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.

           

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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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”?

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

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.

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

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.

 

 

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.

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

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.