The Vault: August 2009

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Developer's have had the wheel long enough

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Aug. 19, 2009

Col. Thomas Baker was many things — founder of Bakersfield, highly-regarded lawyer, generous soul to travelers and neighbors alike, a surveyor, and, oh yes, a civil engineer.

As such, he liked a good road system. In fact, he was a stickler for it. As the original planner of Bakersfield’s roads system, he designated streets here would be 82 feet wide rather than the standard 66 feet of the day.

He wanted people to be able to get around.

What would he think of Bakersfield’s now snarled system of bottlenecked thoroughfares, hodge podge developments connected by single-lane farm roads and, of course, our intermittent freeways?

Who cares?! The man’s been dead since 1872. Let him rest, for Pete’s sake. The real question is what are we going to do about it?

Here’s an idea: Those who put an extra burden on the system by building housing subdivisions should help ease that burden by paying a fee toward traffic improvements from the profits they’ll reap from that very subdivision.

That’s fair and appropriate. The only issue after that is how much.

In Bakersfield, as numerous people have said since the traffic fee was instituted in 1992, ours has been way too low for far too long largely because of political pressure from developers.

That — and politicians’ undying inability to say no, or even not yet, to any development that comes down the pike — has led to our current infrastructure mess, in which we are $3 billion behind, by some estimates.

I was thinking of doing a column examining what Bakersfield would be like without any government regulation (some say interference) at all. What if housing were totally “market driven” and developers completely unfettered?

Ha! Look around. That’s exactly where we are — a sprawling mess.

In the last general plan update, city planners had hoped to make sense of the ever outward spiraling building boom by creating “city hubs,” areas of commercial, light industrial, retail, etc., so there might be some reasonable flow to traffic. Even allow for (gasp) public transit.

Developers blew past that so fast it wasn’t even a blur in their rear-view mirrors.

A friend recently told me Oildale now seems quaint to her in comparision with what’s happened to the Rosedale “community.” Not much community among the unending housing subdivisions slashed here and there by clogged arterials where motorists jerk along as people scoot in and out of strip malls that spring up haphazardly along the way.

And truth be told, if we were still in boom times, I doubt developers would have sued the city and county over bumping the traffic impact fee from about $6,000 per single family home to over $12,800.

By the by, even with the traffic impact fee increase, Bakersfield’s overall fees ($25,000 for everything including sewer connection, parks, habitat conservation and schools, which is determined by the state, not the city) are about middle of the road compared to other cities.

The boom went bust, however, and now developers are pulling out all the stops, from suing to suggesting a builder “bailout” by having the city drop its fees.

Other cities have done so in an effort to stimulate the construction industry, which is flat out foolish.

It leaves those cities wide open to California Environmental Quality Act-based lawsuits.

The fees are supposed to help lessen impacts from development. Dropping them doesn’t negate the impacts, so approving the developments would immediately put the city at odds with CEQA.

“It’s just silly to subsidize developers,” agreed Gordon Nipp, who represents the local Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club. “It’s the same sort of boosterism that led us to sprawl to the horizon and caused the traffic problems we have now.”

If government wants to subsidize jobs, he suggested just do it directly and pay for those who’ve been laid off to get education and retraining.

Besides, developers can’t get anyone to buy the half-finished subdivisions already collecting dust all around town. Taxpayers certainly don’t need to help fund more such ruins.

As Col. Baker understood, city representatives have an obligation to provide a safe, well-run environment for all their citizens, not just the ones who fill their campaign coffers.

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

Great, more unneeded, unwanted development

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Aug. 16, 2009

It’s nice to see developers and the county creating housing plans that go beyond the mono-zoned, cookie-cutter, “un-smart” growth style that has been so highly prized here in B-town for so very long.

Nice, but in the case of the proposed Neighborhood Development in western Rosedale, no cigar.

I put this in the same category as other recently approved developments in far-flung Rosedale (along Nord Road north and south of Rosedale Highway) by Bakersfield Land Investment and Northwest Communities.

This latest development frog leapt before Supervisors last Tuesday when they tied 2-2 on requested zoning changes with Supervisor Jon McQuiston absent.

That should have killed the item, but supervisors inexplicably decided to bring it back next Tuesday when McQuiston will return.

Ah, yes, the oft-used “try, try again,” approach that’s led to success for so many developments. Wonder why that never seems to work for the regular schmoes opposed to these projects?

Anyhoo, on all of these latest western Rosedale developments, planners have required far more than they ever did before in terms of higher densities, buffers for surrounding neighborhoods (which are mostly a mix of ag land and 1/2 acre- to acre-sized ranchettes), landscaping, walkability, public transit access, higher fees and so on.

OK, that’s good.

And growth is headed that way, no doubt, so planners and politicians can’t continue to ignore problems inherent in the rural/urban face-off.

But I still maintain, as Supervisors Mike Maggard and Don Maben did with their “no” votes last Tuesday, that it’s too much, too soon.

There still are large swaths of land not only empty but there are half-done, defunct housing developments between the edge of the city and this development.

It doesn’t matter that Neighborhood Development would have housing and commercial mixed with trails, open space and more. It’s still sticking 203 units, which equals hundreds more cars trips on Rosedale Highway, in the middle of what is mostly “country” with half-paved roads and septic instead of sewer.

Bakersfield Land Investment will bring 1,100 more houses, by the by, and Northwest Communities more than 800.

The Neighborhood Development project is a little different from the others in that the land is already zoned for 1/4-acre lots so owners have the right to develop and this proposed zone change holds them to much higher standards.

But it would still mean plopping a mini-city in the middle of the boonies.

During last Tuesday’s meeting, Supervisor Ray Watson told angry neighbors this isn’t leap-frog development because the leap frogging happened long ago. His take was this will bring far more money in development fees so they can build the infrastructure to handle the increased population.

Hogwash.

If you don’t build the houses, you don’t need the infrastructure.

Two other points:

Why not wait for the general plan update before rushing to approve this and other subdivisions in that area, which isn’t slated for buildout until 2035 according to preliminary general plan maps?

Second, planners said in Tuesday’s meeting that in order to approve the requested zone changes, supervisors would have to find the development was so desperately needed it outweighed concerns about air quality, traffic and other impacts.

Huh? We desperately need another housing development? Unless Watson is holding a gaggle of home buyers captive in his garage, I don’t think so.

One neighbor I talked to said he’s not opposed to development. They all know it’s coming. He’s not even opposed to the condos being proposed as long as they’re not right on top of his property.

“But do it right,” Ed Tucker said.

And at the right time.

Cracks in the system pose grave threat

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Aug. 14, 2009

The deaths of Annette Sowders and her mother show at least two substantial cracks in Kern County’s domestic violence protection system that need fixing — pronto.

This isn’t a drawn-out, new-law kind of fix. It’s up to us to handle.

Sowders and her mother, Sharon Cannon, were gunned down in their home at 2:30 a.m. last Saturday by someone wielding a 12-gauge shotgun. Robert Fuller, Sowders’ estranged husband, was arrested a short time later, a 12-gauge shotgun with him in his truck.

Guns

Sowders had a restraining order against Fuller that mandated he either turn all his guns over to the Sheriff’s department or sell them to a licensed gun dealer. In fact, he was twice ordered to dump the guns and provide a receipt showing he had done so.

Though he said in court documents that he’d rid himself of the weapons, he didn’t provide documentation — and apparently no one ever made a fuss over it.

That was the first crack, which then gets wider when you understand there’s no way for anyone, including law enforcment to check on the guns. Officers can’t go storming into people’s houses without probable cause.

In Fuller’s case, Sheriff’s deputies did seize two handguns after he shot himself in the chin with a .44 magnum in April, giving them enough cause to get a search warrant. But they didn’t find any other firearms in his trailer and no criminal charges were filed against him.

According to documents buried in one of his several divorces, Fuller had more than a dozen rifles, handguns and shotguns.

There must be a way to shoe up the firearm loose end. Perhaps the court could mandate guns go only to the Sheriff’s department and require the documentation come directly to court from the department, which would eliminate the “good faith” receipt loophole.

That won’t keep someone from lying about having guns in the first place, or illegally getting more guns. But ordering a potentially violent person to get rid of guns without any kind of accountability is pointless.

Bail

Fuller was arrested twice for violating the restraining order (at least five other violations reported).

He bailed out the very same day of both arrests.

That’s because both arrests were subject to a “bail schedule” which put bail at a set amount — $5,000. Fuller never had to go before a judge who could have reviewed the full case and seen an escalating pattern of harassment and possibly kept him in jail. And that’s the second big crack in the system.

“Both of those are the very things the Domestic Violence Advisory Council was working on,” Nada York, past president of the council told me.

She said the council is resurrecting its criminal justice committee, which includes members of law enforcement, victims’ advocates and court officers, and looked at similar issues several years ago.

There are a couple of ways to fix the bail issue right off the bat. First, bail is too low, she said. And there’s a little-known code section officers can use to ask judges for higher bail based on exactly the kind of escalating circumstances seen in the Sowders case.

“We know officers get frustrated because the perpetrator keeps bailing out and they’re just not aware that that tool is available to them,” she said.

The committee would also address the firearm issue.

“It’s a maze that officers and courts have to navigate and we have to find a way for them to get through that maze so the right person gets the right information and those guns get confiscated.”

Ultimately, what’s needed is a domestic violence court to better track these cases, which studies have shown get continued two and three times more often than other cases.

The cost of creating a new court, she said, would be offset by reducing continuances and repeat visits by law enforcement. Not to mention the cost in lives.

Michael Runner, director of legal programs in the San Francisco office of the Family Violence Prevention Fund also wondered if law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office could improve communication and urgency in these kinds of cases.

“For all those violations he (Fuller) had, I don’t understand why charges weren’t filed,”

Runner said. He mentioned a report several years ago by the Attorney General’s office that documented a severe lack of enforcement on the prosecution side.

I tried to check Kern’s prosecution rate on restraining order violations (Bakersfield Police makes about 250 such arrests a year and the Sheriff’s department responds to about 463 reports of violations a year).

But the cases are prosecuted in a myriad of ways, such as being sent back to civil court if that’s where the restraining order originated, or hooking the perp up on a probation violation instead of opening a new case, so they’re nearly impossible to track.

In Sowders’ case, the arrests and the many reports she made of Fuller violating the restraining order weren’t sent immediately to the DA for charges.

Senior Deputy Michael Whorf told me there’s a time delay getting the paperwork downtown that varies depending on a lot of outside factors, but he was sure the DA had most, if not all, of the reports on Fuller’s violations by now.

That’s cold comfort to Sowders’ cousin, Jeanne Dillman, who last spoke to Sowders and Cannon the Friday before they were killed.

Sowders had been making the rounds between court, the DA’s office and the Sheriff’s department trying to make sure Fuller was prosecuted.

Finally, Dillman said, Sowders was told by the DA’s office they didn’t have the Sheriff’s reports. She went back to the Sheriff’s department, which gave her a handful of request forms to get the reports to take to the DA herself.

“That’s what they were doing Friday night,” Dillman told me. “When I last talked to them, she and Sharon were at the dining room table filling out those request forms.”

She never spoke to them again.

Could these tragic deaths have been averted?

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Aug.12, 2007

It’s hard to look at the smiling picture of Annette Sowders and not feel that she was horribly and irrevocably let down by a system that should have protected her.

She and her mother were shot to death Saturday, deputies say, by Sowders’ estranged husband, Robert Fuller, after he bailed out of jail for violating his restraining order eight times in 11 days.

The restraining order was officially logged into the system July 21 and Sheriff’s deputies began getting reports from Sowders July 25 that he was slashing her tires and the kiddie pool.

They couldn’t find him the first couple of times, but by July 28, after another set of reports, they caught him and stuck him in jail. He bailed out and went right back to harassing Sowders.

They caught him again and sent him back to jail Aug. 4.

Again, he bailed out.

Sowders and her mother, Sharon Cannon, were shot four days later by someone using a 12-gauge shotgun.

Fuller was arrested a short time later in his truck with a gun.

Here are just some of the questions that need sorting out in the aftermath of this tragedy:

Because of the restraining order, could deputies have searched Fuller’s home and seized all his weapons after his first arrest on July 28? If so, why didn’t they?

We know he either owned, or had access to, at least one gun after he shot himself in the head in April during a weird incident at his trailer park that the Sheriff’s department was called out on.

Did the judge on Aug. 4 have the opportunity to review the full history of this case or was bail automatic? If it was automatic, should it be in cases of domestic violence?

Maybe nothing could have been done to prevent these deaths.

If Fuller indeed shot Sowders and her mother, it was his decision alone and in reading through the remnants of his history, he may have been following a path he chose long ago.

In fact, in one crushing irony of this story, Sowders herself may have been an unwitting accomplice in her own death.

Fuller was married once before in 1995.

Things went bad quickly and he filed for divorce in 1997. After a few reconciliation attempts the marriage was definitely over by 2000.

His wife at the time sought, and was granted, a restraining order against Fuller in June 2000, saying he had hit her and during one drunken rage had waved a 10 mm handgun at her.

In the marriage dissolution order listing who would got what (including the horse that ultimately introduced him to Sowders through her stables), the judge mandated that Fuller couldn’t have his guns for one year. He had to give them all — and he had an arsenal — up to the Sheriff’s department.

That’s where they stayed until he filed the paperwork to retrieve them in early 2001.

That paperwork was filled out for him by Annette Sowders, according to her signature.

On March 5, 2001, Fuller was allowed to collect all of his dozen or so rifles, shotguns and handguns, including his Remington 870 Wingmaster, a 12-gauge shotgun.

Like I said, who knows what, if anything, could have altered this sad course.

But it sure seems like there were a lot of warning signs along the way.

Developers biting the hand that feeds them

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Aug. 9, 2009

My, my, my what sharp teeth developers have for the hand that has fed them for so long.

I’m talking about the lawsuit filed by the Home Builders Association of Kern County over the city and county increasing traffic impact fees from $7,343 to $12,870 per single family home outside of the city’s core.

Builders have had it so good around here for so long — absurdly low development fees, few mitigation requirements and a steroidal laissez–faire attitude toward sprawl — they’ve forgotten the dog is actually supposed to wag the tail, not the other way around.

Meaning government (on behalf of the taxpayers) should call the shots on development with regard to where, when and how much it should pay.

Because the tail has been doing most of the wagging in Kern County, our roads can’t handle the traffic they have now.

More development without enough money to keep up roads only compounds the problem.

Unfortunately this we-all-saw-it-coming-but-no-one-did-anything-to-s top-it kind of problem is coming to a head at a terrible economic time.

That is too bad. But the now oft-repeated cry from development standard bearer Roger McIntosh that builders shouldn’t be punished for sins of the past when city and county leaders didn’t have the political huevos to set the fees high enough is patently ridiculous.

It was developers themselves, many the same ones being “punished” today, who fought tooth and nail against fee increases in the past that led to where we are today.

It’s hard to know which party deserves more derision in this little melodrama.

City and county leaders have clearly not done their job over the last 17 years by making sure the traffic impact fee was at the right level for needed road improvements.

I covered the Council when the first fee was introduced in 1992 and well remember the debate. Planners calculated they would need a fee of $6,000 per single family home to keep roads up to snuff while developers pressured council members to get the fee squashed down to $1,179 per home.

Everyone at the time agreed it wouldn’t do the job. But developers were happy, so council members were happy.

The fee got bumped here and there (most notably and after a major fight in 2003, but only up to $6,000 — where it should have been 10 years prior) but it stayed fairly low.
Meanwhile, between 1994 and 2007, builders paved over more than 27 square miles and paid only $130 million in traffic impact fees and built $6 million worth of road projects, according to a Californian analysis done in 2007.

At the time, it was estimated $2 billion was needed to build or improve roads.

That measly $136 million in developer contributions represented only 6.8 percent of the solution when development had clearly created the majority of the need.

It’s no wonder Kern voters spit back the one-half cent transportation sales tax proposal for the third time in 2006. (It certainly didn’t help that developers were some of the most avid promoters of that measure, contributing most of the $767,000 used in that campaign.)

So, no, developers haven’t made the case that they’re being overburdened by local government.

But local government has some ’splaining to do as well.

In particular, the city needs to clean up its act in accounting for how it’s spent traffic impact fees thus far. A handful of loose papers instead of itemized yearly reports is pure hogwash.

And the city’s methodology for calculating the fee seems haphazard as well, going from actual current costs for road widenings, signals, etc. to an average over the last five years.

Neither side is looking very clean on this.

Instead of buckling down and hammering out differences to fix problems, though, we’ve gotta get all lawyered up and start looking for a tree, so to speak.

I’ve said it before and it continues to be true: Development by lawsuit is the Kern County way.

Giving to panhandlers isn't solving a real problem

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist

Aug. 5, 2009

I wonder if everyone is as torn as I am when I see people on the side of the road holding cardboard signs begging for help.

I’m not heartless (not totally anyway). I want to help.

But then, I can’t help thinking: What happened to all the “Homeless veteran, please help!” people who seem to have been replaced by “Foreclosed family, please help!” people?

Did the “homeless vets” all find homes? Did the “foreclosed families” muscle them out in a turf battle?

Or have savvy panhandlers simply switched marketing tactics to prey on our sympathies and, lets face it, our fear that we’ll be making our own cardboard signs soon in this never ending dump of an economy?

The cynic in me suspects the latter which, in turn, causes my sputtering social conscience to look for solutions.

The thing is, foreclosed families are a very real and frightening phenomenon whose numbers are increasing at crisis rates. Though most aren’t begging for change on the side of the road, they are in dire need.

“Families are one the fastest growing segments of the homeless population,” Louis Gill, executive director of the Bakersfield Homeless Center told me when I called asking about how to handle these “foreclosed family” panhandlers. “People would be shocked to know how many families are living in vehicles in this town.”

If Dorothea Lange were alive today, he said, and knew where to look, she could make photos strikingly similar to her haunting images of Kern County during the Great Depression.

To get a sense of how quickly things have gone from bad to worse, he said he homeless shelter gave needy families $8,425 to assist with utilities and $29,331 to assist with rent and mortgage payments between February and June this year.

Then in a six-week period between June and July, it gave out $5,422 in utility assistance and $27,242 in rent/mortgage assistance. Yowser!

“The need is accelerating,” he said.

I asked Gill what he thinks of the panhandlers. His advice was to approach everyone in need with kindness and respect, but to consider giving information rather than cash and to support helping agencies, such as his, or perhaps your church or business has a charitable arm that could help.

“People can print out little cards with phone numbers and addresses and give those out instead of cash,” he suggested.

Everyone I talked with in the social services realm noted those same factors: needs are

increasing exponentially; and the community can do far more by banding together rather dropping a couple bucks on random panhandlers.

There are 240,000 Kern County citizens on some form of assistance right now, Human Services Director Pat Cheadle told me. That’s a third of our population.

“This is a whole new population coming to us,” she said. These are people who until recently had never been out of work, always paid their bills and never needed help.

In just one month, she said, 4,000 people who never applied for any kind of services before walked through her doors.

“We all know someone, a relative or friend, who’s been touched by this economy,” she said.

Because of the unprecedented need, Cheadle is considering new resources, possibly even forming a partnership with faith-based groups such as Kern Leadership Alliance.

I know everyone might not like a religious organization mixing with taxpayer money, but I think this could be a fantastic private-public partnership.

The Alliance was formed late last year and includes a couple dozen churches of all denominations that marshall their forces to provide whatever is needed.

“Our dream is that we can have the Department of Human Services, or anyone, come and explain what their needs are and then we coordinate among our churches and move forward to meet those needs,” said Shannon Grove, who serves on the Board of Directors for the Alliance.

Churches in the group recently responded to a call for service in Oildale by collaborating to provide everything from tutoring to financial help for families in danger of losing their homes.

“The people who need help now, they’re you and me,” Grove said. “They are the people who used to provide help to the people on the street.”

It’s serious and it’s getting worse for far too many families.

Which makes me wish the professional panhandlers would stop using their misery to make a buck and just be honest as was one man whose recently spied sign read: “Why lie? I need a beer.”

Don’t we all.

Panhandler advice
Instead of giving cash to roadside panhandlers, give them resources. If your church, service organization of business has a charitable arm, give them that information. Or point them to these agencies:

Bakersfield Homeless Center
1600 E Truxtun Ave
Bakersfield, CA 93305-5432
(661) 322-9199

Bakersfield Rescue Mission
724 E. 21st Street
Bakersfield, CA 93305-5241
(661) 325-0863

Or tell them to call 211, which is an information clearing house in Kern County where they can get connected to all kinds of agencies and services.

Taxpayers can't afford such luxurious benefits

By LOIS HENRY, Californian colunist
July 26, 2009

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous

My entire working life, I’ve only ever heard of pensions — kind of like how I’ve heard of unicorns.

And medical benefits? Sure I get ’em, but I, and my co-workers, pay an ever-increasing percentage to keep ’em (and we’re lucky for that, I might add).

So, although I know that Kern County department heads and managers work hard and have huge responsibilities, I almost spit Diet Pepsi through my nose when I saw how much taxpayers are kicking in for their benefits and perks.

We’re paying a little more than a third of their salaries — 33.48 percent — into retirement alone. (Based on a yearly actuarial review, that amount was bumped up from 30 percent a few weeks ago even as the Board of Supervisors was pressing for more painful cuts to public services. Sheesh!)

For Public Defender Mark Arnold, that works out to $73,200.63 a year of taxpayer money chucked into his “gone fishing” account.

For District Attorney Ed Jagels, it’s $69,152.49. New County Administrative Officer John Nilon gets $66,482.85; Resource Management Director David Price gets $56,225.28, and so on.

The county pays $13,044 a year per department head/manager for medical benefits.

That’s not a shocking number in itself, except when you learn they don’t pay a dime toward that tab.

I wonder how many Lotto tickets (retirement tickets as I call them) I could buy with what I have to contribute toward my medical premiums each year?

Things are different for new employees, thank goodness. Anyone, including department heads, hired after Oct. 23, 2007, must pay a portion of their medical and retirement costs for their entire county careers.

That’s a start, but considering the economy today, supervisors need to look much more closely at those in the upper pay strata.

Supervisors Michael Rubio and Ray Watson both told me they are ready to look at health and retirement costs, perhaps having existing employees pay more into those funds now, rather than wait for attrition to naturally reduce those costs.

That may seem harsh to some, but it’s what the private sector does when we get in a money pinch.

“It’s important to attract good, qualified people to these positions,” Environmental Health Services Director Matt Constantine ($111,557.35 base pay) told me about what he described as the county’s “generous but fair” pay and benefits.

He and others I spoke with reminded me that pay was increased a few years ago because the county lagged far behind other agencies and the private sector and not only couldn’t recruit good people, it was losing them to better-paying jobs.

That was then.

Now, the county is struggling and Constantine agreed it’s fair to re-evaluate. He noted that department heads and managers did not receive a pay increase scheduled for this month that was part of a three-year, 12 percent increase approved in 2007.

“Maybe in these tight times, other reductions should be made,” he said.

Such as, perhaps, the auto allowance — $7,296 per year.

Other than a few department heads/managers (Fire, Sheriff, Environmental Health maybe), I don’t see a great need for these folks to be driving around on county business.

Oh, and I found out when they DO drive on county business, they can charge mileage!

It’s a “reduced rate” of 15 cents per mile as opposed to 50 cents per mile, I was told.

To which I can only say, AAACCKK!

I’m pretty sure county business won’t grind to a halt if the CAO, auditor/controller, county counsel, employers training resource director and a host of others have to do without a car allowance.

But wait! Don’t answer yet, there’s more!

All department heads/managers get something called KernFlex pay —10 percent of their base salary.

KernFlex was started in the 1980s to make up for items not covered by employee benefits and was NOT used to calculate retirement costs. Time passed and a lawsuit made it clear that such extra pay, not uncommon in other counties, must be figured in to retirement pay.

So, every salary for a county department head or manager is really 10 percent higher than what appears on the surface.

I think that’s a little sneaky and, after talking to Kern Medical Center CEO Paul Hensler ($341,250.12 base salary, no KernFlex because he’s a contract employee), think it ultimately harms recruitment efforts.

Hensler, who acknowledges he makes a lot of money but said it’s about at the midpoint compared to similar positions in the state, said when he’s trying to hook new administrators, salaries look low here until he explains KernFlex.

“It puts us at a disadvantage. I don’t know why it continues.”

Agreed. Just roll it into their base pay so we all know who’s making what, or do away with it.

Kern could take a lesson from the new executive director for the Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, who was named just last week. This is kind of a hybrid agency, but it typically has followed county wages and benies.

No mas.

The new executive director, Rebecca Moore, who’s been with LAFCO since 1994, will earn $103,500, with no KernFlex. She’ll also be paying 20 percent toward her medical benefits and 8 percent into PERS. (She will get the car allowance).

Her predecessor, Bill Turpin, enjoyed the full county ride.

“I’m very happy with my pay,” she told me. “Sure, I was a little disappointed not to get

KernFlex, but it’s fair. It’s the right thing to do in these times.”

Wow, she’s a keeper!

Movement on the river

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
July 22, 2009

We may be one step closer to getting water back in the Kern River.

The State Water Resources Control board has set a hearing for Oct. 26-28 to hear testimony and sift through evidence about whether as much as 120,000 acre feet of river water is up for grabs after a water district was found to have forfeited it in 2007.

The city has argued that the water is out there for the taking and they want it to run down the river.

Imagine! A river in our river bed!

“This is the first stage of a two-stage process,” said Florn Core, Bakersfield’s water resources director.

This hearing will be very technical as the city and several water districts argue the fine legal points of whether unappropriated water is truly available.

Core said he feels the city has a strong case because during a 12-year-long legal battle over this very water, several lower courts found it was available, but the final decision had to be made by the Water Resources Control board.

At least four water districts and the city of Shafter have argued there is no unappropriated water. They’ve also said if the board finds there is some water up for grabs, they should have it for homes and businesses and irrigation.

I agree with the city that the river, and the citizens, should get that water for recreation, to restore the natural habitat surrounding the river bed and to replenish the aquifer.

I’ve encouraged people to write to the board in support of the city’s position. This upcoming phase is much more technical than simply saying “I want a river!”

But it still couldn’t hurt to send a note reminding the hearing officer that A) you want any unappropriated water back in the river and B) you’re watching this process closely.

If — big IF — the officer rules there is available water, then we’ll need a full frontal assault in support of getting that water back into the river. That’s still a ways down the road.

For now, keep your powder dry and cross your fingers.

SUPPORT THE RIVER!

If you’d like to send a comment in support of the city of Bakersfield’s petition and application write to:
State Water Resources Control Board
Division of Water Rights
RE: Kern River
1001 I Street, 14th Floor
P.O. Box 2000
Sacramento, CA 95812-2000
High points to hit:
State your support for Bakersfield’s position that there is unappropriated water in the Kern and that it should be run down the river to:
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"Trust me" science doesn't cut it

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
July 22, 2009

Oh brother.

Those were my first thoughts when I read yet another study designed to scare the breath out of us, literally.

This time around, it’s air pollution making babies dumb in utero (that means before they’re born).

The study, of 249 poor kids in New York City linked exposure to air pollution before birth with lower IQ scores later in life, which researchers said bolstered evidence that bad air may harm the developing brain.

Words like “link,” “may,” “suggest,” “associated with” and “could” make me very nervous when used in frightening studies like this one that not only cause worry over the health of our children but could, might, may, probably will, be used to create even more restrictive regulations for benefits that are at best uncertain.

Basics from the study:

The moms wore air monitors for 48 hours during the last few months of pregnancy to gauge inner-city pollution exposure. Of the 249 kids studied, 140 were in the high exposure group.

At age 5, those kids scored lower than kids not in the high exposure group.

All the children lived in low-income neighborhoods and and fewer moms in the high exposure group had graduated from high school.

I haven’t read the study, just the article about it, which we dutifully ran on the front page as many news organizations did because A) it’s a study and B) it’s scary.

But since I started delving into these kinds of studies more deeply, I’ve learned to be a more skeptical.

I contacted Stanley Young, assistant director for bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences in North Carolina, and asked for his thoughts.

Turns out he had already asked the authors of this study for their data set to see if he could replicate their results. They declined. (This has been an ongoing issue with the authors of other studies “linking” PM2.5 exposure with an increased death rate, but that’s another rant.)

Without the data sets, Young and other scientists were left to read the study and ponder its findings with the rest of us.

Just a couple of points I pondered were that the kids came from low-income neighborhoods and at least some had uneducated parents, two factors long associated with academic underachievement.

Young, who has a Ph.D in statistics and genetics, had more scientific ponderings. He noted the researchers did vast numbers of statistical comparisons and it doesn’t appear they adjusted their analysis to reflect the number of questions.

Asking loads and loads of questions means you increase your odds of getting a “hit” (something that is statistically significant) by chance alone.

“Statistically significant does not equal true,” Young explained. “But you will have to trust them as they will not give up their data set.”

He also noted that the lead author of the air-pollution-leads-to-dumb-kids study used at least some of the same children and others in previous research that linked (there’s that word again!) prenatal air pollution exposure with genetic abnormalities that could increase risks for cancer; smaller newborn head size; reduced birth weight; developmental delays at age three; and children’s asthma.

Whew!

Again, if you’re talking about low-income communities, factors such as diet, alcohol consumption, smoking and a host of others could be responsible for all those findings.

And I can’t help wondering, if you’re looking at the same set of kids and see developmental delays early on and then low IQ scores later, is it the air? Or the kids?

As Young points out, if you don’t let other scientists scratch around your data sets, we’ll never really know for sure.

Despite my skepticism, I’m not saying we shouldn’t do these kinds of experiments and studies, we should.

But the data should be open for inspection. In fact, considering the possible regulatory impacts on all our lives, if a dime of government money is used, it should be required by law .

Perhaps I have trust issues.

Answer to gang problem elusive

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
July 18, 2009

Most of us are lucky enough that we aren’t caught in this no-win situation.

You desperately want to make your gang-riddled neighborhood safer, but talking to the police makes you and your family a target.

What do you do?

I’d like to say I’d go to the cops because first and foremost, crime victims deserve a voice and, of course, doing nothing only makes gangs stronger.

If I lived in a neighborhood plagued by gangs, however, the reality would be much more complex.

I might have known these “vicious” gang-bangers when they were children, their family might be friends or family to my own. At the very least, they would know me, where I live, who my children are and where my friends live.
That makes me extremely vulnerable.

Which is why I can only encourage those living in areas where gang violence has exploded this year to come forward, even if only to give an anonymous tip.

But I can’t, and I won’t, judge them if they don’t.

That leaves the Bakersfield Police Department fighting a nearly impossible battle trying to solve 9 gang-related homicides, and far more shootings and assaults, that have occurred just this year.

Detectives are used to getting only scraps of information on gang killings, but for some reason, even that has dried up recently.

In an almost defeated tone, Lt. Hajir Nurridin noted that community outrage seems muted at best.

“These aren’t just numbers,” she said. “They’re real people.”

Indeed.

In January, husband and wife Curtis and Tina West, both 44, were walking home from the store in the early evening when someone walked up and blew them away.

On a soft spring night in April, 62-year-old Iva Lee Craig was killed and Mamie Foreman, 54, and Gregory Webb, 44, were shot by goons in a passing car as Craig closed the gate to her driveway.

A month later, a 30-week fetus was killed and the mother, Marisha Walker, 40, was shot multiple times, as was her husband, Anthony Walker, 49. Also shot were Anton and Heavenly Walker — both only six years old! — as they slept in their home.

In the early hours of July 5, a family reunion was shattered when thugs walking by a home indiscriminantly fired a semi-automatic handgun into the gathering, killing Anthony Johnson, 37, of Texas and wounding four others, only one of whom was from Bakersfield.

Earlier this year, I’d had hoped we might be making at least some progress on the gang front.

On April 19, Deputy District Attorney Cindy Zimmer won the crown jewel of gang convictions against Country Boy Crip gang members Corey Ray Johnson, 23, Joseph Kevin Dixon, 25, and David Lee Jr., 21, who went on a murderous rampage for nearly a year in 2007, attacking and shooting numerous people in separate incidents.

Killed were 19-year-old Vanessa Alcala and her unborn child and 21-year-old James Oliver Wallace, Dixon’s own cousin.

Each defendant was sentenced to three life terms.

When I spoke with Zimmer about her stunning victory in a case that could easily have ended in frustration as so many other gang cases have, she credited the DA’s ramped up gang enforcement efforts, tireless police work and most important, the witnesses who truly risked everything to testify.

Three of those witnesses are still in hiding. They had to move out of state, leaving everything behind, Zimmer said.

That those witnesses hung with Zimmer was incredible and not just because of threats to them. The whole trial operated under a cloud of intimidation. Audience members were kicked out more than once for picking fights and making threats in open court.

And one juror had to be excused after his wife was approached in the grocery store and told her husband had better vote “the right way.”

That is downright chilling.

But, like I said, we seemed to be making headway.

Shortly after Zimmer’s win, District Attorney Ed Jagels had a press conference on April 23 trumpeting the successes of his anti-gang program saying 85 percent of the 105 so-called “gang shot callers” were either in custody, dead, or on the run out of state.

Two days later, a 16-year-old girl walking with friends was shot in the leg by some coward in the backseat of a passing car. Two days after that, Craig was killed in her driveway and so on.

Sgt. Joe Aldana and I tossed reasons back and forth for the spike in gang killings and for the clampdown on information from witnesses. Could be distrust of the cops, could be fear, heck, it could even be a backlash to the increased enforcement efforts. Who knows?

The only thing we do know, and I’ve written whole columns on this before, is that no matter how hard Aldana and his colleagues work to solve these crimes, they’ll always be on the clean-up end of gang violence.

We cannot arrest our way to safe neighborhoods, as Sheriff Donny Youngblood has told me numerous times.

It’s up to us, the community, to do whatever it takes to keep kids from joining gangs in the first place.

But that’s a whole other rant.

The Vault