Preserving the Future

Published in edited form Sept. 20, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     While in Dunsmuir two weeks ago, I overheard something wise from an acquaintance, who’d been told “You can drag the past around with you like a dead horse, but you can never bring it back to life.”  I was struck by the truth of the imagery, and put it in my mental pocket for future use.

           

     But something else I brought home from Dunsmuir convinced me that the past is an ineradicable part of the present, as well as necessary for the future.  It is a small book on Dunsmuir, one of the “Images of America” series published by Arcadia Publishing Co.  I fell in love with these books when I worked at the Book Garden in Exeter ten years ago, and exactly for this reason:  they show us – literally, in photographs with captions - the connections between our past and our present.  They help us understand what might be possible in the future.

           

     As a carpenter’s daughter, I have a natural fascination for how things are built.  My father builds houses, and I have watched the process from building forms for pouring the concrete foundation to the last row of shingles along the roof’s peak.  I watched him build community, too, from co-operatively constructing a boat-launch/clubhouse on an edge of Puget Sound to forming a sewer district intended to keep us from polluting that body of water.  I watched as our primitive roads lined with wooded lots became neighborhoods during the post-war 1950’s.  My fascination with how things are built now extends to towns.

           

     Like many towns, Dunsmuir’s development was defined by the railroad, which was spurred by outside corporate interests to convey coal from British Columbia to San Francisco.  In turn, the railroad promoted Dunsmuir as a tourist resort, as well as carrying the products of surrounding forests to distant markets.  But it was the development of the automobile that brought prosperity to the little town, which seemed to thrive when Highway 99 ran down its main street.  Despite fires, heavy snows and avalanches, and flooding of the Sacramento River repeatedly reshaping the facts of Dunsmuir’s life, the little town has re-built on its past, retaining a sense of authenticity.

           

     And of course it’s the people who make that possible.  Ron McCloud, who co-authored the book with Deborah Harton, owns the True Value hardware store on the main street, which is part museum, with shining wood floors as well as inventory to supply everything you’d need to live there (visit www.dunsmuirhardware.com to see for yourself!)  Across the street, wedged between cafes, is a thrift store run by third- and fourth-generation Dunsmuirites whose profits support single mothers in need.   There’s a record shop/book store aimed at us Boomers, multiple shops featuring artists’ and craftspersons’ wares, and a storefront for the local watershed preservation organization.  There’s a dispensary for medical marijuana across from the Amtrak station.  And there’s a noon signal horn every day that becomes an emergency warning when it blows 5 times in succession.

           

     When I mentioned Ron McCloud to a friend here, he said “Oh, he’s like our Chris Brewer.”  Having worked for Chris and Sally at the Book Garden, I can say “yes.”  Chris has managed to bring the powerhouse of history into the preservation of the future in Exeter.  I think the example of both men is worth noting. But it takes a host of people dedicated to the community’s well-being to connect the past to the present – and that’s what preserves the future of our small towns.  Let us join hands.

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

Rose-Colored Glasses

Published in slightly edited form July 26, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Last week I confessed the little fling I’m having with girly pink glasses.  But most of my life I’ve been associated with a deeper, and more consequential shade of eyewear:  rose.

           

     The phrase “rose-colored glasses,” of course, refers to the lenses, not the frames.  It’s a metaphor for a way of seeing the world in which its darker side is not visible.  People who are accused of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses are being criticized for not seeing (and not being willing to see, since glasses are removable,) the tougher, grimmer parts of existence.  They only want to see the good, not the bad.

           

      I can remember a time in my life when I qualified for that criticism.  It was before I left for college, when I still could watch the news on television and simply not comprehend the civil rights uprisings in LA, Detroit, Chicago and the entire southeastern U.S.  Then I left home and started trying to make a new one.  Then came the oil embargo of the 1970’s and the tortuous end of the Viet Nam War.  That’s when reality set in:  bad exists, as well as the possibility that it reigns.  Since then, the question for me has been where and how do you take your stand against that?

           

     I’m sure that people who met me when I first moved to Lindsay in 1993 thought I had rose-colored glasses strapped tightly to my face.  In response to their sentiments bemoaning this community’s losses, partly due to the 1990 Freeze but perhaps even more to Lindsay Olive’s collapse and Sunkist’s decline in market-power over the prior decade, I would smilingly say “but look at what you still have.”

           

     And I meant it.  What I found in Lindsay then was a level of authenticity and environmental intimacy that I hadn’t known since I moved away from Puyallup, WA.  As our economic shakedown continued, however, I began to experience losses in the community, too.  By the time the City started ripping apart the park and downtown, I was attached enough to this place to mourn its demise, even though the replacements promised to resurrect the community’s viability (which they haven’t.)  For years my metaphorical glasses were dark.

           

     Then came the Lindsay Uprising of 2010, when local residents found their voices and raised them in protest of exorbitant wages and unfair lending practices at City Hall.  They called it corruption, and though the people never found a way to legally prosecute these nefarious activities, it started a call for governmental accountability and transparency that still has teeth.

           

     All we wanted then was a city government that was responsible to its residents, not to special interests.  I think that’s still what we need, and what we still can work to achieve.  Call me hopeful, not blind.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who works to be clear-sighted.  You can send her your thoughts on lens colors c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

Jessup's Tire

Published May 17, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “I’m really going to miss this place,” Sallie McDonald told me last week as we sat in what used to be Jessup’s Tire.

           

     I’d come to find out how I made the terrible mistake in my column two weeks ago, implying that the new owner of the building was being unreasonable about the date to vacate the premises. “Let’s just say he was understandably eager to begin work,” she corrected me.

           

     We looked around at the walls and floors, the windows letting in morning light, the beauty of the past preserved in the present use of the building by the Lindsay-Strathmore Coordinating Council in their modest, but critical offerings to the community.  I realized that I’m really going to miss this place, too.  It will be demolished by the new owner.

           

     The thrift store’s counter is in the same place where I first met John Jessup in the last years of the tire shop’s operation.  I went there with the excuse of wanting to know if I could still buy tires for the 1947 Dodge flatbed I’d acquired in August, 1994, hoping to use it as a parade vehicle for my rural advocacy work.  I looked around as he thumbed through the catalogs of tires, finally delivering a certain “yes” to my question.  The years of serving this community showed in the photos of Lindsay High football teams and class pictures displayed on the walls, the ads for cars and tire companies, the word “vulcanizing” prominent.  John Jessup held his place in this town with dignity and respect.  I felt privileged to be there to witness it.  On the shop’s last day of business, I photographed the interior, wall-to-wall.

           

     “Who knows the history of this building, how the City came to own it?” I asked Sallie.  She said “Joe.”

           

     Joe Mohnike sells insurance two doors down from Jessup’s Tire, so I passed by his open office door, saw him sitting at his desk, and went inside.  It turns out that Jessup’s Tire had once been his grandfather’s livery stable, one of two in town.  The stable had a place for dipping livestock in creosote to protect them from vermin, and Joe’s first sentences of concern were that the soil contamination there should prevent the demolition of the building.

           

     Another reason appeared.  “John Jessup gave that building to the school district for educational programs and some kind of museum,” he followed.  “They didn’t want it, so they sold it to the City for $2,” he said, correcting another mistake I’d made two weeks ago.

           

     But his concern about the building was trumped by his concern for LSCC’s efforts.   “It’s sickening,” he said, “the one thing this town really needs – the Coordinating Council - is being pushed aside.  No one’s getting rich from it, and it brings people downtown.  Nothing else does that but the hardware store – what does that tell you?”

           

     Both Joe and Sallie view the large number of empty run-down buildings in town as part of the problem we face in revitalizing our community.  These buildings are the town’s anchors, like the root of a tooth.  The historical knowledge and caring needed, which seem to be missing at City Hall, are here, waiting to be tapped.  May we find another path than the one we’re on.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rapt listener to Lindsay’s stories.  You can send her yours c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  Thanks to my editorial board for keeping this story straight.

Mayday Mayday

Published May 3, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Circle the wagons, folks:  here comes another City of Lindsay sneak attack on our culture and history.

           

     I stopped at the Lindsay-Strathmore Coordinating Council’s thrift store last week hoping to find some kind of large saucer to put under a pot of wildflowers.  The shop was nearly empty of people and goods, much reduced from its normal stock.  I saw Sallie McDonald sitting at her desk in the next room, so I stopped to talk.

           

     “We have to be out by June 10^th and I can’t find another place to rent,” she told me.  I looked at this woman I first met during the Coordinating Council’s heroic efforts following the 1990 Freeze:  feeding people, helping them find clothes and work, keeping the children in school, keeping the lights on.  It was an emergency effort that grew into a sustaining effort:  making sure there was some place to go for help when employment flagged, when bills toppled family budgets, when eviction notices and red-inked shut-off letters arrived.  I went there myself one year when plans collapsed.

           

     When I first encountered LSCC in early 1992, they were located in two empty shops in the 200 block of West Honolulu, one across the street from the other.  It was difficult, but the spaces were donated, a temporary arrangement in tough times.  A few years later, when Jessup Tires closed their doors and the building was donated to the City in hope of preserving it, LSCC was offered the space.

           

     A tire shop is not necessarily the most hospitable environment for a food distribution effort, but it has one necessary feature:  no steps.  The food is delivered by Food Link on pallets with fork lifts.  Storing it until it the pallets can be broken down and redistributed into family sized bundles requires space for tables and refrigeration units, not to mention the volunteers who man that operation.  One year I dropped by with 100 bags of Fred Smeds’ Ruby Red raisins to donate for the Christmas food baskets, and it looked like Santa’s Workshop.  Elves everywhere.

           

     Sallie told me that the City has offered to “let” them use the gravel parking lot behind the current location for distributing food.  That would mean the whole operation would have to be done in one day, rain or shine, including clean-up.  That idea ignores the reality of what is needed by either LSCC or its clients and the entire community it serves.  It is offensive.

           

     When I called Sallie two days later, I learned that the new owner wants them out in ten days.  I don’t know whether he has legal grounds for that demand, but this entire episode needs more public airing and input, or we will be a community without caring before May ends.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer in Lindsay.  You can send your ideas for LSCC relocation c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

News from Oroville

To be published February 15, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Driving home Sunday night, I heard the voice of urgency through the radio, issuing an evacuation order for low-lying areas below Oroville Dam.  Earlier that day, I’d heard the opposite news:  that no danger was present despite spillway problems and full-to-overflowing levels of the reservoir.  The change in the news put me into emergency mode.

     In my early thirties, while at Berkeley, I’d studied dam failures and a phenomenon called “reservoir-induced seismicity” for a class on earthquakes I was taking as part of my preparation for environmental planning.  An earlier class, “Hydrology for Planners” taught by a nationally-famous hydraulic engineer, Luna Leopold (one of two sons of environmentalist Aldo Leopold who both taught on that campus,) had focused on floods and flooding, particularly with respect to urban areas.  Reservoirs, unfortunately, are where those two subjects sometimes converge.

     Eight years after Oroville Dam was completed, the city of Oroville (located just downstream from the dam) experienced a 5.7 magnitude earthquake embedded in a series of foreshocks and aftershocks that were caused by the reservoir itself – specifically, the rapid drawdown and refilling of the reservoir.  The damage from the earthquake, which involved no flooding because the new dam remained intact, was estimated at $3 million dollars.  Had the dam failed as a result of those earthquakes, the costs would have been astronomically higher.

     As I write this, the failures on both the main and emergency spillways, which prompted the evacuation of almost 190,000 people, are being managed.  Even if they succeed in lowering the reservoir in time for the next downpour, however, the costs of the evacuation to those shuttled away from homes, jobs, farm animals and implements could easily top the $3 million suffered in 1975, even when number is recalculated for inflation.  Add the costs to the state and multiple counties for providing emergency services, then the costs of repairing the dam’s spillways, and what we have is a portrait of one of the things that’s wrong with building large reservoirs:  the total costs of these projects are never computed in the cost-benefit studies.  They aren’t calculable.

     Oroville is an interesting town, especially considering that the majority of its vast water resources is shipped well beyond the lands surrounding it.  With a population of 16,000 it has much in common with the towns in our readership area.  The first olive processing plant was built there; the original “Mother Orange Tree” still resides there.  Located at the last spot on the Feather River where boats can go, it began as a service center for gold miners in the foothills when the state was still in diapers, then developed small-scale farms.  It has a small downtown with half-empty brick buildings like most of our towns have, and serious challenges for survival.

     Unlike Lindsay, however, it has many people working to preserve its historic quality and stimulate its economic development in sustainable ways.  My friend and attorney Richard Harriman has been following and assisting in these folks’ progress, and has brought me stories of hope even as we ponder how to help something similar come into being here.

     So I’m praying for the folks of Oroville right now, and the future of their downtown restoration.  The Feather River would like to go right through those streets and buildings right now and carry the fruit of many peoples’ efforts all the way to the Sutter By-Pass just south of Nicolaus.  Pray that the Department of Water Resources can stay on top of water under the tremendous force of gravity.  Pray that weighty water doesn’t trigger another earthquake.

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Trudy Wischemann is an environmental planner who writes.  You can send her your favorite flood stories c/o P.O. Box 1374 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.

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.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.  Deep thanks to Colleen Childers all these years for her support and her love of Pepper’s Market, now MIA.  Send your thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

           

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.

 

Data Crunching

Published Jan. 14, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     Last week’s warm, spring-like weather had me crunching some raw data I mentioned in my previous column.  “Data crunching” is just academic slang for processing facts in some way that shows relationships between categories of things.


     My processing began in the form of laundry.  I washed piles of clothes from my past, looking for clues to my true identity as a child of God despite the clear evidence of massive strokes of sin.  A flannel shirt from my field work days, for instance, helped offset some guilty-looking underwear.  A pair of jeans I’ll never squeeze back into reminded me I once thought size 12 was large.  Examining one’s conscience through the lens of previous wardrobes can be a growth experience in humility, one trait of the saintly.  But hanging wet stuff on the clothesline, letting it dry in full view, preparing for its new life as a rag or thrift shop donation - man, that’s cathartic.


     I keep wondering how Val is doing with his data crunching.  His job is a little different from mine:  he’s got to organize his raw data well enough to contradict the data provided by his clerk.  His data need to provide a different picture of relationships than the one her data paints.  His data have to convince a panel of people not from his home town or county that he’s a child of God qualified enough to keep serving up justice here at home despite the clouds on his apparent character.  All I have to do is convince my internal judge and jury that I qualify to keep breathing.


     When I crunch the data in the judicial committee’s report, the relationship I see is one of invidious paternalism.  He was trying to take over her life.  With the anonymous letter accusing her of having an affair with another court employee, supposedly sent to her husband’s workplace and cc’d to Judge Val, he was inserting himself between her and her husband as well as the other employee with whom she was still on a friendly basis.  By instructing her to tell no one about the letter, he was also inserting himself between her and her other friends.  He then began depositing cash into her bank accounts and providing other luxuries, from AAA coverage to a BMW.  As benign as he tried to make these look, they are steps toward a predatory relationship, how paternalism goes ugly.  Ask any daughter of incest.


     I probably wouldn’t mention this again except for the possibility that Judge Val has been using his power in other inappropriate ways, particularly within our community.  The most blatant example I know was his signing the LPD’s search and arrest warrants over a 3-day weekend in the unwarranted arrest of Councilman Mecum last year.  The Saucedo’s home is three doors down from Lindsay’s police station, which made it convenient, I’m sure.  But his past history on the city council and multiple terms as mayor leave too strong a connection to City Hall to guarantee impartiality in evaluating the validity of those warrants.  Most judges refuse to sign warrants in the communities in which they live simply to avoid the appearance of potential conflict of interest.


     The other was his attendance at Lindsay City Council meetings during the LARGo lawsuit on CEQA violations and neglect of historic preservation provisions in Lindsay’s outdated general plan.  I didn’t know it at the time, but that may have been a violation of the judicial ethics code.  At the time, however, I felt it was some kind of betrayal of the community, his appearance and comments meant to sway the Council back toward the staff’s direction at a time when they were beginning to move away.


     I hope the community will come to understand that the loss of this “local hero” may in fact be a gain for our efforts to build real democratic process.  Maybe it’s time Val did some laundry.
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Trudy Wischemann is writer who loves to get her hands into soapy water and make things clean.  You can send her your data crunching stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

           

 

 

 

           

Having Say

Published July 30, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


            The Lindsay City Council took another step forward at the July 8 regular Council meeting when it refused to give direction to the city’s staff regarding historic preservation. While the Sun-Gazette’s article made it sound like the Council was indeterminate, actually they were holding firm against an attempt by staff to squelch community interest and involvement in the shape of our downtown.

            In early June, without the knowledge of at least four of the five Council members, the city staff sent a 2-page letter to all property owners within the Central Business District asking “if you desire an historic district” at this time.  The letter briefly described what that might include, and the potential impacts on their properties. 

             The letter also included a two-question survey which the property owners were encouraged to return, noting the survey’s results would be presented at the July 8 Council meeting.  The letter indicated that if the majority of those property owners answered “no,” the matter would be laid to rest until some future time. (This letter can be viewed in the Council agenda packet for July 8, either at the library, city hall, or online at www.lindsay.ca.us under Council Agendas. After the initial posting of this blog, the historic preservation "initiative" was added to the City's website.)

             The staff was clearly giving veto power to property owners, regardless of the Council’s response to the survey.  No one else was surveyed, such as business owners, who might have a greater interest in the benefits of historic preservation than property owners, who might bear some of the costs.  Forget the residents of the community, whose lives are shaped by the quality of the environment we live in.

            One sentence near the end of the letter showed their hand.  Before encouraging property owners to return the survey as soon as possible, a sentence underlined for emphasis read: “Do not leave this important decision to activists or other special interest groups.”  At the Council meeting, Councilman Mecum asked City Manager Rich Wilkinson, who signed the letter and said he was its author, to give his definition of “activists and special interest groups.”  After thinking a moment, Rich replied “Those who put their opinions over something they don’t have any say in.”

             Apparently that moment wasn’t long enough for a quality answer, because at the end of the meeting Rich asked to modify it.  After pausing much longer, he said “I think I need to give clarification on my definition of an activist ... for Mr. Mecum.  You caught me off guard!  So you got a real quick shot there, but you know really it’s someone that’s promoting their, or promotes social change that’s close to their … beliefs system.  And sometimes it infringes on those other rights that other individuals have that are important to them as well.

            “In this case the activist is that who is promoting a social change in respect to some of these personal property rights.  So there’s my reference there.”  To which Mecum replied “Cool.”

             Historic preservation is much more a public concern than private property owners’.  Historic preservation gets its energy from the recognition that preserving a community’s history, its physical record of existence in a place, is a community value to be weighed with property values.  It usually is instituted to balance the private property owners’ rights with the community’s needs for belonging, for maintaining a sense of place.  This is something the public very much has a say in, and the staff’s attempt to exclude us from the discussion is shameful.  Kudos to the Council for refusing to buy in.

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Trudy Wischemann is a carpenter’s daughter who loves old buildings more than new ones.  You can send her your thoughts on historic places c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or  leave a comment below.