3-4-16

John’s Soapbox:

This morning I attended the Alliance Breakfast meeting and listened to City of Santa Rosa Department Heads David Guhin and David Gouin along with their boss Sean McGlynn. The three spoke to the priorities of:

Housing for All, Cannabis, Infrastructure, Homeless and Roseland Annexation

I wanted to applaud the ambitious efforts of the City Council and City staffers, but with a note of caution. When a City decides they want to solve big problems, and provide expanded services for all, those lofty goals come with a price tag. If none of you have noticed, we are doing ok but we are still rebuilding our nest eggs and financial safety nets of cash reserves depleted since 2007 with the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Who do you think will be asked, or are being asked, to foot the bills for these priorities?

YOU

This is a short column, written to be provocative about current topics, so I am not going to get into a detailed study of each priority. But since I have the typewriter, I am going to pontificate (like that word?) about one or two.

Let’s talk about “Housing for All” or the loose translation that reads “higher fees for anybody that chooses to build housing so we can subsidize those lower income folks that cannot get into what is market valued housing in Santa Rosa”. If our economy was a bit healthier, and folks were making more money on their paychecks, they could afford more expensive housing. If bigger paychecks were being paid, bigger loans would be issued. Maybe to get the bigger paychecks, the City should be enticing more businesses to stay or come here by actually lowering the business costs rather than adding to them. Just sayin’…

Aaaahhh – the sweet smoke of cannabis. Now we all know that the State may soon be legalizing Cannabis in a big way, and the Feds may actually follow suit soon. I will take a contrary position based upon my unscientific view of a van, a plumber’s van, driving down the Highway 101 rush hour traffic last night around Novato, with huge plumes of cannabis coming out of the driver window (at least 6 separate and enormous plumes while I am behind the van), until he stopped paying attention and rear ended the car in front of him. Now, far be it for me to claim that the accident had anything to do with the smoke plumes as it could have been caused by the van driver simply being angry at Hillary or Trump and taking it out on the car in front, but suspicious me says maybe we should not be so eager to “light up” legally on the highway-duh?

Infrastructure-the “red headed step child” of all Californians-by that I mean they understand they need to feed and provide some minimal shelter for their red headed step child, but they will only sustain that baby-they will never provide what is really needed! Last September I listened to a Santa Rosa consultant explain that the City’s infrastructure needs would be underfunded by around $400,000,000 over the next 20 years due to less income to the City from impact and development fees. Hmmm – think the City will cut public safety costs to help pay for the “red headed step child’s college education?” No.

Homeless– We should be dealing with the 67% (estimated) that are mentally ill. Instead of just building housing for them, maybe we should be looking at creating services for the mentally Ill.
And for those that are just homeless, teach them to fish, don’t give them a fish.

Finally – Roseland Annexation-enough already. Do it.

Hope you found this mildly interesting.

That’s all folks-

John