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.

 

 

Eagles in the Sky

Published in slightly edited form April 29, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Thanks to the Orange Blossom Festival and several class reunions, many of Lindsay’s eagles returned to the nest this past weekend, a remarkable homecoming.

     I had one on my porch Friday afternoon in anticipation of Saturday’s events, Stan Rice.  Some of you may remember him from high school:  fundamentalist, nerdy, ‘way-too-bright kid who is now a Christian Environmentalist in a way that is not an oxymoron.  Stan writes, teaches and leads evolution field trips in his parents’ home state of Oklahoma. “I just flew in from Tulsa,” he said when he called to let me know he was here.  “My arms are really tired...”  Stan still tells cornball jokes, but his heart is true and his mind is sharp as ever.

     Bob Puls’ brother David was also in town for his 53rd.  David’s lived Down South most of his adult life, and is the only person I’ve heard so far who can offer one reason why the price of ag land around here is soaring through the stratosphere at a time when you can’t live on the income from oranges and there’s no guarantee of water in the foreseeable future.  Everyone around here just watches with their jaws hanging open.

      I myself was not here for Saturday’s festivities.  I was singing backup in Porterville with “The Standlees,” Diane and Tommy, with Jesse McCuin on standup bass and me on tambourine, conga shaker and autoharp.  We’d managed to get ourselves booked for the Iris Festival before we realized we’d be missing OBF as well as two nearby rodeos, but it was alright. 

     There we were, singing in the rain under two little tents that shed their collected stormwater every time the wind blew, while the generator running the PA equipment roared and the feedback squealed and groaned.  Diane was belting out a line from “Master of the Wind,” and it sent shivers through me.  “Sometimes I soar like an eagle to the sky.  Among the peaks my soul can be found.  An unexpected storm  may drive me from the high.  It can bring me low but it cannot bring me down.”  Day to day, life sometimes can be daunting to Diane, but not when she’s singing.  Then nothing stops her.

     Later that evening Jesse and I were up at the casino to hear the Oak Ridge Boys.  They said they were glad to be here, and even knew where “here” was:  first they were in Porterville, then they started driving up, up, up.  “Eagle Mountain,” said one, “I guess that’s still in Porterville,” and all the Portervillians clapped and hooted.  But we were really nestled among the peaks to the east, the ones that catch the rain and save us our drinking water.  When someone announced mid-way through the concert that it was raining again, everyone cheered, including the Boys and the Mighty Oaks Band.

            Some writers have noted the brain drain in rural areas, and it’s not hard to notice on a weekend such as the last.  What these Brains have done, however, is leave the fate of their hometowns in the hands of people who, perhaps, have a little more heart and a little more faith in harness with their minds, and willingness to put up with the every day consequences of being attached to a place.  May our all our souls soar among the peaks.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer committed to rural places in California’s Central Valley.  You can send her your eagle sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.

Silver Linings

Published in edited form April 22, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     We’ve entered Orange Blossom Week with no orange blossoms left on the trees, a combination of the drought-induced early bloom and the late timing of the event (caused in part by trying to avoid conflict with Easter.)  It struck me as odd until I remembered silver linings.

     The whole idea that there are silver linings to even the darkest storm clouds is really a biblical concept:  that in dire conditions God may be sending a hidden blessing.  Reading Habakkuk this weekend, I discovered that the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was God’s winnowing hand, a way of recovering His people from their lust for other gods and the domination of the common people by the sin-filled, greedy Jewish elite.

     An orange grower friend called last week to catch up. Living outside the boundaries of the Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation District, he pumps groundwater to irrigate his trees. In normal years all he has to worry about is the winter recharge of his wells, Edison rates, and the lifespans of his pumps.  This year his worry is doubled by the possibility that neighbors, again having no surface water deliveries from the district, will draw down the aquifer and leave his pumps high and dry.  

     “The bloom was light,” he added, contemplating the possibility that there may not be enough crop to warrant irrigating beyond keeping the trees alive.  “That could be a silver lining,” I thought to myself.  Then he said “But I see the baby oranges already.”  I knew immediately that this true farmer will do everything he can to get those oranges to maturity and to the packinghouse, where my neighbors will find work this winter and be able to keep living here.

     The drought itself may have a silver lining.  I find myself holding my breath a lot, too aware (thanks to my education) that our population is well above the natural carrying capacity of this land and that the physical, political and social infrastructure we have created to amend that natural capacity is fragile.  In many places it is broken, perhaps beyond redeeming.

     That awareness has made me super-conscious of my domestic water use.  I find myself dedicating more of my day conserving the water I use and hauling the best of the used water outside to my plants and trees. “Run once, use twice” has become my new motto. These efforts have a silver lining: they connect me to this little piece of land I live on and give me a supportive role in its life.

     It has also led me to look for models of how we here in California might begin to resolve some of the raging conflicts over water supply and use.  Most people who think this drought is man-made look to Sacramento as the location of the evil-doers.  But if they  look west, like where my walnut grower friend who sits on the board of the Tulare Irrigation District looked, discovering a 40-acre “pump farm” where Boswell is pumping Tulare ID’s conscientiously-recharged aquifer with 29 huge pumps running 24/7, they will see that we have neighbors to blame (or at least hold accountable) in this shortage.

     In the early 1990’s, in a similarly-raging water war in Idaho, a woman named Janice Brown, who ran a trout-fishing motel on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, teamed up with Dale Swenson, the head of the local irrigation district, to form the Henry’s Fork Watershed Council.  The council brought together all the competing interests to learn to manage the flows of the Henry’s Fork for the benefit of all.  The first two years were fearful.  But by the late 1990’s, more than 150 people participated in the coalition, including river-runners, loggers, farmers and land managers, and the coalition had reached a point where it stood for equitable use of the river’s flows for all the economic sectors involved.  (Visit www.henrysfork.org to view their continuing efforts.)

     For those of us served by the Friant-Kern, who live outside the watershed where the majority of our water has come for 60 years, this concept may be more difficult to fathom.  But the need is there.  Maybe the silver lining of this drought is that we will begin to acknowledge the conflicts over water development and use, and begin finding solutions - together.

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Trudy Wischemann is a faithful water and community development researcher who writes.  You can send her your silver lining stories 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.