Infrastructure woes

 

Lack of serious efforts on the part of legislators at all levels of government to deal with infrastructure issues should be a focus for all of us. Poor planning or no planning at all has resulted in roads that no longer can carry the load that is present, cracks and potholes that get worse with time and damage your car, shrinking water supplies with no reasonable planning on how to maintain the system we have, inadequate power supplies, antiquated sanitation systems, and uninformed decisions made to blame segments of the population that have no control over what they are now supposed to control.

Generations ago, our legislators very often were brought up on farms or some rural property where they had some understanding of rural life. They knew that milk did not originate from the grocery store but rather came from an animal that needed some space to live, preferably not next to a housing development. With the increasing number of housing units decreed by an equally ignorant state-level legislature that could care not one whit about your particular situation, industries that used to be properly located in rural areas are now abutting residential neighborhoods. Some are even being proposed to be plopped right in the middle of a housing area. Such is the situation of the 20,000 sq. ft. commercial wine facility being proposed for the Happy Canyon area. I have mentioned this project before because it seems to be a perfect example of what is so very wrong with our local legislators. Why is it, under any circumstances, appropriate to put a commercial facility in the middle of a neighborhood of homes, some horses, cows and other livestock, accessible only by narrow, two-lane, winding roads? A commercial wine facility, especially one entitled to eight events a year with one 150 people, requires good access for the numerous trucks that will be carrying the wine product elsewhere for sale. Again, I ask, how is this appropriate? The applicant for this project has managed to convince some people that this is no different than the occasional holiday party that residents have, but somehow I don’t see the similarity.

 

We constantly hear about how Highway 101 is so plugged up during rush hour and the incessant hand wringing over what to do about it. This reminds me, with some anguish, of the 20-some years that it took for the legislators at that time to make a decision about how to get rid of the four stoplights in Santa Barbara that were the only ones on that highway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I see the same lack of decision-making skills here on the Big Island of Hawai’i as the west side near Kona is, and has been for a number of years, at gridlock from 2 p.m. onward every single day. There are only two lanes going into the only major town on this side of the island, whereas on the Hilo side, where the majority of the legislators live, there are three lanes in both directions. The majority of the tourist trade is on the Kona side of the island that is suffering because of the massive, daily traffic jams that people must endure to get anywhere. Yes, it is a difficult decision; yes it will be expensive; but why wait 10 more years until everything is that much more expensive? Legislators are being paid precisely to make those decisions, and while sometimes I don’t envy them that responsibility, it is theirs. I think that we, as voters, need to be aware of where our legislators come from, what experience they bring with them and whether they are capable of making the hard, sometimes unpopular decisions that will enable a community to thrive, because when a community thrives, everyone has a better chance of thriving.

 

 

Somebody’s economic study

Speaking of infrastructure and relevant issues, there was an item on the Feb. 19 Board of Supervisors agenda (Item A-12, Administrative Agenda) to place a hearing on the Feb. 26 agenda to look at an economic assessment study of the local casino, commissioned by the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association. As a former Board member of this organization, I find this study to be very curious for a number of reasons. First, I asked Executive Director Joe Armendariz several years ago to look into the impact of the casino on our community because of the heavy usage of our roads, water, and law enforcement services; services the casino does not pay taxes to support. I wanted to know what this was costing the taxpayers and where they were going to get the money. There was no interest in looking into that.

Now, here comes this study, which I have not heard of before and suspect strongly that it is the multi-headed Hydra that the community killed a few months ago when it was named the “Baseline Study.” This attempt on the part of our representatives to rename this phony study something else and think we will be fooled into thinking it’s real is pretty pathetic. They even went as far as to put the name of a highly respected economic forecaster on it. Shame on them!

 

For the Board of Supervisors and for all of those who are running for 3rd District Supervisor, I have a few questions that I am sure the residents of the district also would like the answers to. First, who really asked for this study, since the Taxpayers Association had no interest in this information before, so I’m not sure I accept that they had a pure interest in this study if, indeed, they were the initiators? Second, how much did this study cost and where did the association get the money to pay for it, as I am sure it was expensive? I am curious as to whether this study was independently peer reviewed. If not, why not? I would like to know why nobody in the affected community was involved in scoping this study. In fact, how could a study like this be conducted openly in a small community like ours without anybody knowing about it?

I find it curious that there is no copy of this study or link to it currently on the County website, which normally is the case. What this means is that the community is not able to look at or assess the value of this study in advance. This is ridiculous and certainly not the kind of “representation” that I want. I am sick and tired of the secret deals made behind closed doors. I am sick and tired of elected officials abdicating their positions to someone who is neither elected nor, apparently, responsive to the community or the board either. Or, am I mistaken? Of course, if that is the case, perhaps we need to think long and hard before we re-elect any of these folks.

 

The recent behavior of this board and its hired employees is to make the majority of the community feel like so much flotsam to be disregarded at every turn. As in the national race for president, there is a huge response to anything new because people are sick of the status quo. Frankly, I am, too, although I am not willing to sacrifice my safety and that of my loved ones to just being hopeful. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had representatives who actually gave a damn about what we, the residents, thought we would like to see our community look like? Yes, miles of new houses would produce more tax money for them to spend or waste, depending on your perspective, but do you really want that for the valley?

 

 

Choices

Once again, it is up to all of us to stand up and let our representatives know, loud and clear, that we will no longer stand for this nonsense. I would be thrilled to write each week about the great things going on in our valley, of which there are plenty, but I am concerned that they are overshadowed by the threat of someone else’s vision to which we aren’t even privy. It does all seem to revolve around major developments in our rural areas. If it’s such a great vision, why the secrecy that seems to become more commonplace every week?

So this past week, our supervisor was thinking outside of the box and suggested that we finance the North County jail with funds from legalizing marijuana. I respectfully suggest that he was thinking “out of the United States” rather than the box, as marijuana is illegal in this country and it would require federal legislation to change laws in Santa Barbara County. I can’t imagine what he was thinking! Even law enforcement personnel remarked that a large percentage of people in jail are there for crimes committed because of drug usage. A recent tongue-in-cheek article by Dan Bernstein advocated legalizing prostitution to help reduce the deficit. Creative thinking is one thing, but I would hope we could begin by reducing the frivolous spending all of the legislators are doing. One can no longer blame this bad behavior on one political party or the other, as they all seem to have lost sight of why they were elected in the first place.

I would suggest that we all have a responsibility, to ourselves, our families and our community, to think very clearly about the choices we have this fall. We can either choose to have the same pitiful representation that we have had in the past, which has been worse than none at all in my opinion, or we can begin to make the effort.

 

It will take an enormous effort to turn this behemoth around, namely county government, to reflect what we want to see in our community, not what some developer wants and not what is wanted by people who seek only to control land they don’t own.

Do we want to support someone who moved into the district to run? Do we want to support the same old regime or the one that came before the current one? Would you like to see something fresh and new with new ideas that don’t depend on developing all of the rural land?

Like they say on HGTV: Want to make a change, start at home. It is truly up to us, and if we don’t make the time to participate in some way, we have no one but ourselves to blame. Most people are so busy they cannot see themselves doing much if anything, but even the smallest effort can result in some profound changes.

For the sake of the valley we all love, let’s try.