Unite & Conquer

Published March 7, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
 
     It’s been a sad week in Lake Woebehere, my adopted home town.  Last Tuesday, Feb. 27^th, the City Council voted 3:2 to demolish the historic public resource known as the Lindsay City Golf Course and build 5 soccer fields on the property instead.  We’ll be seeing bulldozers there very shortly.

           

     At the Council meeting there were 20 or 30-some little soccer players shepherded there by a few mothers and their coach, Mr. Faustino Perez.  The three women who spoke on behalf of the soccer players are employees of the City, and they spoke confidently of the need for greater access to playing fields for this burgeoning youth activity.  Mr. Perez followed their comments with a description of the hardships these youth were experiencing for lack of places to play.

           

     Four adults representing Lindsay’s youth baseball teams were also there, because the money for “repurposing” of the golf course is coming from a grant recently acquired to upgrade the Olive Bowl (our historic baseball facility) and Kaku Park, an adjoining triangle of ground with facilities for children in an area where there is very little for children to do.  These coaches were not as prepared to defend against the “repurposing” of the money granted to support their efforts; their day jobs don’t give them direct access to the powers that be.

           

     There were some silent majority types sitting in the audience, too, adults from the boomer generation for whom the destruction of the golf course feels like destruction of their personal history, not to mention golfing future.  “I feel like crying,” one woman said to me after the meeting, though she did not address the council when it came time to speak.  When the bulldozers arrive, I imagine a lot of us will feel like crying.

           

     With the little soccer players standing there behind the podium, it was hard to question the rightness of Bill Zigler’s decision to propose this change, promoting one sport (soccer) to the detriment of two (baseball and golf.)  Councilman Velasquez did, however, providing multiple reasons why destruction of the golf course should be reconsidered, and lodged one of the two No votes.  Mayor Kimball also expressed regret about the loss of this public resource and concern about the hastiness of the decision, casting the second No.  Councilman Salinas argued that at least it will remain open space rather than being developed with housing, while Councilman Watkins expressed hope for the resurrection of active use of this public land (he golfs in Exeter.)  Councilwoman Cortes was adamant about the importance of supporting soccer in this community.

           

     I agree with all of them, but I question whether this decision is fiscally responsible.  The City owns a facility with two indoor soccer fields, which were built entirely with public funds that were garnered on behalf of serving the underserved.  Building new soccer fields which will compete with our indoor facility, while continuing to neglect the baseball park (long overdue for maintenance) and demolishing one of the last remaining public golf courses in Tulare County, seems like just another bad decision in a long stream of bad planning.

           

     But to challenge this decision, it will take the residents coming together to support all the recreational needs of the community.  It will require us to take back our voice as the represented public, and tell them what we really need:  a city government responsive to its citizens, not the bulldozers.

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

Senseless Violence

Published Feb. 28, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     For two weeks now, if we watch the news, our eyes and ears have been riveted to the multiple outcomes of the latest school shooting in Parkland, Florida.  As before, we review the mass shootings that preceded this one, looking for clues about why this keeps happening and what we might do to prevent another.

           

     One TV program about church shootings put this effort under the title “what we can do about senseless violence.” Hearing it advertised repeatedly broke my mind open to the definition of that term, wondering if there’s such a thing as violence that isn’t senseless, and where to draw the line between violence and something lesser, like petty theft.

           

     Surely the violence in Syria right now is as senseless as it gets, as was the violence in Viet Nam or any of the other countries we’ve sent troops.  I have a little less trouble seeing the violence of WWII as necessary, if also senseless on a spiritual level.  Did the world really need an Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin?  Did it need Pol Pot?  Did it need George Custer?

           

     See what happens when you start asking questions?  I’m sure I’ve already stepped on a few toes with that last name.  But I learned an interesting definition of violence from a book by Fr. John Dear:  violence is anything that divests a person of his or her true identity as a child of God.  The whole effort to eliminate the red skin threat to white settlement as Americans (many of them recent immigrants) pushed westward in search of free land, a place to live, certainly falls into the category of violence.  Was it senseless?  If not, was it any less violent?

           

     I won’t touch the rhetoric of our current commander-in-chief.  Someone might decide to divest me of my true identity.

           

     On a more human level, I’m wondering about the technological advances currently ongoing in our region, everywhere from the groves and fields to brick-and-mortar work environments where jobs are being eliminated faster than we can count.  One particularly attractive “advancement” displayed at the farm show two weeks ago was GUSS, “the world’s first unmanned orchard sprayer.”  GUSS “removes the operator from the tractor, thus eliminating the chance of driver exposure to the products being applied.”  It also, by the way, “eliminates” operator error and 10 minute breaks, lunchtimes, Sundays, and quite frankly, jobs.  When faced with the choice of being exposed to pesticides or not working at all, people have for years chosen exposure over unemployment.  But now they will not have to choose.

           

     We are a violent people.  If we’re going to find ways to stop senseless violence, we’re going to have to look at all the ways we accept violence as necessary, even when there’s a better way.  May someone brave lead us in that direction.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte Quaker who writes.  Send her your suggestions for becoming a non-violent culture c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Beyond Boswell

Published Feb. 21, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     I was just catching my breath last week from the news that Boswell had withdrawn their proposal for Yokohl Ranch when I heard that Mark Arax would be interviewed on KVPR.  The subject was his article “A Kingdom from Dust” on Stewart and Lynda Resnick’s operations just published Jan. 31^st in the California Sunday Magazine (https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust).

           

     Once known as Paramount Farms, renamed to Wonderful, Inc., these operations now exceed those once farmed by Boswell.  Although there’s a difference in levels and kinds of philanthropy, like the clinics and schools being built in Lost Hills and Delano, there’s great similarity to the Boswell empire in control over water and land, which we learned in Arax and Wartzman’s  The King of California:   J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire (2003.)  The Resnick article just published is also part of a forthcoming book by Arax, hopefully to be released next year.

           

     Getting this Resnick story now rather than later, however, may help us face the need to take back the decisions over land and water that belong in the public’s sphere.  “Stewart Resnick is the biggest farmer in the United States,” Arax wrote early in the piece, “a fact he has tried to keep hidden while he has shaped what we eat, transformed California’s landscape, and ruled entire towns.”  Arax also writes of Stewart’s partnership with his wife, Lynda, as unique and portentious.  With their influence over the entire citrus industry, we who live in the Sun-Gazette’s readership sphere are already feeling the effects in lost navel markets and acres of replants to mandarins no longer packed in our towns.

           

     Wonderful’s crop production through the drought was remarkably high, a fact that led Arax to track down their water supply.  One thing he discovered was a “private, off-the-books pipeline” that was taking water “from unsuspecting farmers in an irrigation district in Tulare County 40 miles away.”  Learning that a land developer from Santa Clara Valley named John Vidovich was the wheeler for that water provides clues about what we’ll need to prevent in the future.

           

     Writing about the Wonderful Citrus complex sited along Hwy 99 just south of the Tulare/Kern county line, “with its four-story storage building designed in the shape of an almighty box of Halo mandarins, (the complex was) conceived by Lynda, cost one fortune to build and a second fortune to light up.  I doubt the Resnicks have any idea,” Arax continued, “of the fester that eats at this place, the shame piled on shame.”  I think one layer of that shame is that we seem unable to bootstrap our public power high enough to make these guys realize who they’re taking from and how they’re damaging the future they’re trying to make with their charitable contributions in the communities of Lost Hills and Delano.

           

     This is just a taste of what’s available in Mark’s article.  If you’re interested in the future of this part of the Valley, it’s worth starting here – and now.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rural community researcher who writes.  You can send her your thoughts on the Big Boys c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

Real Progress

Published in edited form January 31, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “You can’t stop progress,” I’ve been warned my whole life as I worked against the predictable devastation I saw coming in progress’s wake.  Maybe that’s true, but the news this past week suggests that progress can be re-directed.

           

     Saturday’s front page article in the Fresno Bee showed fingerling Chinook salmon from the San Joaquin River.  Last fall, spring-run salmon made it to the foot of Friant Dam and reproduced for the first time in 60 years, re-starting the cycle many thought was lost forever.  Like the migrating birds returning to Tulare Lake’s man-made wetlands, the salmon run appears to be more resilient than most of our imaginations.  What we thought was lost to “progress,” Mother Nature resupplied once we committed ourselves to restoring the conditions we’d stripped from her plan.

           

     Even more pertinent for those of us in Tulare County who dream of a more sustainable future was the news that the Boswell Corp. withdrew its plan to build Yokohl Ranch.  “You’re kidding,” said one friend I called; “No way,” said another.  Ten years ago the dream of saving Yokohl Valley from this plan was ridiculed by many, made cynical by the King of California’s power - even those of us who were infected by the dream of preserving it.  One of my Tulare County heroes whose cinch straps had worn thin fighting for another, much smaller valley, said it wasn’t worth trying to fight it.  Whatever Boswell wants is inevitable.

           

     And I don’t kid myself about that power dynamic.  That company has decided that it doesn’t want to spend its resources this way, that’s all.  Whether that decision was affected (at least in part) by the costs of deflating opposition to their project, we may never know.  But there are some positive lessons I get from this news.

           

     The most important one is that sacrifices count.  Mine were small:  time spent writing, worrying, talking, more writing.  Others’ were larger: members of the Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth worked for years to document facts, then use them to lobby for and enlighten the general public and its governmental officials.   Some of the individuals involved in the group realized another component was missing, that there was a void in our public awareness of the true value of our beloved, human environment here.  One answer was the development of the group sponsoring the website www.tularecountytreasures.org (check it out!) which tells stories of the individuals who  have shaped our relationships to this place, sometimes sacrificing themselves for the greater good.

           

     There were larger sacrifices, too.  One long-time Yokohl family rancher, Tom Daly, who died in 2014 while working calves for a friend, refused to sell his land to Boswell although the offered price was 5 to 10 times higher than the going rate.  And all of these people made their sacrifices according to deep beliefs, which they held and acted upon despite the widely-held notion that Boswell’s proposed 10,000 unit development, described as self-contained, self-sufficient (i.e., “sustainable,”) would be good for this county.  Those sacrifices, large and small, were made because we believe Yokohl Ranch would be bad for this county, not just bad for Yokohl Valley.

           

     The real progress I see is that we appear to have an opening to have that discussion.  How should the water resources of this county be used?  What kind of development would be good for those of us who actually live here in the center of a small, fertile universe?  Let’s get talking.

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Trudy Wischemann is a land reformer who writes.  You can send her your ideas of progress c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

 

 

The Hope of Action

Published  in edited form Jan. 30, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
 
     “How many names will it take to stop this thing?” a woman asked me after last week’s Lindsay City Council meeting.

           

     She was referring to the proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood and the signature-gathering effort she’d participated in a few weeks before, heroic by this (or any other) community’s standards.  I don’t remember my answer, although I’m sure it wasn’t encouraging, clouded by my experiences here over the last 7+ years.

           

     Yet, before they’d gathered those 800+ names, there was no hope of stopping this thing.  Before individuals started asking questions about the safety of school children crossing there, the potential increase in traffic congestion, the high cost and possibly better (and cheaper) solutions, there was no hope.  Not one drop.

           

     When she asked that important question, we were standing in the dark in front of city hall, the meeting still going on.  The agenda item to approve the roundabout’s environmental document (called “Initial Study/ Mitigated Negative Declaration,”) had been put off for the second time, this time without explanation.  Perhaps it was because two of the five council members, including Mayor Kimball, were absent.  Perhaps they expected challenges from outside experts called to testify by the San Joaquin Valley Environmental Defense Center, a non-profit in which I participate.  Perhaps they expected a large turnout of community people and wanted to discourage the effort.  Or perhaps they actually knew the document wasn’t ready and wanted to give staff more time to improve it.  Who knows?

           

     What I know is that those 800+ names gathered in the first four days of 2018, when most people were just recovering from the holidays, are what kept the Council from approving the roundabout on Jan. 9^th, and again on Jan. 23^rd.  Those community members’ questions, requiring answers in the document, have delayed the normal rubber stamp approval of yet another one of Lindsay’s Follies. And the persistence of community voices wanting to be part of the solution is the only thing that’s going keep yet another community design disaster from happening.

           

     Last week’s Sun-Gazette carried a fiery editorial about Lindsay’s bad attitude toward repaying TCAG for misused Measure R funds.  It made a very important point that should be remembered now, as the City once again contemplates spending public funds they consider “free” (meaning they come from some coffers other than the city’s tax base.)  That point is that these “free” funds are still taxpayer dollars.  We all have contributed, one way or another.  They’re our monies, and in our behalf, conditions have been placed on their use to ensure they go toward real public improvements, not boondoggles.

           

     The City of Lindsay has not demonstrated an awareness of that fact, much less respect for it.  When one resident questioned the high price tag of this roundabout, the city’s response was, essentially, “it’s not our money, don’t worry about that.”  We do worry.  We’re offended by extravagant, wasteful projects in our town (which unfortunately we have in abundance) while we jounce uncomfortably down our un-mended streets.  And it is our money.

           

     So, friends, look at what we’ve done so far with our actions, large and small.  There is hope of solving some of the traffic issues at that intersection if we don’t let up.  We must require the City of Lindsay to respond to the concerns and voices of its residents, now and in the future.  That’s where Hope lives.

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

On Residence

Published Jan. 24, 2018 in Tulare County's  Foothills Sun-Gazette


     “No one wants to live here anymore,” said the same friend in the same conversation I wrote about last week.  The explanation she gave for that purported trend, that many current residents now park their cars on their lawns (which is a violation of Lindsay’s municipal code, enforceable by law) was merely one indicator of the overall decline of this community’s once glorious existence.  It’s shorthand for an unnamed and unanalyzed problem facing towns throughout the Valley and rural communities across the nation.

           

     If no one wanted to live here anymore, I would expect to find a large number of empty houses.  Instead, we find a lack of “for rent” signs, construction of new (albeit subsidized) housing, and street-side parking spaces filled with cars every evening in many neighborhoods.  Some people obviously want to live here.  I happen to be one of them.

           

     Perhaps my friend was referring to the perceived desirability of the town, particularly to people of greater means.  Attracting more “middle-class” people to Lindsay has been a stated goal of several councilmembers, as well as the staff, for years.  The assumption is that we’d see economic benefits from that class of people which would be reflected in the town’s downtown environment, perhaps even greater social commitment to schools, parks and cultural events.  I understand the correlation they’re making – in the past, that’s how it was - but I don’t think it pertains to the present, much less the future. 

           

     I think most of the City’s projects have been simply attempts to “modernize” the town, regardless of whether it is an improvement.  From the project to renovate the downtown and the city park, to the construction of the new library, McDermont Field House, the Wellness Center and the existing and proposed roundabouts, this “modernization” has come with real impacts to the town’s financial stability and the living qualities that made some of us want to live here, not to mention participate in its future.

           

     I think that choosing maintenance instead – maintenance of the park, the city streets, the traffic circulation, the street trees that once existed and now have been replaced with palms and overgrown shrubs – would have been a better strategy, one that would have served the town’s current residents better and increased our desirability by showing a devotion to the qualities that make this small town a great place to live.

           

     Modernization may be an effective technique in cities, but in small towns it puts at risk two essential aspects of our real desirability as alternatives to the urbanizing world:  a connection to the history of this place, and authenticity – the “authorship” of the space, if you will, by individual human beings exerting their creativity and rights to exist through businesses, offering goods and services to their neighbors and contributing to the common good. 

           

     Exeter has been more careful to preserve those two aspects while modernizing, an example we should examine for help maintaining our own.  They also have been better at listening to their residents, who rejected the roundabout constructed at a 5-street intersection and demanded that it be taken out and made it a 5-way stop instead.  I hope Lindsay will learn from Exeter’s example.

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

 

 

Come On Home

Published in edited form Jan. 17, 2018 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


“You’ve got to exert your ownership over the place you live in,
        or you won’t have that place.”
               
                Bruce Springsteen, saying what the song “This Land is Your Land” means
                in the PBS documentary on Woody Guthrie, "I Ain't Got No Home."


     “Do you have to fight about everything?” a friend asked in an unfriendly voice.  We were talking about Lindsay’s proposed roundabout at Hermosa and Westwood, adjacent to Jefferson School and half a block from the entrances to the Olive Tree Plaza.  “I wish I didn’t,” is what I wish I had answered her.           

    
    I’ve got a thing against fighting.  Most of us do.  I got mine from my small-town mother, who abhors fighting in general and understands the underside of the silent class wars that go on in small towns.  Better to go along and be friendly or at least not noticed, because standing out can make you an outsider fast.

           

     But a small handful of Lindsay residents, most of them lifetime members, got up the gumption to gather signatures on a petition against this project.  They gathered over 800 names in four days, 300 more people than voted in the last election.  They overcame their fears about fighting city hall, motivated by concerns about the negative impacts of this project.  I think more of us need to join them.

           

     At the next City Council meeting, Jan. 23^rd (which begins at 6 p.m.), the staff will address some of the questions raised at the public hearing on Jan. 9^th as well as some raised at the public information meeting Jan. 4^th.  The Council then will decide whether to approve the environmental document prepared by the city planning department, a requirement of CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act.)  This is the only point where citizen input has to be considered.  After that, the Council is free to approve the plan regardless what the public thinks or feels about it.

           

     There are genuine defects in the environmental document.  With the aid of experts in the fields of traffic engineering and design, the San Joaquin Valley Environmental Defense Center will address technical flaws in the report.  What is really absent, however, is public participation and a public vision of the town’s future.

           

     There’s a song by the Milk Carton Kids called “The Ash and Clay” which pertains to our situation.  I first heard it at the end of a movie about a rural community that nearly fell prey to a corporation seeking to drill natural gas wells through their aquifer, potentially contaminating their only source of water.  Many in the community wanted the leases as a way to survive financially in an area whose economic base was waning.  A few fighters struggled against both the corporation and the general community’s fears of repercussions, and I thought the film represented well the struggle of public resources and community well-being.  Some lines from the song, however, capture this moment perfectly:

“I know we want what’s best for us – I know it has to come at a price;
I also know the trouble that you find when you stop being nice.
You look around you one day; what you once knew didn’t stay….
Come on home before the girls are grown, come on home to fight.” 

           

     Come be part of the solution Tuesday night, Lindsay City Council chambers, 6 p.m.

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Trudy Wischemann is a small-town researcher who always has a song in her head.  You can send her your thoughts about our roundabouts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247