where people are regularly made hungry and thirsty by freezes and droughts.  We’re a town that regularly needs some kind of bailout by the government at one level or another, and the City’s become expert at raising the cry.


     But this dearth in fire coverage is the City’s own making.  I don’t think it’s the best we can do.  There’s some uncovering needed down at City Hall, and I hope the newly-elected City Council will address this question in the New Year.  In the meantime, everyone be really careful with those Christmas tree lights and New Year’s Eve fireworks lest we discover the hard way just how uncovered we really are.

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Trudy Wischemann is a volunteer fireman’s daughter who remembers the death of her friend Kevin Suttles in the Brown's Point Cliff House fire in the second grade.  You can send her your suggestions for improvements in Lindsay’s fire protection c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

If I Had A Hammer

Published in edited form May 14, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette 

If I had a hammer

I'd hammer in the morning

I'd hammer in the evening

All over this land

I'd hammer out danger

I'd hammer out a warning

I'd hammer out love between

My brothers and my sisters

All over this land. 

            When I told my mother I was going to write a piece under this title, I heard her suck in her breath over the phone.  Pausing, she said cautiously “They might think...” 

            Both of my parents were raised in small towns and vowed after they left they’d never go back.  Born in different towns on different sides of the tracks, they both were still massively concerned with what people might think.  To find freedom from that, they made our homes in unincorporated settlements, rural fringes, and subdivisions of larger towns.  But they never got free of their fears about the opinions of other people.  Early childhood learning, I think. 

            I actually do have a hammer, in fact, three claw hammers (tack, medium and large) and a woman-sized sledge, if I knew where it was.  I know how to use them for hanging pictures and outside Christmas lights, re-nailing a board coming loose or pounding a stake into the ground.  With my brother’s fiberglass-handled carpenter’s hammer, I can pry nails out of boards, straighten them on a rock, and nail things back together with the best of them.  My father’s a carpenter: more early childhood learning, learning by doing. 

            His father was a blacksmith, and he hammered metal into beautiful wrought iron fences and gates; he also repaired plowshares and other farm equipment.  Both men saw their hammers as extensions of their creative, productive, useful selves.  However, both men were quick to pound their opinions down the throats of other people, so I know the hammer as both useful and dangerous.  Dad stopped throwing his hammer after it went through a stack of windows he’d saved and he had to eat a piece of humble pie.  He's only recently stopped hurling his words. 

            This beautiful song from the early folk movement started pounding through my head when I read the letter to the editor authored by Councilmembers Pam Kimball and Danny Salinas several weeks ago.  It wasn’t what the letter said about me that was so disturbing: it was their attack on the truth.  They’re not only in denial about the possibility of wrongdoing in the Lindsay PD's arrest of Councilman Mecum, but in denial about their own wrongdoing in making Rich Wilkinson joint City Manager and Director of Public Safety under a contract irresponsibly difficult and expensive to break.  They’re in denial about the staff’s role in generating the lawsuit we filed and their own role in running up their attorney's fees defending against it.  They’re in denial about their role in excluding the public from real participation in city council meetings, the detrimental CalTrans re-realignment of Highway 65, the non-promotion of voluntary water conservation measures in this city, and other leadership challenges too numerous to mention. 

          The song, written by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, has been recorded by hundreds of people and sung at thousands of gatherings over the last 60 years.  I hear Peter Paul & Mary’s version in my head now as I type; according to Wikipedia, singing the Spanish version may have gotten Chilean activist Victor Lara assassinated after the military coup of Salvador Allende in 1973.  It's a song for The Struggle, no matter what country or miniscule jurisdiction you find yourself called to enter it.  Sing the last verse with me in your head. 

Well I’ve got a hammer and I’ve got a bell;

I’ve got a song to sing all over this land.

It’s the hammer of justice, it’s the bell of freedom

It’s the song about the love between my brothers and my sisters

All over this land. 

          Gather up your hammers, bells and songs, friends - we have work to do.

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Trudy Wischemann is an old folky who writes.  You can send your songs of love and freedom (not to mention justice) c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.