This land is your land, for a fee

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
May 27, 2009

Lame ideas have more lives than cats, I swear.

Glancing at the Sequoia National Forest’s website, it appears the “ring around the lake” fee proposal is baaaack. Along with new proposed fee sites along the Kern River up to and including Lloyd Meadow.

Heck, why not just put a gate at the top of Highway 178 and charge an entrance fee? Oh, wait, since this is the PUBLIC’S land, that would be illegal, wouldn’t it?

I’m not sure how making every square inch of useable space a fee site is any different, but then I don’t work for the federal government.

Right now visitors must pay $10 per vehicle for day or overnight use at three so-called HIRAs (High Impact Recreation Areas) — Auxiliary Dam, Old Isabella Road and South Fork. This is all under the new year-round Southern Sierra Adventure Pass program.

Those are actual camping sites that are supposed to have certain amenities, such as garbage service, bathrooms and picnic tables, so the Forest Service can charge a fee.

Those things cost money and it makes sense to charge a little extra. Whether the forest service is actually providing the required amenities , however, is debatable.

Either way, if the “2009 Proposed” map (which you can find online at http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/seq... comes to pass, it could mean you’d have to pay $10 to stop and dip your toes in the water for a few minutes.

Last summer, Kern River Valley residents hit the roof when they first heard about a similar proposal.

They blasted the Forest Service for wanting more fee sites when conditions at current sites were awful with garbage strewn everywhere, filthy bathrooms (if there were any at all) without any significant Forest Service presence.

On top of all that, the Forest Service couldn’t account for how it’s been spending fees it had already been charging the public.

When I say officials couldn’t account for those fees, I mean the numbers on the charts they gave the public didn’t add up and they mixed up calendar and fiscal year monies.

There was NO accountability.

The Forest Service quickly pulled back its ring-around-the-lake proposal and Forest Supervisor Tina Terrell told me several months ago she had no intention of bringing it back up until the money issues were sorted out.

To that end, she told me and the public, Sequoia National Forest had spent $24,000 (yes, using public fees) on a software program called CASH, which she said would follow the income and outgo of those fees.

Nope.

Turns out the CASH system, in use for the last decade on Southern California forests, will only track sales of Southern Sierra Adventure Passes, not how the Forest Service spends that money.

“That isn’t really an accounting system that the Sequoia bought, it’s the CASH system, which is a web-based system that tracks collections,” Tamara Wilton, of the Forest Service’s regional office in Vallejo, told a meeting of the Recreation Resource Advisory Committee on May 13. This is the same committee that OK’d doubling the HIRA fees and making them year-round at its meeting last fall.

Wilton also said during the meeting, according to audio tapes, that her staff spent 50 hours creating a method to track how fees on the Sequoia were spent in the first quarter of 2009.

And still there were problems.

Wilton didn’t include the “real” total collections amounts because a percentage goes to administration. That percent is just left off the spreadsheets.

She also didn’t calculate expenses associated with some rental incomes and itemized incomes and expenses for two campsites separately, except for the cost to collect fees for each site. She lumped that together so it’s impossible to see which area made or lost money.

Sigh!

I wanted to ask Terrell, or anyone at the Sequoia National Forest, why the public was misled about the CASH system and also whether the the ring-around-the-lake HIRA proposal is something they’ll be pursuing.

No one called me back.

I don’t disagree that people should be charged for using some areas around the lake and river. They’re pretty much loving it to death up there.

Lets face it, people are pigs. Cleaning up after them costs money.

But unless the Forest Service can A) show that it’s doing that job and B) plainly tell us how it’s using the public’s money, allowing the service to conjure up more fee sites is absolutely out of the question.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

BILL AIMS TO CURB FEES

I’ve been bugging Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, ever since I found out that Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, had a bill up to repeal fees charged by the Forest Service for the public to use its own lands.

McCarthy told me Tuesday he’s been working with the House Resources Committee on a similar bill to match Baucus’ effort.

“I’m working with other offices to bring in greater accountability to any fees charged by the Forest Service.”

He hasn’t seen the final wording yet as Congress is out on break.

That would dovetail nicely with Baucus’ S868, which would repeal the 2004 Federal Lands Recreational Enhancement Act.

It would bring the Forest Service back to the 1965 policy which limited what the agency could charge the public.

The Baucus bill, similar to one he and Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, wrote in 2007, is awaiting a hearing in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

The Forest Service contends that budget cuts have made it impossible to keep up with trash, toilet needs, vandalism and enforcement. The fees, it has said, are necessary, though still inadequate, for basic upkeep.

I would be fine with the fees, except they don’t seem to have improved service dramatically at heavily used areas and the Forest Service has been incapable of accounting for how it’s spent the money. My suspicion is that’s not exactly unintended.

If the Baucus bill or its House cousin passes, I have a feeling the Forest Service will find some way to use the tax dollars we already give them to keep our lands open, safe and trash free.

— Lois Henry

Your tax dollars at work, sort of

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
May 24, 2009

I have a noggin full of rants rattling around in my head and it’s time to dump ’em out. Lucky you! You’re the dumpees.

The theme this week: Your Government In Action.

Big, ugly pile
More than a few readers have asked about that huge pile of dirt (which I’m affectionately deeming “Mount Tandy”) at 24th and Oak streets.

The dirt is from a storm drain project completed several months ago. The city says it has nowhere else to put the dirt. Besides, the dirt may be needed when they remake that intersection. They don’t want to move it only to have to move it back again all at taxpayer expense.

Understood, but the problem is, construction won’t likely start until 2011 at the earliest.
So, ol’ Mount Tandy will be with us for a while.

I had to wonder, could you or I get away with that?

Not no, but HECK NO!

According to code compliance rules, that much dirt can’t just be lumped any which way. It has to be engineered and requires a grading permit.

There has to be a plan as to how long the dirt will sit and regular inspections to make sure it doesn’t shift or erode, as loose piles of dirt like to do, onto neighboring properties or public streets.

I called over to the city to see about that permit and whaddaya know, no permit.

“We had a permit when we did the grading for the sump,” Public Works Director Raul Rojas told me. “But a specific permit for the pile? No, that we do not have.”

As many complaints as the paper has received, he said, the city has likely gotten more and he understands it’s an eyesore. The city will be cleaning Mount Tandy’s crop of weeds over Memorial Day Weekend and will look at fencing it off.

And he assured me the city does have funding to complete that intersection, so Mount Tandy won’t be there forever.

As for a permit, OK, he said, they would look at the need for a permit.

“I really don’t think that pile of dirt is that dangerous, though,” he said.

Is he kidding? Where does he think it got its name!?

Keep it short
By the by, if you were to climb Mount Tandy and peer across Oak to Beach Park you would notice that the grass is dead. Brown and dead. But very nicely mowed.

Recreation and Parks Director Dianne Hoover told me the well used to irrigate Beach Park went down about two weeks ago and they only got it up again on Friday.

So the grass died. But the mowing continued.
“That’s not a bad thing,” Hoover said. “Even when the grass is brown it still needs to be clipped.”

Call me cheap, or lazy, or both, but I always figured one of the benefits of a dead lawn was no need to mow it.

That may come to pass, Hoover said. Budget constraints mean they’ll be watering less throughout the park system and they may have to cut back mowing if they have to cut people.

Oh, er...that’s not good.

Double scoop
During our latest special election (are they really all that “special” when we have them every couple months?) 1,147 poll workers helped direct voters and collect ballots.

A little more than 100 of those people were county employees who not only got the $110 to $150 state stipend but were also paid regular wages for “volunteering” their time.

Now, I know that’s only about $10,000 and I don’t begrudge them the stipend; that’s what all poll workers get. But if I were to work the polls, my employer would require that I take a vacation day.

Not so for county workers.

It’s been that way for several years, ever since the Auditor/Controller told Supervisors they were having trouble mustering up enough people to adequately staff the polls.

Supervisor Michael Rubio said elections are so important he’s willing to err on the side of overpaying in order to make sure polls are adequately staffed and there’s never even the hint of discouraging someone from voting due to lack of workers.

I agree with him in principal, but I’m pretty sure the county would get the people it needs through a little creative advertising (maybe someone might even write a column about it?) or working with the local colleges (something Rubio also suggested).

But double-paying county workers when our unemployment rate is hovering around 15 percent and we’re looking down the barrel of even more budget cuts doesn’t set right.

Supervisors Don Maben and Ray Watson agreed. Maben said he intends to bring the issue up in the next few weeks.

What’s in a name?
When Kern County Superintendent of Schools Larry Reider steps down and his second in command, Associate Superintendent Christine Frazier, is appointed in his place by the Board of Education (as I and everyone else expect will happen at their June 9 meeting), a whole lot of letterhead, envelopes, business cards, forms, signs and more will suddenly be wrong.

How much will taxpayers spend to replace all that stock?

Nada.

“We’ll probably just X out his name,” growled the lovably gruff Jim Varley, director of communications for the superintendent’s office. “That’s the way we did it when Kelly (Blanton) left and that’s the way we’ll do it this time.”

It would be an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars to throw out what they have, so they’ll find a way to make do, he said.

“There’s no other way to do business. And since I’m in charge of printing and graphics, I guess I’ll make that call.”

Too bad Varley’s call, or even just his attitude, doesn’t extend a little further.

Aloha! And start your engines!

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
May 20, 2009

So, you want to open an off-road track in Kern County?

You must be stubborn or crazy. Best if you’re both.

Oh, and a good, strong pair of legs is essential for all the hoop jumping you’ll be doing.

Since the state has failed miserably at building new off-road parks (despite an $86 million annual budget and $90 million generated by fuel taxes and green sticker fees paid by off-roaders for, um, new parks), it’s basically up to regular Joes to take up the slack.

That’s no easy feat when you consider the byzantine world of CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act.

Even so, Darrell Melton, Darin Layton and Charlie Comfort were crazy enough to wade into that world more than four years ago to open Honolulu Hills Raceway east of Taft.

And they’ve been stubborn enough to stick with it over four years of stutter-stepping through paperwork, meetings, reports, studies and countless phone calls.

They’ve been operating under a temporary use permit from the county that allows for some races and practice days, but haven’t been able to go full-time without a Fish and Game permit.

They should have that golden permit in about three months, I was assured by Fish and Game’s senior environmental specialist, Julie Vance.

I was all set to slam Fish and Game for dragging its feet. After all, a safe, legal riding park can only help cut down on illegal riding and actually protect more critters than it harms, I thought.

But Vance, curse her common sense ways, agreed that Honolulu Hills is a good project that desperately needed.

“One of the reasons we were interested in seeing this happen is that trespassing by OHVs is a big problem, and we recognize that,” she said. “You need a place to relieve the pressure. Our lands are hit with that, too. It’s a constant enforcement issue.”

Part of the delay was inexperience on the owners’ parts, she said. And they also weren’t sure whether to apply for a permit for the immediate race track (which is already built and involves 160 acres) or the ultimate vision (640 acres of trails, camping and concessions).

Yeah, in hindsight, Melton said, it would probably have been better to hire a Roger McIntosh-type development consultant who can work through permits in his sleep.

“I think even he would have had a difficult time with this one though because it was so unique,” Melton said.

No one seemed to know what to do with the Honolulu guys and their raceway.

Even the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District wasn’t sure what to ask for.

Melton said they had a friend who works with oil companies on air mitigation do a report and the district was so pleased with it, they asked if they could use it as a model.

Melton, a substitute teacher with a psychology degree, agreed he may have made some missteps along the way.

“I’m no dummy, but I’m no genius, either,” he said. “It should really be up to the state to put in more riding parks. They have all the money, they know all the hoops with Fish and Game and all the other agencies. It’s a lot easier for them than a private person.”

Actually, Melton and his partners could probably teach the state a few lessons, considering how a state riding park east of Bakersfield proposed a few years ago fell through at the last minute.

Vance said that if Melton and his partners talked to Fish and Game first, the permitting probably would have taken much less time.

Vance will have the chance to prove that possibly in the near future if all goes as planned for Ron Pierce, who’s scouting for land east of Bakersfield to open a similar off-road race track.

He had a permit to hold a handful of events on his own ranch at Breckenridge and Comanche roads, and they were so well received, he’s decided to jump into the pond with the Honolulu guys.

Having spent a career as a builder, however, he’s a bit more prepared for the process.

“If you’re not stubborn as a mule, you’re not going to get anywhere,” he said.

Crazy helps, too.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Heir apparent system robs taxpayers of choice

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
May 17, 2009

If all goes as I expect it will — and I expect it will — the first female Kern County Superintendent of Schools in the 143-year history of that office will be appointed on June 8 as soon-to-retire Superintendent Larry Reider nods his approval.

Looking at more recent history, Christine Lizardi Frazier will remain in that elected office until she decides to retire, at which time she likely will choose
our next Superintendent of Schools — who will be in office until he or she picks a successor and retires. And so on and so on.

That’s how it worked for Reider, who was appointed by the County Board of Education in 1999 when former Superintendent Kelly Blanton retired mid-term.

I’m not complaining about the job any of these people have done or will do.

Reider has been an exceptional public servant — smart, experienced, honest, plain-spoken and hard-working.

Frazier, now the associate superintendent (as Reider was before her and Blanton was before him), is all of the above. Plus, I can’t lie, I’m ecstatic to see a highly qualified woman breaking that 143-year-old glass ceiling.

But I can’t help wondering at the fairness factor.

Shouldn’t we, the voters, pick our own Superintendent?

More important, shouldn’t anyone seeking public office have to prove themselves to voters before they’ve held the office (in Reider’s case for nearly three years and, if she’s appointed, in Frazier’s case nearly a year)?

Some political insiders e-mailed me as soon as they heard of Reider’s impending retirement asking the same questions, even calling the mid-term retirement an “affront to voters.”

That’s because it would give Frazier instant incumbency in the 2010 election.

When it comes to this little-understood office, name recognition is often all voters have to go on.

Incumbency virtually locks in a win, and that’s only IF someone else runs, which hasn’t happened since Blanton’s second election in 1994.

“I understand why some people feel that’s not fair,” Frazier told me. Reider said the same thing.

But, they both said, the best person for the job is someone who knows the job.

Despite its under-the-radar profile, the Superintendent of Schools office in Kern County is massive.

It provides various school districts with, among other things, legal services, insurance, financial services, transportation, special education services and technology. It even has its own television studio and broadcasts its own shows.

It owns and operates the Kern County Museum, California Living Museum and Community Connection for Child Care.

And the little old Superintendent of Schools office also runs the state’s fiscal crisis team, which parachutes in to troubled districts after the state takes them over to restructure and help get them going again. In fact, Frazier was the point person on the Kern team that helped revamp the Compton Unified School District in half the time it was estimated to take.
Kern’s Superintendent of Schools’ general fund budget is $254 million and it employs 1,920 people.

Overseeing all that is the superintendent, whose salary can range from $190,624 to $210,939 a year (Reider makes the max, by the way).

Taxpayers have a clear interest in who’s in that seat.

Absolutely, agree both Frazier and Reider.

But (there’s that “but” again)... “This office can’t be left up to chance,” Frazier told me. “I know that sounds tough and I do believe in local control and the people having a voice. But I also believe voters should have a choice of someone who has the experience and knowledge to do the job and then they should make the choice.”

She likened the superintendent appointment — and yes, she’s hoping to get the job — to a “test run.”

“Then the public can say yes or no.”

True, that might weed out undesirables such as the pay-for-play poster boy Rod Blagojevich or closer to home, Mack “we’ll kick your ass” Wimbish. Even so, that’s not how our system works, and this “heir apparent” way of doing things goes against the grain for me.
Reider told me anyone interested in running for Superintendent is required to have a teaching credential and an administrative services credential.

Beyond that, he said the right person also needs a deep understanding of the byzantine world of educational finance and strong relationships with the many districts that dot Kern County. All of which, he said, Frazier has in buckets.

He said he doesn’t make a recommendation to the Board of Education about who to appoint, but strongly supports Frazier.

Frankly, I’d probably vote for her, too.

But I’d prefer to make that choice on my own.

The opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/
Blog/noholdsbarred, or call Lois at 395-7373 or send e-mail to lhenry@bakersfield.com

Lessons in democracy are never clean and efficient

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
May 13, 2009

Trying to make democracy more “efficient” is never a good idea.

Besides, there are far worse sins — such as cutting people out of the process.

That’s exactly what the Bakersfield College Student Government Association did in its election April 29 and 30 when it decided to reduce the number of voting days from four to two, prohibit online voting, provide only one polling place on the main campus and require students to present not just any photo ID card, but a new, specific student card that many didn’t yet have.

Add to that the lack of any real pre-election information, such as sample ballots or even a list of election dates and voting requirements and this was close to a stealth election as you can get.

Apparently, operating that kind of “controlled environment” was nothing new for the administration. They’d already cut off any meaningful communication with the campus newspaper, the Renegade Rip, and nearly ignored to death a movement by students of the Delano satellite campus to form their own governmental body.

Perhaps you think I’m too harsh. This is, after all, a learning environment. And how much harm could a handful of student officers do being in charge of homecoming and spring fling?

Well, like any government entity, these “kids” are in charge of public dollars, public business and public policy. This small group makes decisions on behalf of 18,600 students. One of those decisions recently was to put two propositions on the ballot that would ban smoking on BC (passed) and increase health fees by $4 per semester up from $13 (failed).

So what they do — and how they do it — has real life implications for many of those 18,600, students.

Oh yeah, and they get paid, by the by, minimum wage for a maximum 19 hours a week.

Not a lot, but that’s still money students (or their parents) had to fork over, whether they wanted to or not.

Yes, a community college campus IS a learning environment and I think these student officials should have been taught by their advisor, interim Dean of Students Angela Guadian-Mendez, that this was not the right way to do things.

I called her several times over the course of two days, but got no return.

BC’s President Greg Chamberlain did call me back, however, and agreed this election was a learning experience.

“Really, there are three key areas that need to be improved,” he said. A better election process, making sure everyone is truly represented and — the biggie — communication.

“Should we have had a polling place on the Delano campus? Of course and next year, we absolutely will,” he said. He’ll be meeting with the new student officers over the summer so they understand his priorities.

Outgoing student president Lyne Mugema told me the student government wanted to make sure the election ran smoothly, voter turnout was good and that they avoided the kinds of fraud accusations that cropped up last year. None of the accusations were ever proved and it was unclear if the main concern was over online voting or fraudulent paper ballots.

“We didn’t have a single complaint (about fraud) this year, not one,” said Mugema.

As for voter turnout, she said last year was the highest ever on campus, at 800.

Only 700 students voted this year, but with the number of days cut in half, she said, that’s actually a higher percentage. (Voting students also got free t-shirts, food coupons and other goodies, which probably helped.)

When I mentioned complaints from Delano students who felt cut out of the process because they got no pre-election information and had to drive to the main campus to vote, Mugema said none of the satellite campuses, or centers, have everything a student needs. At some point, they have to come to the Bakersfield campus.

Funny, that’s exactly what outgoing Vice President Justin Salters told me. Politicians and their talking points know no age limits.

It was Salters who also instituted the new “media relations,” or non-relations, policy under which government officers refused to speak to the press. Instead, they issued releases through the campus public information officer.

According to Mugema that was an effort to be more professional and avoid inaccuracies.

“Unfortunately, they (the Rip) didn’t like that very much,” she said.

No kidding.

Salters and Mugema both also told me the election was conducted according to their bylaws as far as the number of days and the “convenient location” of the polling place.

Yeah, I read the bylaws and, yeah, they didn’t have to do more than they did. But that’s one of those spirit/letter-of-the-law kind of things. I tend to favor bending in the direction of public access.

The bright spot here is that Delano students who were all but shut out of the election and who had waited in vain all year for the BC students to meet with them about their own government are steaming ahead.

They’ve written their own constitution and are drawing up bylaws that they’ll present to the Kern Community College District board of trustees in hopes of creating their own associated student government, according to Loy Salarda, who ran unsuccessfully for president in the BC election.

The Delano campus now has more than 1,000 students, Chamberlain said, acknowledging that it has definitely grown beyond satellite status.

“We pay the same fees as the BC students and we deserve representation too,” Salarda said. “We just got tired of waiting.”

Interesting how democracy always seems to have that effect.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Tax money is well-spent on education conferences

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist

May 10,2009

A couple of local school districts are spending hundreds of thousands of
taxpayer dollars to send people to conferences in Las Vegas and Hollywood
after they just laid off teachers, cut programs and reduced class sizes.

I think that's a good thing.

Sure, on the surface, it looks bad. But the surface is never where the real
story lies, as you know.

Most of the money they're spending on these "Professional Learning
Communities" conferences -- $250,000 by Panama-Buena Vista Unified and
$180,000 by Kern High School District -- is from federal and state pots and
can only be spent on training. As with anything in the wacky world of
education some of it is from sources that can be spent on training, or could
be spent elsewhere.

That whole "restricted money" argument is a cop-out anyway. It's all tax
dollars and right now none of us is in the mood to see it wasted whether
it's local, state or federal.

What I really wanted to know is whether it's money well spent.

Yes, it is. And I wish more districts would jump on the Professional
Learning Communities bandwagon.

PLC (I think educators might actually shrivel up and blow away without their
daily quota of acronyms) was created by a husband and wife, Richard and
Rebecca DuFour, who spent their careers turning around bad schools, even
entire school districts.

And they've done it by focusing on - wait for it - children learning.
While that seems intuitive, it's not nearly as simple as it sounds.

We stick teachers and kids in a factory setting and expect standardized
results forgetting that they¹re all a bunch of squirrely human beings, just
like the rest of us.

PLC puts the focus on whether kids are learning what we want them to learn
and, if not, why not. It gives teachers ways to figure out why Suzie gets
long division and Johnny doesn't and how to get Johnny on board.

No, it doesn't involve magic beans or special origami hats.

It's real work, restructuring the school day so teachers can focus
relentlessly day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month on how each kid
learns.

PLC really starts after the conference, when employees start putting what
they learned to work.

* Teachers get together in teams on their campuses and trade ideas about
better ways of teaching.

* They create tests so they can figure out what each kid has and hasn't
learned.

* If even one kid isn't getting something, they brainstorm together with
that kid and his or her parents to find the right button.

* The teams find ways to motivate students who¹re coasting to make them
shoot for the high notes.

*Finally, they find ways to measure results, and the only result that
counts is whether kids are learning.

By the by, I had to read through reams of information with sentences like:
"Powerful collaborative teams are the fundamental building block of a
professional learning community and a critical component in building a
collaborative culture..." to figure out the above bullet points.

The horror of edu-speak! These people need to add a course on how to write
like a cowboy (or cowGIRL). OK, end of self-pity pit stop.

This summer will be KHSD's first large foray into PLC, though they've had
some smaller training sessions in the concept over the last few years.

Trustee Joel Heinrichs said the district has high hopes for this training,
which is sweeping the country.

"The bottom line is, whether we have 1,700 teachers or 1,600, we have to
invest in them if we want to improve student achievement," he said,
referring to the layoffs KHSD has undergone. "Just preserving bodies isn't
the way to go, they have to have the right training."

PLC isn't, or shouldn't be, an ongoing money-sucker program. Once a district
gets the majority of its people involved in the new way of doing business,
then it¹s up to the district to keep it going.

That's already happening at Panama-Buena Vista, which has sent groups to PLC
training over the last three years.

"We've already implemented considerable structural changes," said Pam
Bianchi, Panama-Buena Vista¹s assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and
Instruction. They've created the teams and carved out time in teachers'
schedules to work with those teams and evaluate students.

They have seen results, she said, on a daily, weekly and monthly level.

Whether that's due to this new program or a host of factors is hard to say.

But it's certainly not hurting.

"We used to focus on teachers teaching," she told me. "Now we focus on
students learning and we¹re being very proscriptive when they don¹t learn
and asking, 'What are we going to do to ensure that they do learn?¹'"

Hopefully, this will help them find the answer.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The
Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment
at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or
e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Fees, regulations and my new summer footwear

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
5/6/2009

Here are some odds and ends for your entertainment, placed in totally random order so you have to read all the way to the end — because you never know what gems are hidden here.

Our fees are slipping. Well, here’s hoping.

I did a column in March about the Sequoia National Forest Service’s inability to account for how it’s been spending fees it charges the public for alleged maintenance and upkeep on camping areas around Isabella Lake.

The double-talk was bad enough, but it really turned my stomach after residents sent me photos showing disgusting, broken porta-toilets and overflowing garbage that were supposed to be cleaned up by the Forest Service.

My conclusion was the Forest Service has done a terrible job not only caring for the sites, but communicating with the public about how they’re spending our money.

Well, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, apparently doesn’t like the situation any better than I do and has introduced S868 to repeal the law under which the fees have been charged.

I called Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, to see what he thought of the bill. There is no house version, so he called the Western Caucus to see if they’re going to create one and, if so, asked how he can help.

McCarthy represents the Kern River Valley area where residents have fretted over the fees and lack of service for some time.

“I think this will open the debate so we can discuss whether it’s reasonable for the Forest Service to have these fees,” McCarthy told me. “If so, we can talk about that, but there absolutely has to be better accountability.”

Watch these!

I’ve been writing about how the Califronia Air Resources Board irresponsibly, I believe, adopted new diesel rules that will all but kill independent trucking and the heavy construction industry in this state.

The rules are based on flawed science cobbled together in a report authored by a man who lied about his credentials. I’ve been advocating the whole mess should get a do over.

Alas, no one listens to me.

But a couple of bills have been written that at least try to inject some fairness into the regulatory process.

• SB 356, by State Sen. Rod Wright, D-Los Angeles, would require agencies to determine the impact of new regulations on small businesses before they’re adopted.

This one made it through the Business, Professions and and Economic Development Committee — where our own State Sen. Dean Florez was one of only two votes against it — and is now scheduled for a hearing in Appropriations on May 11.

I thought it was a sound, straightforward bill.

But Florez told me he voted against it because we already have rules that require agencies to get public input and analyze the impact of new regulations.

And he also felt it could lead to endless litigation over regulations already established.

“Under the bill, if a small business (the number of which would multiply under the new definition in this bill) sought an exemption to one of these important protections, the responsible agency would not only have to consider it — the onus would be on them to justify NOT granting the exemption.”

Despite Florez’s concerns, I think it actually might have a snowball’s chance in the Legislature.

The other two bills were introduced by Assembly Democrats, Tony Mendoza, Buena Park and Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, San Jose.

• AB 1085 and AB 1395, respectively, would require the Air Resources Board to show and tell, so to speak, by making public the methodologies and other input supporting regulations, as well as all changes to draft regulations.

Both have yet to be heard.

Gay is good (well, for now anyway)

A few weeks ago I went to a fundraiser for a new group called “Gay is good.” (The local gay community wants to raise money to put up billboards and find other ways of communicating that it’s not a bad thing to be gay.)

I don’t normally go to fundraisers, but I’d heard through Facebook that State Sen. Dean Florez might show up and I really wanted to be there if it happened. It didn’t.

For background, I was hammering Florez in mid-April after he signed on as a co-author to a bill that would declare a Harvey Milk Day. Earlier, he was the swing vote to approve a Senate resolution that took issue with the small percentage of signatures needed to get Proposition 8 on the ballot.

Florez had, up until then, spent his entire legislative career voting against gay rights issues.

My working theory is he needs to drum up support for his run for lieutenant governor from the much more politically powerful and left-leaning Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Florez told me that creating a “recognized” day isn’t a gay rights issue and there’s a recognized day for just about everyone and anyone so no biggie. He did NOT say he’d changed his stance on gay rights nor gay marriage.

That was mid-April.

The very next week another reporter, E.J. Schultz with the Fresno Bee, ran into Florez at the state Democratic convention and “the gay thing” came up.

Here’s Florez’s quote:

“People change and it’s OK to change,” he said. “My position right now is the same as [President Obama’s] and I think it’s a civil rights issue and I don’t think that people should in essence stand in the way of people who want to get married.”

That reminds me — it’s almost summer and I need buy some new flip flops!

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Swine flu: CHILL you're not dying

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
5/3/2009

People, people, please. Calm dowwwwn! If you’re reading this from anywhere within the borders of Kern County, I can tell you with near certainty that you are far, far, FAR more likely to die from being overweight and out of shape than any kind of flu, swine or otherwise.

So stop crowding into emergency rooms and quit bugging your doctors to get swine flu tests or prescriptions so you can stockpile flu drugs. All you’re doing is running down supplies and clogging up an intricate testing system.

Oh, and you might want to turn your television dials to something other than hyped-to-the-max-24-hour cable news shows. Get out and go for a walk instead. That would have the two-fold benefit of maintaining your sanity and helping you avoid Kern’s real health menace — heart disease.

If that doesn’t help, here are some common sense things to remember about swine flu: 1)

As of Friday afternoon, there was not one single documented case in Kern County and B) even if the swino virus does eventually affect a few people here, it’s a mild flu. Repeat: MILD flu.

Since this whole thing started I’ve been appalled by the breathless reaction to an illness that’s not life-threatening, particularly here in the United States.

Maybe the hysteria is amplified because Mexico, the epicenter, is in our backyard as opposed to China where avian flu and SARS originated. Or maybe we’re so freaked out because of the 1976 swine flu episode, which resulted in a vaccine that turned out to be more dangerous than the actual virus.

Either way, this outbreak has really brought alarmists to full shrill.

State Sen. Dean Florez even started calling it a pandemic before health agencies used the P-word, which unnecessarily scares the jeepers out of people.

Please note that “pandemic” doesn’t mean “we’re all going to DIE!!!!”

Pandemic means widespread. Cases of skin cancer among people who spend too much time in the sun without protection are pandemic.

Even the word “epidemic” doesn’t mean “we’re all going to DIE!!!”

It means rapidly spreading. Twittering has become epidemic, particularly among people who like to pass on bad information about swine flu.

So, to recap, a mild flu that is widespread could spread even further.

“This is a time for awareness, not alarm,” Kern County Public Health Director John Nilon told me.

If you wake up tomorrow with the sniffles and a headache, stay home from work. (Even in run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks, it really chaps my hide when people come to work sick. Like I want their crud!)

If the sniffles progress to a high fever with other flu-like symptoms, call your doctor and discuss it first before you rush in for a nose swab.

Doctor Raj Patel told me his office has received a lot of phone calls from concerned patients, but neither he nor his partner have found any whose symptoms qualified for testing. He’s also received calls from people wanting prescriptions for tamiflu or relenza “just in case.”

“Those need to be reserved for patients who really need it,” he said.

Besides, they’re expensive, have short shelf lives and if not administered at the right time and in the right manner can make you even sicker than the flu.

“Don’t stockpile,” Patel sternly warned.

For those of you getting tested “just because,” here’s the fallout you’re causing:

There’s a checklist that needs to be filled out. If not fully completed, the lab has to backtrack through your doctor, then the lab screens the list to see if you’re a priority case.

To be a priority case, first off, you have to have flu symptoms. Sniffles don’t cut it. Then they want to know if you’ve returned from Mexico in the last seven days and become ill. And so on.

If you meet those criteria, they send it on the Kern County Public Health, which does a further priority screening. Then it’s sent up to Tulare County, which screens the list again.

If it makes it through all those cuts, the sample gets tested in Tulare and if it turns up as a “probable” case (meaning it’s some kind of influenza), they send it on to the Centers for Disease Control to confirm whether the virus is genetically the “swine” strain.

Results from Tulare come back fairly quickly, but the final verdict from CDC can take several days.

Up to Friday afternoon, Public Health had received about 250 samples over the course of the week and sent a little more than 60 up to Tulare. None were even probable cases.
Clearly, the more frivolous samples submitted, the more time, money and effort is wasted.

“We’re trying to get through this early period of high volume, which is really pushing our search capacity,” said Michael Lancaster, the lab director for Public Health.

Once swine flu is found here, he said, testing will slow down.

“Once it’s established in the county there’s no advantage to finding it more often,” he said.
Besides, the treatment is pretty much the same for regular old flu — bed rest, liquids and time.

Prevention is pretty old school too: wash your hands, cover your mouth...and if you’re sick, STAY HOME.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Rally a family reunion for victims of Kern's justice system

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/29/2009

As press conferences go, Tuesday’s “Witch Hunt” rally was one of the odder and more interesting ones I’ve ever covered.

Setting aside the outright bizarreness — such as the tall, thin man in the crowd with the parrot on his shoulder — it felt like part press conference, part tent revival and part celebrity stalking.

Mostly, though, I felt like an interloper at a family reunion.

There they all were in front of the courthouse — the Pitts family, the Kniffens, the Modahls, the Nokeses, the Cummings family and John Stoll. They hugged and chatted as if they’d all known each other all their lives even though for some it was a first meeting.

They share a history I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and that makes them family.

Older now, their faces are a bit more weathered than when The Californian took their photos 25 years ago as they appeared in court accused of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable: passing their own and other children around in sexual molestation rings.

Nearly all those convicted have been released now, their convictions overturned one by one.

As they got out of prison, each family went its own way, trying to forge a new life despite the notoriety and years (in Stoll’s case 20 years) lost in prison. They didn’t want attention, they just wanted to live normal lives, without fear.

But, they told me, they came back Tuesday despite their fears to draw attention to their cases in hopes it would never happen again.

As Scott Kniffen, a tall reserved man of few words, said, “the people of Kern County need to wake up and make some changes with the people they elect.”

He was referring to District Attorney Ed Jagels, whom they all blame for what happened in the 1980s.

“I’d like the state of California to wake up and change the laws,” Kniffen told the applauding crowd. “Prosecutors shouldn’t have total immunity to avoid responsibility when they put innocent people in prison.”

Jagels, who didn’t return my phone calls last week about the rally, has told The Californian in the past that the convictions being overturned doesn’t prove the people are innocent.

Well, as someone else pointed out to me, by that logic, then being convicted doesn’t prove a person is guilty of a crime.

The crowd at the Liberty Bell wasn’t in the mood for debates on logic, they were there to talk about justice. Judging from the hoots and applause, that would have to include Jagels doing time behind bars.

“What happened to these families is incomprehensible,” said Jack Cummings, who with his wife Jackie spent a year on the run with their three boys. They went on the lam when they realized they were being implicated simply because Jackie had baby sat for Cheryl Gonzales, who was arrested with her husband and several others in 1984.

Authorities caught up with the Cummings family and their three boys were taken away, spending a year in foster homes even though Jack and Jackie were never formally charged.

Incomprehensible is a good word to describe what went on during that time.

I met Carol and Lisa Pitts, daughters of Rick Pitts, who spent six years in prison along with his wife Marcella Pitts, her sister Colleen Bennett, friend Gina Miller and three others.

Carol was 11 at the time and Lisa was 7. They were with Rick and Marcella, their step-mother, in court on a custody hearing over Marcella’s sons from a previous marriage the day the Pittses were arrested. The girls went straight into protective custody.

Their mother, Linda Cardoso, Rick’s ex-wife, was able to get them home after a month.

She moved them across town and instructed their school not to allow anyone other than herself to pick them up or speak with them without her present.

“That’s what would happen to a lot of these kids,” Cardoso recalled. “They’d just come take them from school.”

When Carol talks about those days, her body becomes rigid and her words are clipped.

“They tried to get me to say these things happened and I said, ‘No! I’m not saying that!

Because it’s not true!’” Carol, now 36 said. “I’m pissed off that it happened and it’s awesome this is all coming out now.” Both girls testified for the defense but it didn’t save their father.

It’s important for people to see “Witch Hunt,” they said, to understand what happened.

I’ve seen the film. I’ve read the news accounts and I’ve interviewed the people involved.

Frankly, I still don’t understand how it happened.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Planning commission pick no surprise

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/26/2009

Different day, same old story in local politics.

I read Wednesday that Councilman Ken Weir appointed Dean Haddock to the Planning Commission over four other candidates.

Color me unsurprised.

But it’s not the anti-Russell Johnson sentiment that’s so depressingly familiar.

We all knew Johnson, appointed to the commission by former councilman and now Kern County Supervisor Mike Maggard, didn’t stand a chance at being reappointed (though he did re-apply, the cheeky boy).

Weir made it clear he didn’t want Johnson when he tried to bounce him from the commission mid-term. No, Johnson’s ship sailed long ago.

The real issue here is Haddock, yet another model in the never-ending parade of Stepford-pols from the Mark Abernathy puppet factory.

OK, so Weir didn’t want Johnson or his Maggard baggage. Fine.

There were two other very strong candidates.

Andrew Heglund and Kristin Hagan, both attorneys, also applied.

Hagan is a real estate and land use attorney for Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann and Girard in town.

She also has experience as an administrative intern for the city of Anaheim, a legislative intern for a congressman and an aide for an Orange County supervisor. So she knows how government ticks.

Asked what major issue(s) she felt were facing the Planning Commission, she said:

“I feel the commission is always charged with the difficult task of balancing the need for a new project against current supply and demand. The recent adoption of climate change legislation will also present new planning challenges.”

Good answers that show a grasp of local issues as well as how we fit into the bigger picture.

I left a message for Hagan but she didn’t return my call.

Heglund, who works for Klein, Denatale, Goldner, has also represented developers, but not much, he told me.

Aside from being a lawyer he also has a real estate broker’s license and has taken real estate law classes in land use and the environment.

He has no previous government experience, but applied for both the Planning Commission and Redevelopment Agency last year.

It was Councilwoman Jacquie Sullivan’s turn to pick last time around and she reappointed Jeff Tkac. Heglund also wasn’t selected by Mayor Harvey Hall, who appoints members to the redevelopment agency.

Though he was shut out of both slots again this year, Heglund was undeterred.

“I’d like to get involved,” he said. “I think we should all utilize our talents, in whatever way, to better our community.”

On the major issue question, Hegland wrote:

“1. Insuring that adequate infrastructure is in place to support new development.

“2. Weighing surplus development against development planned for upswing in economy.”

Hmmm. There’s that surplus development issue again. (Remember, city planners have estimated there are 50,000 approved housing units on the books waiting to be built.)

Looking over Haddock’s application, I didn’t see his qualifications outshining either Hagan’s or Heglund’s.

Haddock is a clinical psychologist who runs his own practice, Community Counseling and Psychological Services. And he lists “construction experience, homebuilding and remodeling” on his application, but gives no further details.

On the major issue question he says:

“The biggest issue facing the Planning Commission is protecting the rights of property owners while at the same time having the highest quality plan for Bakersfield’s future. In the planning process, we sometimes have to see the future of Bakersfield before it is created and have a healthy balance of residential, commercial and industrial as well as transportation and livability issues.”

OK, protect property rights, high quality plans, look to the future and have a healthy balance. So which of these is the major issue?

I left a message for Haddock but didn’t get a call back.

I asked Weir what it was about Haddock’s experience that made him more qualified than the other applicants.

He e-mailed me his response saying he’d interviewed all three (except Johnson, of course) and felt Haddock shared his views on planning and development and had no apparent conflicts of interest.

Back up. Planning vision?

I attended one of Weir’s community meetings to discuss planning for the northeast. He said a lot of things people liked, no block walls, architectural themes, preserving the dark night sky, etc.

When one attendee reminded him that The Canyons was planned to be ringed by a block wall, and asked if he would work to change that, Weir skirted the issue, saying these ideas were really more for a guiding document for future development.

Uh-huh. We all know how well “guiding documents” have worked around here. Those are just so much pablum to keep the masses quiet, if you ask me.

I think Haddock’s appointment had more to do with who’s really calling Weir’s political shots — Abernathy.

Abernathy managed Haddock’s campaign against Maggard for Kern County supervisor back in 2006.

In fact, Haddock still owes Western Pacific Research, Abernathy’s political consulting firm, about $13,500, according to his most recent campaign disclosure statement filed at the end of 2008.

Whether they share a planning vision, Weir and Haddock at least have that in common.

Weir appears to still owe Abernathy about $45,000 from his days on the Bakersfield City School District Board, according to his most recent statements from the end of 2008.

Like I said — different day, same old story in local politics.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Plans are only as strong as our political backbone

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/22/2009

I tried. OK? Really, I did.

I was all set to write a happy column about Earth Day (which is today, so pick another day to dump your battery acid down that gopher hole) and how government agencies are going ever “greener.”

Then I got to reading about the city/county general plan update discussions and cracked open the background reports to see how things are proceeding.

The bottom line is if you are at all interested in better planning for this community, you need to get involved, do it NOW and stick with it, because this will be a long haul.

Otherwise, the powers that be will succeed in getting a namby-pamby plan approved, we’ll get sued, a plan will be forced on us and our politicians will worm out from under it every chance they get.

That will continue to happen until we citizens make it very clear we are watching.

In case you blinked and missed this, a “growth concept” map was floated by a joint meeting of the city and county Planning Commissions Monday night. Developer whining quickly ensued.

The concept involves growth boundaries, which other communities have had for many years. Somehow those cities still have survived.

Our boundaries would be huge.

The “core” would extend from 7th Standard Road on the north to Highway 119 on the south and from the mouth of the Kern River canyon on the east to Heath Road on the west.

Inside that vast core, developers could build higher densities and pay lower infrastructure costs.

Unlike other communities, which have simply said no growth beyond the core, this plan would allow development at a future date. If someone wanted to build sooner. he or she could, but at a much greater cost.

That only makes sense as leapfrog development costs taxpayers far more to stretch services out to sprawling neighborhoods.

This watered-down version of growth boundaries was met with skepticism, concern and outright wheedling Monday night as some developers and property owners argued their land (outside the core) should be exempted.

“People here haven’t seen anything like this,” said Bakersfield Planning Director Jim Movius.

When I spoke with the Sierra Club’s main local activist, Gordon Nipp, he was not enthralled with the boundaries — mostly because he fears they’re on the verge of being breached.

The county Planning Commission on May 14 will study at least one massive project, Nipp said, that’s far outside the core. And that doesn’t even count all the many acres already entitled to be developed during the boom whose owners are now waiting out the bad economy.

“It’s astounding to me,” Nipp said. “They should put a moratorium on development if they’re considering these type of boundaries.”

Despite new state laws that give anti-sprawl efforts teeth, Nipp said he’s not very positive about what the new general plan will look like.

“As you know, the devil is in the details,” he said.

That’s also where the real fighting begins — writing the policies that back up the plan.

As tedious and time consuming as that part will surely be, that’s where we citizens need to be most vigilant.

“The policies are going to have to be real strong to make the growth plan work,” Movius agreed.

Right now, our general plan policies “encourage” certain types of growth and “discourage” others.

Those words will need to be replaced by “require” and “prohibit.”

That’s how the settlement agreement between Stockton and the Sierra Club reads after the environmental group (with the backing of the attorney general) successfully sued over Stockton’s general plan.

Sierra Clubbers have two hefty new hammers in the form of SB 375, which mandates more sustainable growth, and AB 32, which mandates the state roll back greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels.

We could have been well on our way if our general plan hadn’t been treated like a pile of used Kleenex over the last seven years.

When it was written back in 2002, it envisioned mini city centers, or hubs, of retail, commercial and other job zones surrounded by high-density housing and then lower-density housing, so no matter where you lived, you could walk or bike to work or shop. No ugly block walled neighborhoods. And, oh, taking the bus would actually have worked.

“It had some pretty sexy ideas in it,” Movius said of the old plan.

What happened?

Politicians, that’s what.

Developers said “jump” and our public servants said “how high?”

This time around, let’s make sure we the people are holding the bar.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Tandy’s tactics not moving us forward

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/19/2009

Here’s a tip:

Don’t dare someone to dig up documents when they have nothing better to do with their time than dig up documents.

Oh yeah, and make sure there’s nothing to get before you spout off, too.

When City Manager Alan Tandy quit talking to me — again — a couple weeks ago, he sent an email refusing to answer questions about a directive he allegedly issued to the fire department for on-duty personnel to stay out of the public eye unless they absolutely had to come out of their stations for a real emergency.

He ended the email with this: “In all future communications with me please submit a freedom of information act notice to the clerk. That is for you personally not your employer. Have a nice day.”

OK.

One Public Records Act request later I found a string of memos and emails between Tandy and Fire Chief Ron Fraze that show Tandy, indeed, trying very hard to strong-arm Fraze into putting his people under a burqa.

He demands Fraze justify why firefighters are allowed to go to gyms (they’re evaluated on fitness and not all stations have work out space), eat in restaurants (when they’re on calls, they sometimes do have to eat); go to grocery stores (kind of necessary if he wants them to eat only in the stations behind closed doors, with the shades pulled down); and — here’s the biggie — attend public events.

All if which led me to wonder what bee was buzzin’ around in Tandy’s bonnet.

My conclusion: Leverage.

This is a classic Tandy tactic to try and gain the upper hand in union negotiations, which have dragged on for more than a year now. He wants to jab firefighters to remind them who’s boss and, in the process, reduce their visibility to the public.

Don’t believe me? Look at the timing.

His memos to Fraze start back in November and specifically refer to a restaurant grand opening opening (Famous Dave’s on Rosedale Highway) as an improper use of personnel and equipment. In fairness, we also received a few letters wondering why the fire department was there.

Here’s the thing, though — that happened in February 2008 and Fraze had already agreed it wasn’t a good idea and wouldn’t happen again.

But Tandy didn’t bring it up for seven months. I can’t imagine him letting something stick in his craw that long before spitting it out.

In the back and forth (which goes on from November to mid-March), Tandy moves from being concerned about the public perception of firefighters at public events to saying it’s a safety issue.

In a Jan. 15 memo he tells Fraze, “Given the concern expressed by Fire Department staff regarding the current level of staffing within the department and the desire to have each station fully manned to meet response times and employee safety requirements it would seem paramount that Fire Department equipment and staff be available and ready to respond to life safety responses as quickly as possible.”

Aha.

Tandy had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get firefighters to agree to bump the lucrative three-at-50 retirement benefit to three-at-55 for new hires. They weren’t going for it, so, boom, he brought up staffing levels earlier this year, according to union president Derek Tisinger.

The issue of three at 50 is pretty much the same with police officers, who’ve been without a contract for nearly two years. Talks with the police union are now at impasse.

I agree that taxpayers can’t pay the freight for three-at-50 (employees can retire at 50 with 3 percent of their last year’s salary for every year of service) and still give decent wages and health benefits to employees. It’s too expensive.

But Tandy’s tactics are getting us further from that goal instead of closer.

Both unions have offered different ways to ease the cost of three-at-50 to the city that would show immediate savings, but Tandy told them to pound sand.

Meanwhile, the council has sat idly by taking Tandy’s reports in closed session as time marches on.

That’s some great governing there.

When Tandy was still speaking to me (or at least emailing me) he wouldn’t answer any specific questions about the negotiations, saying he didn’t want to conduct negotiations through the media.

Oh, bull puckey! Negotiations absolutely should be more public. It’s hard to see how that could make things any worse.

A bill by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that would have required the city to publicly report the offers and counter-offers recently died a quiet death before its first hearing.

That’s unfortunate.

But it shouldn’t stop us, the taxpayers, from demanding some kind of action from our City Council like, I don’t know, getting a real negotiator involved.

Someone a little less harsh and uncompromising. Maybe Dirty Harry’s available?

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Pot of parolees at the end of Kern's rainbow

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/15/2009

In Kern County, you really can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a parolee.

I started looking into our parolee situation last month after four Oakland police officers were shot to death by an at-large parolee.

I wondered whether we were being overwhelmed by parolees.

Not really, I was told by Rodney Armstrong, our local parole administrator. We’re about average for our population, he said.

On any given day, there are about 4,200 parolees legally wandering among us. Another 450 are “at large,” meaning they haven’t been checking in with their parole agents as required.

In all, we have 58 pairs of eyes watching all those parolees. That’s a caseload of about 72 potential bad guys to one good guy. Scary!

But, wait, that’s not all. We also have an additional 800 parolees who are in custody as they cycle back into the system for violating their parole or committing new crimes.

That’s 5,450 people (the amount changes daily) out of a population of 540,000 adults who’ve spent quality time in one of California’s finer institutions.

That’s 1 percent, or 10 parolees per 1,000 adults.

In Fresno County, with a higher population than us, the rate is 9.4 parolees per 1,000 adults. San Joaquin County has 6.9 parolees per 1,000 and Sacramento County is 5.2 parolees per 1,000.

Chances that Kern’s parolees will reoffend and end up back in the slammer are higher than the state average as well.

Nearly one in three Kern parolees are considered to be at high risk of recidivism, according to the California Department of Corrections. That’s compared to one in four statewide.

We are seventh in the state for percentage of parolees likely to be heading back to the big house.

Great, why can’t we ever have higher numbers for something good, like college degrees or rainbows?

Getting a handle on how many of our parolees are considered a high risk as far as being dangerous to the public was more difficult.

The prison system does have an assessment tool to determine each parolee’s potential for violent behavior. But getting the numbers proved difficult as the tool hasn’t been implemented throughout all the state’s parole units.

Perhaps some of Kern’s parolee overload is of our own making, as I was reminded by Mark Arnold, head of the Public Defender’s office.

“Kern County prides itself on sending more people to prison per capita than any other county in the state, so it stands to reason we have highest number of parolees,” he said.

That may be true, but for now we’re stuck in this overcrowded, leaky boat.

And it’s about to take on more passengers as a panel of judges recently ordered the Department of Corrections to release 70,000 inmates to reduce the strain on the prison’s health systems. Which, of course, will simply shift the strain to our backyard.

Considering we put a disproportionate share of inmates in, we shouldn’t be surprised if we get the same share back.

So much for college degrees and rainbows.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

When in doubt, just report it

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/12/2009

Oh, for crying out loud. I’m torn between outrage and derision.

First Bakersfield City Councilman Ken Weir has to be ordered to fill out his conflict-of-interest statements two years ago and now Mayor Harvey Hall thinks it’s just dandy to take not one, but two $10,000+ trips to India on someone else’s dime, not report the first trip at all and then try and get by with saying “Mr. Anonymous” paid for the second one.

Is it something in the water over there?

It’s real simple folks — when you’re in public office, you are legally obligated to ’fess to the public about where you get your money, what property you own, who you owe money to, who gives you gifts, and who pays for trips you take.

(Quick side note: Kudos to Councilman Weir, who didn’t need any arm-twisting this time to list the names of his top clients on his financial disclosure statements. Good for you!)
The law applies to non-elected public officials in top positions as well as those elected, such as City Manager Alan Tandy and other city department heads.

(Another quick side note: Tandy’s statement showed he received no reportable gifts. Awww.)

We, the taxpayers, get to know all that stuff because we’re trusting you with our money and decisions that affect the health, safety and future of our community.
We want to know if you’re getting casks of expensive wine or cruises courtesy of a developer who has a project in front of you.

That is what’s known as a — I’ll say it loudly for those who don’t seem to understand the concept — a CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

So when the Sikhs pay for these trips at $10,000 or more (which goes far beyond the $390 limit from 2008 and the $420 limit for 2009 in any case) for Hall to traipse around the subcontinent, I wonder why.

Hall isn’t just Bakersfield’s ribbon-cutting cheerleader.

He is our representative and has extraordinary access and influence on city government. He could also be the tie-breaking vote on serious matters, such as The Canyons development or a freeway slicing through a neighborhood.

That’s why we absolutely have a right to know who has access to him, who’s doing him favors that he might be inclined to repay.

As for his comments to the paper that the public should be glad he reported the trip at all because otherwise “nobody would have known,” that sounds vaguely like a threat that I’d advise Hall to avoid.

When you’re in the public eye, someone always knows. Then it looks like a coverup.
Frankly, Hall’s reporting-non reporting of those India trips looks bad enough to me. What on earth does he mean that the Sikh’s “passed the hat” for his trip? Did they write a check signed “the Sikhs?” Or did they hand him a satchel of cash?

Maybe the Sikh’s really do just “love” him all that much, as he told reporter Gretchen Wenner.

Being the cynical old hack that I am, I can’t help but wonder now about Hall’s efforts to help the Sikhs who’ve chafed under strict city rules on where they can hold their grand parades.

If another group, say the gay community, asked for similar favoritism, would he grant it? Perhaps they should consider funding a trip for Hall to attend a Liza Minnelli concert. Then maybe he wouldn’t back out of declaring a Gay Pride Day, as he did under pressure from religious groups in 2004.

What I’m implying is ugly, downright Blagojevich ugly, I know.

And in all reality, Hall, who has more money than you-know-who, could easily pay for worldwide travel on his own. So, a couple jaunts to India likely wouldn’t turn his head.
But I learned a long time ago that perception is often even more important than reality.
That’s why we have all these little rules and forms and pesky insistence that our political leaders keep to the straight and narrow. We not only want them to avoid any real conflict of interest, but any perceived conflict of interest as well.

Hey, I’m just trying to help.

When they knock on your door

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/8/2009

It’s been 25 years since the bulk of Kern County’s notorious child molestation “ring” cases ensnared nearly 50 people — family members, friends, neighbors — in a now unbelievable communal nightmare.

But Sunday night it’ll seem like yesterday when a new documentary titled “Witch Hunt,” based primarily on John Stoll’s case, airs at 7 p.m. on MSNBC.

The documentary, while a little light on details for my taste, is narrated by Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn and has been gaining attention and accolades at film festivals around the country and in Canada.

For anyone who’s followed these cases even mildly, the film doesn’t give any new insights or information. And, of course, it’s constructed to build an emotional case, mostly against the District Attorney’s office.

It’s definitely worth watching, however, not just to better understand our past, but to instruct our future as well.

This is a refrain you’ve heard from me before, but after watching “Witch Hunt” it bears repeating: It’s up to us, the people, to hold our government accountable.

And, yes, even when that means questioning law enforcement, something I know this community is loathe to do.

As almost all of those interviewed for the film said over and over, you don’t believe it can happen until they knock on your door — and by that time, it’s too late.

Between 1982 and 1985, 46 people were arrested and charged with participating in child molestation rings, often involving their own children.

There was no physical evidence to support any of these charges. They were all based on the testimony of the children believed to be the victims.

After charges against some were dropped, plea bargains of vastly reduced charges were accepted on others and still others were given probation, there were 27 actual convictions.

Of those, 24 have been reversed.

The sheer numbers alone are amazing. What they don’t tell you, and the film brings out, is the devastation suffered not only by those accused but by the children who say they were coerced by law enforcement to make false accusations that fed the frenzy.

The shadow extends even beyond them, though, hanging over the very agency that won the convictions.

“In cases I tried earlier in my career, if you had a credible victim and that was the only evidence you had, you could get a conviction,” said Lisa Green, veteran prosecutor and head of the Special Prosecutions Unit. “It’s not like that today. Jurors expect more. It’s probably one of the fallouts of all those ring cases being overturned.

“People here are pretty aware of those cases.”

She said she’s heard from prosecutors in her unit that jurors do sometimes bring up the Stoll case.

“It causes them to question the integrity of our office,” she said. “The first thing they teach you in Prosecutor School 101 is you have to have credibility with the juror and if you lose that, the case is lost.”

Green has a small part in the film. At a hearing to determine whether Stoll was properly convicted based on witness testimony, she tried to discredit those very witnesses as they recanted their original stories.

She’s accused in the film of badgering the men and calling them liars.

When I asked her about that characterization, she said it was an aggressive cross examination. Later she said, “I felt bad about it. In a sense I did, I feel bad for all those young men.”

She reminded me, and the film notes, that Stoll’s own son, Jed, never recanted.

He came to Kern County for his father’s hearing and restated that he was molested. If he hadn’t, Green said the DA’s office likely wouldn’t have pursued it as they did.

That’s what happened with one of Stoll’s co-defendant, Grant Self. At his hearing she couldn’t get any victims willing to go through the ordeal of testifying again and so his conviction was quietly vacated about six months ago, Green said.

The filmmakers didn’t call her for an interview and she has no intention of watching the program Sunday night, she told me.

As for the bigger picture, all those other cases, all those lives in tatters, Green, like most people in the film, was at a loss.

“I don’t have an answer for what happened in the 1980s.”

District Attorney Ed Jagels was out of town. But he’s talked to us in the past about the ’80s cases and repeatedly said the reversals don’t prove innocence.

He has categorized most of the reversals as technicalities, though some were based on prosecutorial misconduct, and said even though the investigation techniques (questioning children away from their parents over and over, for example) were wrong, they were the best practices known at the time.

But he’s never expressed regret for prosecuting these cases to the hilt, even after 89 percent have been overturned.

Frankly, I find that a more than a little weaselly.

It’s the DA’s job to study the information given over by law enforcement. They don’t blindly prosecute every case that comes their way.

And, come on, these cases were crazy. Whole families — dads, moms, aunts, uncles, neighbors — all involved in the worst kinds of crime against their own children?

I suppose maybe, MAYBE, once in a lifetime you might come across that. But eight (8!) different rings all in Kern County in the space of three years? Not even any in the Bakersfield City limits, all in the county?

The film notes that Jagels declined to be interviewed. Probably a good idea.

Unlike Green, Sheriff Donny Youngblood doesn’t feel his department is stained by the 1980s cases, even though it was the Sheriff’s Department that made all the arrests and conducted the improper investigations that incurred a blistering report from the Attorney General’s office in 1986.

Youngblood was interviewed for the film (even though he wasn’t sheriff at the time), and talks on camera about a culture of “cowboy law enforcement” in Kern County. He wasn’t involved in any of he 1980s cases, but co-director Dana Nachman told me they wanted to interview him to get a sort of zeitgeist of the times.

The sheriff who championed those cases, Larry Kleier, is dead. And all the detectives who did the investigations are long gone now, Youngblood said.

But unlike Jagels, Youngblood does believe there was a breakdown somewhere in the system.

“Obviously something didn’t work right,” he told me.

Perhaps it was improper interviewing, he conceded. But having been an officer for 30 years, he said he can’t see the cops trying to put words in kids’ mouths.

“Why? What’s the payoff?”

I asked if perhaps Kleier, who absolutely believed in the molestation rings and is never mentioned in the film, pushed his officers in that direction.

“He was a hard-nosed officer and sheriff and very aggressive in law enforcement,” Youngblood said. “But I never got the impression he wanted someone to be put in jail who didn’t commit a crime. He believed those children.

“Kids don’t lie.”

Or maybe they do, or they say things they don’t mean, Youngblood said.

“I’ve played this situation over in my mind several times,” he said of the 1980s cases.

“And I just have no answer. I really don’t know.”

All the more reason films like “Witch Hunt” will continue to be both a fascination and a fearful lesson for us.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

"Small" graduation creates big fuss

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/5/2009

Blackmail is never a good solution.

I hope that’s at least one of the lessons a Panama-Buena Vista school district parent comes away with after her attempt to extort the district into holding its traditional, elaborate and now unaffordable eighth grade graduation ceremony.

Jill Carroll advocated to any parent who would listen that they keep their kids out of school last Friday in order to pressure the district into holding a graduation ceremony.

The district has held the ceremony for years, renting the Icardo Center at Cal State Bakersfield for 21/2 days in order to accommodate all of its 1,850 eighth-grade students.

The cost had grown to $25,000.

With a $3.5 million shortfall barreling down on them, the board decided this was an expense that could be cut.

Carroll’s idea was that by keeping kids out of school, it would hit the district so hard in its pocket book (every absence costs them $44.90) officials would capitulate to parents’ demands.

Hmm. Aside from the “what are you teaching your kid about the value of education?” question, I have to say that’s some interesting logic going on there.

The district can’t hold the ceremony because it doesn’t have enough money. So, the solution is to take more money away from them?

Anyhoo, the district told me Friday it had a few more students gone than usual, but since it was the Friday before spring break that wasn’t unexpected.

As the schools called parents to verify absences, no parents said their child’s absence was in protest of the graduation decision, according to Asst. Superintendent of Educational Services Gerrie Kincaid. Not every parent had been reached when we spoke Friday afternoon, but so far that day, the protest seemed to have been a bust.

Good.

It was an ill-conceived idea that was the absolute definition of generating more heat than light.

Carroll never returned my phone call but she did come on the Ralph Bailey show (KNZR 1560) when I was a guest and explained her position.

Spending $25,000 is too much, she agreed, “borderline criminal.” She and other parents just want something simple to keep the tradition of graduation alive.

But when they went to the board, she said, they were all but ignored and told to “write to the Legislature, they’re the ones who made these cuts.” And when she called the district, yes, Kincaid called her back, but she was told the problem was being worked on.

“It’s all behind closed doors,” said Carroll who did keep her daughter home Friday but said it was a melancholy experience for both.

“Perhaps there was a better way to do this,” she acknowledged. “But we wanted to get the board’s attention.”

Another parent, Windy Haverstock, who agonized over the protest but ultimately sent her girls to school, said she understands the district is in a tight spot but still advocates having some kind of graduation ceremony.

When she went to the board meeting last month and heard what else was being cut, such as a proposal to chop all field trips, including the district’s support of Camp KEEP — about $200,000 for transportation each year — she realized how much more was at stake.

“Here we are focused on graduation, but Camp KEEP!” she said. “I’m having a hard time with this. Camp KEEP is a really, really wonderful program.

“If it were up to me, I really don’t know which one I’d choose.”

Not to mention the district notified 83 teachers — 77 multi-subject and 5 music teachers — that they would likely be laid off.
Look, I really don’t get the whole eighth grade graduation thing. It seems like a whole lot of fuss for a fairly small step.

And I certainly don’t think moving from eighth grade to ninth is worthy of the hour-and-a-half-long productions Panama-Buena Vista put on at the Icardo Center, with special parking, busing in the chorus and band, printed programs and speechifying by various dignitaries over two and a half days.

But this obviously is a highly emotional issue for local parents (Bakersfield City School District officials told me they spend $30,000 a year on their graduations and have no intention of cutting back.)

With that emotional tie in mind, Panama-Buena Vista administrators should open up the process and work with parents. And parents should drop the arm twisting.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Politics makes unreasonable bedfellow in union negotiations

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
4/1/2009

There’s a reason Bakersfield’s fire and police unions have been working without a contract for more than a year and negotiations are dragging on, no end in sight.

The city manager’s office is not only rigid, but I believe unreasonable in its bargaining position.

I know, I know, you can’t believe Alan “old softie” Tandy would ever be unreasonable.

But, um, it’s true.

“Oh yeah, he comes in and thumps his hand on the table and acts like a big bully,” Bill Ware, president of the Bakersfield Police Officers Association, told me. “We’re not intimidated by that. We’re cops. We intimidate those who intimidate others.”

As a result of all that hand thumping, the police officer’s union contract expired in July 2007 and the two sides are now at impasse. The firefighters’ contract expired a year ago but they’re still talking with the city.

The real nut here is retirement, not pay.

Both unions have 3 at 50 (employees retire at age 50 and receive 3 percent of their last year’s salary for every year of service).

The city — two councilmen in particular — wants to increase that to 3 at 55. And Tandy is going to the mat over it.

Hey, I agree 3 at 50 is a overly luxurious for Bakersfield’s wallet.

But going to a two-tiered system where new employees have a different deal doesn’t save us any money until people start retiring, potentially years out.

There are other ways to lower retirement costs that the unions have indicated they’re willing to consider.

Getting there, however, requires reasonable attitudes and a willingness to set politics aside. (You knew it was really all about politics, right?)

That’s where Councilmen Ken Weir and Zack Scrivner come in.

Both made “unfunded liabilities” a major issue during their campaigns and vowed to right the city’s financial ship by cutting back on the city’s retirement largess.

I’m not convinced we’re going down the tubes because of a couple of grim years on the stock market, which in good times helps fund the retirement accounts and in bad times sucks out money like a Hoover vaccuum stuck on high.

We’ve always had unfunded liabilities — not just in the form of future retirement costs, but in future medical benefits for retirees as well. It’s only been in recent years that municipalities have had to actually SHOW those costs on their books. And much hoopla has ensued ever since.

Even so, if you want to cut costs (always prudent) you could do that by asking employees to pay more into their own retirement fund. The city currently picks up the entire retirement tab after an employee’s sixth year on the job.

Firefighters have offered to “give back” 3 percent of their proposed pay increase of 8 percent over two years, asking the city to give them 5 percent in pay and fund the retirement and retiree medical accounts with the remaining 3 percent. That may sound like they’re paying themselves, but the money would help pay the city’s current retirement costs so they wouldn’t have to dip into the general fund for quite as much.

That 8 percent, by the way, is exactly what other city employees, including managers, have received over the last two years. Truth be told, though, unions would be much better off in the public’s eye not asking for any raises right now, or offering it all to help defray retirement costs considering what’s happening in the private sector, not to mention layoffs that have already hit the police deparment.

Ware told me the police union has also tried to talk with the city about what they might get in exchange for bumping the retirement age to 3 at 55, such as longevity pay. But no dice.

“It’s ‘take it or leave it,’” Ware said of the city’s attitude.

Firefighters thought they were close to a deal when they offered the give back, but then Tandy brought a new issue to the table — staffing minimums —according to union president Derek Tisinger.

So, they’re back at Square One.

I asked Tandy about that via email (he won’t talk to me on the phone anymore) and he wrote, “Sorry — I do not think it is productive to conduct complex collective bargaining sessions through the media!”

Yes, I’m sure the citizenry couldn’t possibly understand such complex issues as staffing and pay.

I do know a political stink bomb when it goes off under my nose. And this smells like Tandy taking marching orders from Weir and Scrivner so they can crow over their “fiscal conservative” credentials when they next run for office.

Goody for them, but I’d rather have a reasonable contract with members of the two agencies that provide for the safety of this city.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Solution to "fixing" our pet overpopulation problem is clear

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
3/25/2009

I like the energy and innovation I’m seeing at Kern County Animal Control these days.

First, they’re working more with rescue and transfer operations, WAY more.

For the first quarter of 2008, 575 animals went to rescues compared to 847 so far this year, and only 17 animals were transferred to other, less crowded shelters in 2008 compared to 381 so far this year.

That’s huge!

But even huger (uh, more huge?) is what’s happened on the spay neuter front.

The county took its time but finally came up with a very smart voucher program that allowed low-income families access to spay/neuter services for nearly free.

And 864 families took the county up on its voucher offer. So far 73 percent of those have been redeemed.

That means 630 dogs and cats that may otherwise have left a legacy of multiple litters of unwanted puppies and kittens, were fixed (yes, I know it’s unPC, but I say fixed).

Here’s how quickly unaltered animals can add to overpopulation, according to a rescue Web site called Ahimsa Rescue Foundation.

A cat can produce an average of three litters a year with seven to 10 kittens per litter.

Over seven years, that could add up to 420,000 offspring.

A female dog can produce two litters per year with six to 10 puppies per litter. So over six years, that can add up to 67,000 offspring.

Dogs and cats come into puberty as early as four or five months, so for some animals, that’s a long reproductive life.

I heartily applaud Animal Control’s efforts to work more liberally with rescue groups and transfers. Even their efforts at creating a local network of foster families to keep animals out of the shelter, and harm’s way, have been earnest if slow.

But I remain steadfastly convinced that the only way out of our mess is to stop it at its source, and that means spaying and neutering as many animals as we possibly can.

Which, of course, translates to money, not an easy topic these days.

The voucher program has been so successful that Animal Control has finally depleted the $80,000 Supervisors gave them a few years ago specifically for spay/neuter projects.

It started as $100,000 but Animal Control spent about $20,000 on several special spay/neuter events held with other groups.

The voucher program, though, has greater potential impact and sustainability, I believe, and here’s why.

It targets low-income families only. The families have to buy the vouchers at $20 a pop.

They can chose from nine participating veterinarians who agreed to discount their fees and they have four months to get their animal fixed before the voucher expires.

That $20 per voucher, by the way, goes back into a fund to seed future vouchers along with, hopefully, more money from supervisors.
In this economy, that could be a major sticking point, said Guy Shaw, director of Animal Control.

“When we’re being asked to cut our budgets by 15 percent, it’s kind of hard to ask the board for another $100,000,” Shaw said.

Still, he’s going to crunch the voucher numbers at the end of April and make a pitch.

I hope Supervisors are listening closely.

Because even just keeping the voucher pot funded for 800 or 1,000 surgeries a year could make a big, big difference, as results from similar programs across the country have shown.

If the board can’t cut loose with the money, what about creating a non-profit foundation so donations could be used to keep the voucher program going?

Or how about partnering with HOPE, the group in Fresno that does high-volume low-cost surgeries and transports Kern animals twice monthly? That could further cut costs and spread vouchers out to even more people.

Shaw said he’d be interested in seeing if that’s possible.

I appreciate Shaw’s willingness to work all the angles.

But it’s up to us to make sure he gets the support he needs.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Taking advantage of HOPE
Since the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on Gibson street took over the paperwork and logistics in July last year of getting animals on the twice-monthly transport to Fresno for low-cost spay/neuter surgeries, they’ve sent 985 animals to be altered.

By the first of April, the count will be at least 1,000, according to Sandy Dralle, executive director of SPCA.

“We’ve had no problems, no mishaps and everyone’s been really happy with the service,” Dralle said.

She said most clients are in the middle- to working-class income and a lot of young families who might not otherwise be able to afford to fix their animals.

Costs for cats are: $55 for females and $45 for males.

For dogs, the costs vary depending on size.

Prices range from $75 for a female and $65 for a male weighing up to 64 pounds and $115 for a female and $105 for a male weighing over 100 pounds.

All appointments must be made through the SPCA at 323-8353 and must be paid in advance.

The animal must be brought to the SPCA before the appointment to be weighed and medically checked. On transport day, the animal must be at the SPCA on Gibson Street off Rosedale Highway by 6 a.m.

Owners must pick up the animal the following day between 11 a.m. and noon.

The transport schedule is April 13, April 27, May 11 (only one in May because of Memorial Day holiday), June 8 and June 22.

All animals are required to have a rabies vaccination. If proof cannot be provided at the time of registration, owners will be charged $12 for a vaccination before boarding the transport.

OHVers need space of their own

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
3/22/2009

Hypocrisy is so much fun.

Off-highway vehicles are legal in the state of California. In fact, they’re so darn legal, the state has extra special stickers for you to buy (at $50 a pop every two years) to show how legal you are.

But try and ride that thing anywhere and ohhhhh noooo, can’t do that! It might stir up some dust, make noise or crush a special weed.

OK, I exaggerate, but only slightly.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you might have noticed The Californian’s reporting on how the Forest Service wants to keep off-road and other vehicles off of long time trails and roads around Lake Isabella and throughout the Sequoia National Forest.

The same thing is happening on all Forest Services lands, by the way, under so-called “travel management” plans.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management has closed trails and at least one massive and extremely popular riding area east of Coalinga.

That got me thinking about the failed attempt to create a state off-highway park here a few years ago and whether a new park is even in the works anymore. And where in the world CAN off-roaders ride these days?

Personally, I don’t ride OHVs and don’t particularly like them. But they’re a legal, tax-paying form of recreation for a lot of people. And frankly they, and all of us who’d like to see them contained to specific areas, are getting hosed.

In answer to the second question, off-roaders are only supposed to ride on designated trails on public lands or private land, with the owner’s permission.

There are eight state parks, nine parks maintained by cities, counties or other jurisdictions, 25 BLM sites and about 60 sites on national forest lands, according to a website about where to ride in California maintained by Don Dieterich (http://www.employees.org/~c...

That may seem like a lot of options, but not when you consider the number of registered off-road vehicles has gone from 356,000 in 1996 to more than 1.1 million currently.

As for any new parks, there are none on the horizon, according to Phil Jenkins, chief of the Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation division of the State Parks, which has a budget of about $86 million a year.

Two things are keeping the state from spending green sticker and fuel tax monies designated to build and maintain off-road areas:

• Staffers and commissioners haven’t seen eye-to-eye on the division’s direction for about the last 20 years.

That was kind of good because it allowed the trust fund money (from green sticker fees and special fuel taxes paid by off roaders) to build up to $90 million. But it was bad because, well, we have no new parks.

Commissioners in the past haven’t been willing to open the purse strings for new parks, insisting instead on using the trust fund money to fix environmental damage caused by off-roaders riding illegally.

Staffers, meanwhile, wanted to open more parks to give off-roaders recreation areas that would keep them from riding illegally in the first place. Hmmmm....ya think?

To settle this chicken-and-egg situation, the two sides have been creating a strategic plan over the last year (you can read a draft at http://ohv.parks.ca.gov/?pa... and submit comments through March 25 at OHVinfo@parks.ca.gov).

Part of that plan includes a priority list for new off-road parks.

I might be slightly encouraged by that, except for the second reason there are no new parks on on the horizon:

• The state took nearly all of the Off-Highway division’s $90 million during its most recent budget meltdown.

But, hey, the state promised to pay it back so no worries, right?

Two Kern County Supervisors, however, aren’t waiting around.

Ray Watson has been working with two landowners west of Taft who want to turn their 640 acres into a private OHV park but have run up against resistance from adjacent oil field operators leasing land from the BLM. The oil operators are worried about liability and don’t want the OHVers out there.

“But I’ve argued that it’s better to have them in one place with fencing and the ability to monitor them,” Watson said. So far, he hasn’t won the oil companies’ lawyers over, but the landowners are plodding through the environmental documents and plan to apply for a conditional use permit with the county.

Meanwhile, Mike Maggard has been doggedly pursuing land for a new park locally since 2007, when his attempt at working with the state on an 11,000-acre parcel north of Bakersfield fell through.

“The state’s process is inept, inefficient and obviously unsuccessful,” Maggard said.

He’s narrowed his search to two pieces of land but wouldn’t give me any more intel for fear that could drive up the price.

With tax money scarce locally, Maggard said he envisons some kind of public-private partnership to buy and maintain an off-road park.

“Green sticker money could be used and concievably a private operator could run it. Not the government.”

Particularly a government that doesn’t mind taking money from OHV riders with one hand and then smackin’ them around with the other.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com