Government Gone Wild!

Over the past couple of years of writing this column I have talked a lot about broken government, especially locally. The headlines over the past couple of weeks show that government as a whole has gone wild. It all seems to ask the very simple question: does anyone have any common sense?

Let’s start with the whole sequester issue. Since when is a decrease in the rate of an increase a cut? Even under the sequester budget the rate of government spending will still increase just at a rate of 2% less than before. I understand that with entitlement programs not included in these “cuts” the rest of government will take on a larger percentage, but really, what private sector manager cannot cut 2-4% out of an already bloated budget and not affect service levels?

So the FAA decides to turn a 4% cut into a 10% cut in tower personnel to maximize end user disruptions while not touching unspent budget monies. Of course, the majority of furloughs were to non-union sub-contractors and major market facilities. Fortunately, Congress (of all people) stepped in and mandated the FAA re-work their budget to minimize disruptions and spend other unspent funds. Why was that even necessary?

On a local level, all I have to say is MPUSD. Once again we enter the theatre of the absurd as we watch the MPUSD Board shoot itself in the foot, again. Let me remind them. You hired a PR firm to clean up your image then you go and try to hire a new Superintendent with an open sexual harassment claim against him. You had a search firm give you a list of 27 or 28 “qualified” names and this is who you picked and you were surprised at the community’s reaction?

It is not very often that I agree with the Monterey Herald’s editorials but they were right on this week. It’s time to restart the hiring process and include members of the community on the hiring committee. Once that is done the community will have an opportunity to get a broader group of Trustees on the Board in November (sooner in Marina as the Board needs replace a Trustee).

I think we all need to remember that you get the quality of government that you vote for, especially during school board elections. Only 20% or less of the community even bothers to pay attention and vote during most “off year” school elections. I urge you to really pay attention this coming election cycle and vote. Our children and our community deserve so much more.

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Thank You Marina!

As I have noted previously in this column, I have the privilege to serve as President of The Marina Foundation. It is in this role that I wish to thank the entire Marina community (and those from around the region) that helped to support our efforts to purchase an ADA equipped Van for the City’s Senior Recreation program.

I am very pleased to announce that as of our annual Man & Woman of the Year Awards dinner and fundraiser on April 6th that we have, in fact, reached our goal of raising $20,000. That is the amount that The Monterey Peninsula Foundation (host of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am) will match as part of an overall grant towards the Senior ADA Van.

This was a community wide effort from the beginning. We have received generous contributions from individuals, organizations, other non-profits and companies to reach this goal. It represents a major milestone for our community and for The Marina Foundation. It is now up to us to work with the City of Marina and arrange for the purchase of the Van itself. This will take a few weeks, especially if we custom order the Van which may be the case. The good news is that it should not be all that long before we see the new Van in service to our community. Again, we thank you all.

In addition to reaching our overall fundraising goal at our annual dinner we recognized two individuals whose body of work in service to our Marina Community was recognized with the Man & Woman of the Year for 2012.

I would like to thank Sally French for all of her efforts through the years and especially as a volunteer at Marina High School. Her willingness to volunteer and help the school administration on a daily basis is amazing. In addition, she has volunteered numerous hours with the Marina High Booster’s also in support of our Marina High School. Her service has been so valued by the school that it was the schools administration that nominated her for the award. Congratulations Sally French as the 2012 Marina Woman of the Year!

I would also like to thank Mike Mast for his incredible service to the Marina Community going back to the early 70’s. Mike has served in so many capacities it’s difficult to list them all. Mike was involved in the early incorporation efforts for the City of Marina (successful in 1975), he helped to start the Marina Rotary Club and has held every office including President, he has been a vital and active member of the Marina Chamber of Commerce for years and has served as President three times. He has coached baseball and softball teams of all levels over the years and now serves as the Coach of the division champion Marina High Girls Softball Team. Congratulations to Mike Mast as the 2012 Marina Man of the Year!

I would like to encourage everyone to take the time to help out with our community, be it with the school PTSA or boosters, your church or other community organization. The need for help is all around us. Not everyone can donate money towards a cause but we can all make a little time to help others. We have some great examples to follow with Sally and Mike.

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The Marina Foundation

Ever since the creation of the Marina International Festival of the Winds back in 1999 we had dreamed of creating a Foundation that would benefit our Marina Community. After years of working around the edges we finally created The Marina Foundation in 2008. The Marina Foundation is a registered non-profit 501(c)3 public charity. While the future of the Wind Festival is in doubt the Marina Foundation is thriving and focused on our goals.

One of our goals is to benefit our senior community. To that end, The Marina Foundation applied for and received a matching grant from the Monterey Peninsula Foundation for a much needed ADA (Americans with Disabilities) Van. We call it our “Seniors on the Go” program. The van will be used to take our seniors to events throughout our region as part of the City of Marina’s Recreation program. In fact, the van can and will be used across the recreation programs as needed to allow for the inclusion of all to our City programs.

Over the course of the past several months we have been raising the funds needed to see this dream become a reality. As of this date we are well on our way to securing the funding for this van but we need the community’s help to get to our final goal. There are a couple of ways you can help. You can donate directly to The Marina Foundation by mail (PO Box 324, Marina, Ca 93933) or you can donate online at www.themarinafoundation.org and designate the “Seniors on the Go” program.

Another way you can participate is to attend our annual Man & Woman of the Year Awards dinner and fundraiser on April 6^th at the American Legion. At this event we will honor the 2012 Marina Man and Woman of the Year and raise funds for the senior van with a fun filled evening that will include a silent auction. Tickets are $25 each (or $15 for seniors 65 and older) and can be purchased through our Board members or on-line at the site listed above. If you have questions, you can always call me for additional information or to contribute an item for the silent auction at 717-4117.

Of course, The Marina Foundation does more than just raise funds for the senior program. We also raise funds for and give away scholarships to Marina High School (the Don Livermore Scholarship), Learning for Life (the Gordon Nakagawa Scholarship) and the Marina Cadets Law Enforcement Scholarship. We also support our local schools with the Marina Schools Assembly Program that is designed to encourage all schools to hold a school wide assembly each year to motivate and encourage our students. In addition, we raise funds and support the after school nutrition program at our Marina Teen Center.

Finally, The Marina Foundation is the supporting entity for our Marina Christmas Tree Lighting, the Marina International Festival of the Winds and our semi-annual Marina Community Non-Profit Summit, in addition to the Marina Man & Woman of the Year dinner.

We have a wonderful, hard working Board of Directors that does everything they can to build these programs to benefit our Marina community. I would encourage everyone to help support The Marina Foundation in whatever you can; after all, we are here for Marina’s future.

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The Silent Majority

The silent majority is usually defined as a group of people that have a common interest, opinion or desire but for a variety of reasons decline to act on their own behalf. As a result they defer to a more active minority to dictate a specific outcome.

This is the world that we find ourselves for a variety of reasons. Most people need to put their collective energies into their own economic interests to survive. This would include their jobs/career, their relationships and their children. They simply do not have the time it takes to become involved in the issues that take time away from these important elements in their lives.

While this has always been the case in our society it has become even more pronounced as our economy has struggled locally, regionally and nationally. People are focused on survival not on the issues that have become so political. People are also turned off by the partisan bickering on issue after issue, so they simply tune out. As a result, the vocal minorities seem to dictate overall policy which we are seeing is leading to seemingly disastrous results.

Locally we see the same people who jump up and down for balanced budgets for our City, are also those who seemingly don’t care about the State and Federal budgets that are out of control. In fact, they are at the front of the line for the handouts that fuel the problems. Let’s all remember what Milton Friedman said, “There are no free lunches”. Every grant from the State or the Federal government ultimately comes out of our pockets in the form of higher taxes.

Every request for a good or service from government has a cost. That cost is born by us, the tax payer. From simple public information requests to major social programs, each has costs. Costs that in most cases far exceed the taxes we pay. Each may well be worthy but government does a lousy job of cost recovery across the board.

Then there are the lawsuits. If an issue is decided by a majority it has become the norm for the minority to sue in an attempt to change the outcome. The result is years of very expensive litigation that is paid out of our taxes. In many cases the lawsuits are really nuisance suits designed to result in a cash settlement for the attorneys and minority organizations that filed the suit. Unfortunately, it’s more cost effective to settle a case for money than to fight it on the merits. It’s not a matter of right or wrong, it’s a matter of getting paid for a minority view.

So what do we do about the issues that are really important for all parties involved? Perhaps we need to pick and choose our causes a bit better. We simply can’t take all the issues on, so we need to find those that really mean something us. We need to find ways that we can better express our opinions without having to sit through hours and hours of City Council meetings. We need to find the time to write a heartfelt letter to our City Council members, our State Assembly and Senators, even our Federal Representatives about matters that are truly important to us.

Now is the time to make your voice heard so please make the time to express yourself. There really is too much at stake for our collective futures not to let your opinions be known.

More later…

Cypress Knolls Again

And now there are none. Almost four years ago we started with 2 “qualified” developers for the Cypress Knolls Senior project. We held meeting after meeting as we are so wont to do in our community. We covered every aspect of the development. We had consultants pour over the financial information. We had committee members, the general public and our City Council members ask question after question. Finally we chose a developer. Then we un-chose the developer and decided to start all over again. This of course resulted in a claim against the City for hundreds of thousands of dollars that is still pending.

We started again. This time we chose a shortened process and a smaller project at the Mayor’s insistence. We had one “qualified” developer respond and low and behold he was chosen to finally get the project off the ground. Never mind the fact that the smaller project was a financial stretch under any scenario. Simply stated, there would be fewer units to amortize the demolition of the current Cypress Knolls structures even just those buildings in the smaller project area.

Now even this developer has thrown in the towel and walked away. This time the issue is one of prevailing wages as required by FORA agreement (Cypress Knolls being on the former Ft. Ord property). While this is a key issue, not only for the Cypress Knolls project but most other residential projects on Ft. Ord, it is not the only one. As I stated earlier, when you shrink the project and still require (or strongly prefer as the Mayor did) costly elements in a project, those costs have to be accounted for somewhere. In this case, demolition of the current structures and laundry list of elements to be built would have driven the per unit price way beyond affordability.

The labor issues are going to make or break almost any future development on Ft. Ord. It’s time that our local political types, FORA Board and Labor get together and get this worked out. Stop the accusations back and forth and work together to accomplish something positive for our entire region. Since the economic slowdown started in 2007, hundreds if not thousands of our local construction workers have been unemployed. Many have left the area, while others have lost their homes and in some cases even their families. It’s time to get them back to work. It’s time to get our local economy growing again. So the only question really is: where is the leadership to make it happen?

Of course there are those that do not want any more development. They are happy this and other projects are having difficulty getting started again. I suppose they enjoy driving by the blight - the environmentally hazardous and unsafe structures that we all see every day. What they do not seem to understand is that the only way these things come down is to build something in their place. To do this you need a financially strong developer, a project that will make a profit for investors and one that will benefit the entire community. At one time we had all that but….now there are none.

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A Public Service Announcement

OK, I will admit right off the bat I do not function well when I’m sick. This is apparently common to the male species, at least according to most females. I don’t get sick very often but usually I take a couple aspirin, drink a bunch of orange juice, take a nap and just work through it. No big deal, right!

In my younger years I would get a nasty case of strep throat every few years whether I needed it or not. This was a fairly predictable deal, so much so my Doctor had me keep a supply of antibiotics on hand so when I felt it come on I could start treating it right away. It was one of those things that I would be fine one minute then down for the count the next.

I could literally stand up and by the time I walked across the room I would have a massive high fever, my head was ready to explode and every time I tried to swallow it felt like a grenade just went off. I sounded like Rod Stewart after gargling with razor blades. It would last a few days then I was back to normal. Not fun at all but I knew what to expect.

I tell you that to explain that I had never had what we know as the flu before. Never! That is until a couple of weeks ago. I can’t say it was on my bucket list of things to accomplish but now that I have had it I can take it off the list, permanently thank you.

Here again, I felt fine then I wasn’t. I started to get up for work and fell back in bed and for the most part did not get up for 7 days. I tried just about every cough drop, over the counter medicine and gallons of juice trying to make a difference. It really didn’t. I couldn’t sleep due to coughing so much.

They tell you that you only have two lungs, I not sure if that’s really the case because I feel like I coughed up at least a dozen. In my case the flu went directly to my chest as bronchial pneumonia. Once I started on the antibiotics things started to get better and was finally able to get some sleep. A few days later I was starting to function as a human again, as close as I get.

I seemed to have lost about 9 days (at least) from work, family and really any sense as to what was going on anywhere. Needless to say, it was not fun.

This is really not anything you want to mess with. Take whatever precaution you can and make sure you get plenty of sleep, eat right and stay as far away from this thing as possible. This concludes my public service announcement for today, thank you.

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The Year Ahead

Welcome 2013!

It’s the tradition to start the year with a handful of New Year’s resolutions that we all know few if any will ever be carried out. Think about it, if I had delivered on all the times I promised to quit smoking (long before I really did some 15+ years ago), if I actually lost all the weight I promised to lose over the years or if I exercised as much as I promised I would either be dead from exhaustion or the healthiest man on the planet.

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud all that can keep their resolutions and actually see them through, both of you. Perhaps it’s what we are trying to accomplish with our resolutions that is the issue. Rather than attempting to reinvent ourselves, what if we just made some ‘minor’ adjustments that will change the way we look at everything.

Here are a couple of examples. Unless absolutely necessary, don’t watch the late night news. Why go to bed thinking of all the bad things going on in the world. Trust me, they will still be there in the morning but you will likely sleep better and have a different approach to the new day.

How about changing the last six cups of coffee in the day to decaf (the horror)? Trust me, the first six cups of regular coffee you had will keep you going. Maybe you find yourself a little less on edge and a bit more patient about things in general.

What about parking in the next row out from your destination or stairs instead of the elevator? A few extra steps each day can be a very healthy thing. It may not be as healthy as a walk everyday or an hour at the gym but you will feel that you started something.

Sometimes I think we have this all or nothing mentality. That’s all well and good but resolutions, like so many things in life, don’t have to be all or nothing. We can “compromise” and take some smaller steps first in order to accomplish the larger goal. Sometimes it’s simply a better attitude, or another prospective or taking the first step toward a larger goal.

Just something to think about as we launch ourselves into the New Year.

More later… in 2013