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So I mentioned Measure X. Yesterday they had a rally against it -- three people came.
This is the story. It goes back a long, long ways. Twenty-seven years, actually, or more. Proposition 13, voted in in 1978, was the first of the "taxpayer revolt" laws which limited in various draconian ways the amount of property tax that could be collected by states and counties. It had various disastrous effects, and has been followed by other tax cuts mostly for the wealthy. One thing it did do, too, was to open the doors to the current generation of disingenous initiatives which pretend to be Democracy in Action but which are simply ways to circumvent the rest of the democratic process and to impose the will of the right wing and the wealthy on the rest of us.
(a pleasant side effect for me is that I'm still paying property taxes on a paid-off <$50,000 house which is probably worth nearly half a million in today's market. I could say that Proposition 13 is the reason we can afford to keep our house, but Porposition 13 helped to fuel the real estate bubble, so I think that cancels out)
One of the provisions -- I forget whether it's in Proposition 13 or something later, but I think it's in 13 -- is that any local fees or taxes have to get a two-thirds vote.
So the city had this little utility fee which was being used to fund the fire department and some other public services. SOmebody noticed it had passed its sunset, and so the City sent out mail ballots and said they'd stop collecting the fees in the months that were between the sunset of the fee and its reinstatement, if any. There's been a noisy but apparently ludicrously small group urging a no vote and pointing out that the city's still collecting the fee (which I think is because they collect the fee actually a month or two later than the month it belongs to, but I can't swear to it)> It's a few cents a month we're talking about here.
There were people calling for a no vote on joining the mosquito and pest control district too, saying that we already have a health department, so why do we need to have a department dedicated to mosquito control? That one passed, naturally, in a year when we have had a couple of West Nile cases -- we have had a fatality too, but that was after the vote.
Let's see, what else? THe bus drivers have been working to contract for the last week which necessitates the cutting of fifteen buses a day last I heard, and if they don't get action by Thursday they'll walk out.
I'm always amused when the first thing that a public service workers union does when tals break down is to work to contract, and it causes havoc. There's a message there -- if the only way we can get the job done under current conditions is for the workers to work overtime (unpaid in the case of teachers), there's something desperately wrong. Isn't there? Shouldn't we fund and hire sufficient workers to do the job according to the contract?
But it's a USian thing -- we work harder, under harsher conditions, for less security and benefits, than workers in the countries we're expecting to admire us. It's called "productivity," sometimes, and it's why, often, when I see the word "productivity" I mentally replace it with "theft."
It's apple time all over the Pajaro Valley (that is, the parts which are not replaced with berries)-- there's a section of Watsonville which starts to smell like cider about now, and soon thereafter smells sweetly of cider vinegar. If you drink Martinelli apple juice or eat Driscoll berries you're partaking of the Pajaro Valley (except that sometimes Driscoll is berries from Santa Maria and sometimes from Mexico).
Day before yesterday I was overflown by a turkey vulture so big I had to contemplate whether it could be a condor. Theoretically, it's remotely possible -- they are capable of hundred-mile flights, and Big Sur, where they're being released from the captive breeding program is les than a hundred miles from Watsonville. But it was a turkey vulture, I'm sure of that. I have some decent pictures of blue jays maneuvering around Gloria's compost heap which I have not posted, and pictures too of a kestrel (I think) and a dove which were in the same snag at LIghthouse Field.
My friend Elizabeth has rented her condo to a family on Section 8 housing subsidy -- but before they could finish the paperwork. the English-speaking member of the family, who is a seventeen-year-old high school football player, was seriously and nearly-fatally stabbed by a fourteen-year-old kid for no good reason, and a friend of the family was killed. Neither of the victims was a gang member. The kid was stabbed by a child who has a history of violent, irrational behavior, and the precipitating event seems to be that the football player told the younger kid that he shouldn't cuss out the girls.
But still, it's not really dangerous here.
The yuppies on the West Side have successfully sued to have the city's general plan halted and overturned. They're trying to get dogs banned from the dog park at Lighthouse Field and It's Beach and they found that a correct environmental impact report had not been filed on the dog park for the new plan. (Studies have been done on the dogs' impact, but they were not environmental impact reports) They've halted the entire plan -- including the new restroom and shower facility, parking, and studies as to what is to be done about the lighthouse when the point it's on inevitable collapses from erosion (there's already a deep warren of sea caves down there).
I'm a firm believer in environmental impact reports. So I guess I shouldn't be furious at the yuppies who want to own every little bit of everything and control it all to their own benefit. But I am. Not because they're forcing a proper environmental impact report but because they will not stop until they have gained control of every little thing.
Some of the same guys were down at City Council a couple years back insisting that the cliffs along West Cliff Drive be ppured over with cement to defend their investments -- they've built these hideous McMansions les than fifty feet back from a cliff which has eroded more than that distance in the last fifty? seventy? years (naturally I forget the number in midrant). They never should have been allowed to build the things. Some of them weren't allowed to -- they just did what they pleased and now they think the rest of us should pay for their self-indulgence.
Like the guy who wrote a letter to the editor because he bought one of the ritzy apartments in one of the new buildings downtown -- a block from the Catalyst and the bus station, overlooking all of downtown -- and he's put out because downtown isn't quiet after nine o'clock at night and before eight o'clock in the morning. Like the Westside citizen who's freaking out because strangers have parked all night at the curb in front of her house.
On other frints, the rest of them are at the movies-- "Brothers Grimm." Gloria wants to see "Broken Flowers" but we haven't been getting it together.
And the nice fellow wants to blow the joint because he's got some time off and I'm trying to want to do it too, because he's kind of right, we should go somewhere even if I'm feeling sedentary. He's thinking the norfth rim of the Grand Canyon. I think I'm thinking the Eastern Sierra because it's less driving.
This is the story. It goes back a long, long ways. Twenty-seven years, actually, or more. Proposition 13, voted in in 1978, was the first of the "taxpayer revolt" laws which limited in various draconian ways the amount of property tax that could be collected by states and counties. It had various disastrous effects, and has been followed by other tax cuts mostly for the wealthy. One thing it did do, too, was to open the doors to the current generation of disingenous initiatives which pretend to be Democracy in Action but which are simply ways to circumvent the rest of the democratic process and to impose the will of the right wing and the wealthy on the rest of us.
(a pleasant side effect for me is that I'm still paying property taxes on a paid-off <$50,000 house which is probably worth nearly half a million in today's market. I could say that Proposition 13 is the reason we can afford to keep our house, but Porposition 13 helped to fuel the real estate bubble, so I think that cancels out)
One of the provisions -- I forget whether it's in Proposition 13 or something later, but I think it's in 13 -- is that any local fees or taxes have to get a two-thirds vote.
So the city had this little utility fee which was being used to fund the fire department and some other public services. SOmebody noticed it had passed its sunset, and so the City sent out mail ballots and said they'd stop collecting the fees in the months that were between the sunset of the fee and its reinstatement, if any. There's been a noisy but apparently ludicrously small group urging a no vote and pointing out that the city's still collecting the fee (which I think is because they collect the fee actually a month or two later than the month it belongs to, but I can't swear to it)> It's a few cents a month we're talking about here.
There were people calling for a no vote on joining the mosquito and pest control district too, saying that we already have a health department, so why do we need to have a department dedicated to mosquito control? That one passed, naturally, in a year when we have had a couple of West Nile cases -- we have had a fatality too, but that was after the vote.
Let's see, what else? THe bus drivers have been working to contract for the last week which necessitates the cutting of fifteen buses a day last I heard, and if they don't get action by Thursday they'll walk out.
I'm always amused when the first thing that a public service workers union does when tals break down is to work to contract, and it causes havoc. There's a message there -- if the only way we can get the job done under current conditions is for the workers to work overtime (unpaid in the case of teachers), there's something desperately wrong. Isn't there? Shouldn't we fund and hire sufficient workers to do the job according to the contract?
But it's a USian thing -- we work harder, under harsher conditions, for less security and benefits, than workers in the countries we're expecting to admire us. It's called "productivity," sometimes, and it's why, often, when I see the word "productivity" I mentally replace it with "theft."
It's apple time all over the Pajaro Valley (that is, the parts which are not replaced with berries)-- there's a section of Watsonville which starts to smell like cider about now, and soon thereafter smells sweetly of cider vinegar. If you drink Martinelli apple juice or eat Driscoll berries you're partaking of the Pajaro Valley (except that sometimes Driscoll is berries from Santa Maria and sometimes from Mexico).
Day before yesterday I was overflown by a turkey vulture so big I had to contemplate whether it could be a condor. Theoretically, it's remotely possible -- they are capable of hundred-mile flights, and Big Sur, where they're being released from the captive breeding program is les than a hundred miles from Watsonville. But it was a turkey vulture, I'm sure of that. I have some decent pictures of blue jays maneuvering around Gloria's compost heap which I have not posted, and pictures too of a kestrel (I think) and a dove which were in the same snag at LIghthouse Field.
My friend Elizabeth has rented her condo to a family on Section 8 housing subsidy -- but before they could finish the paperwork. the English-speaking member of the family, who is a seventeen-year-old high school football player, was seriously and nearly-fatally stabbed by a fourteen-year-old kid for no good reason, and a friend of the family was killed. Neither of the victims was a gang member. The kid was stabbed by a child who has a history of violent, irrational behavior, and the precipitating event seems to be that the football player told the younger kid that he shouldn't cuss out the girls.
But still, it's not really dangerous here.
The yuppies on the West Side have successfully sued to have the city's general plan halted and overturned. They're trying to get dogs banned from the dog park at Lighthouse Field and It's Beach and they found that a correct environmental impact report had not been filed on the dog park for the new plan. (Studies have been done on the dogs' impact, but they were not environmental impact reports) They've halted the entire plan -- including the new restroom and shower facility, parking, and studies as to what is to be done about the lighthouse when the point it's on inevitable collapses from erosion (there's already a deep warren of sea caves down there).
I'm a firm believer in environmental impact reports. So I guess I shouldn't be furious at the yuppies who want to own every little bit of everything and control it all to their own benefit. But I am. Not because they're forcing a proper environmental impact report but because they will not stop until they have gained control of every little thing.
Some of the same guys were down at City Council a couple years back insisting that the cliffs along West Cliff Drive be ppured over with cement to defend their investments -- they've built these hideous McMansions les than fifty feet back from a cliff which has eroded more than that distance in the last fifty? seventy? years (naturally I forget the number in midrant). They never should have been allowed to build the things. Some of them weren't allowed to -- they just did what they pleased and now they think the rest of us should pay for their self-indulgence.
Like the guy who wrote a letter to the editor because he bought one of the ritzy apartments in one of the new buildings downtown -- a block from the Catalyst and the bus station, overlooking all of downtown -- and he's put out because downtown isn't quiet after nine o'clock at night and before eight o'clock in the morning. Like the Westside citizen who's freaking out because strangers have parked all night at the curb in front of her house.
On other frints, the rest of them are at the movies-- "Brothers Grimm." Gloria wants to see "Broken Flowers" but we haven't been getting it together.
And the nice fellow wants to blow the joint because he's got some time off and I'm trying to want to do it too, because he's kind of right, we should go somewhere even if I'm feeling sedentary. He's thinking the norfth rim of the Grand Canyon. I think I'm thinking the Eastern Sierra because it's less driving.
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