The Antioch City Council just had the first of many meetings in regard to building the fiscal 2012-13 budget and reviewing projections for the fiscal 2014 budget. Although Antioch, severely understaffed and not meeting community demands for services e.g. the Police Dept. only open to the public 16 hours a week, isn’t in the best fiscal shape, unlike our neighbor Brentwood, there is hope on the horizon. (Jim Frazier for Assembly campaign signs posted all over town on public rights-of-way, fences and other places not allowed in Antioch, aren’t helping our image either.)

Projections previously provided to Council reflected deficit spending in the General Fund of $50,881 in FY12 and $1,781,473 in FY13. Now, however, current projections indicate elimination of the FY12 deficit, largely due to an 8.8% increase in sales tax projections between March 2011 and 2012 and $800,000 in payments from GenOn to be received in July and December 2012. (Council directed that $100,000 of GenOn funds be used to supplement the code enforcement program.)

While the City’s General Fund could run out of fund balance in FY2014, primarily due to higher worker’s compensation insurance premiums and newly negotiated salary increases and other payroll factors, including PERs rates, consultants anticipate the City will return to 2008 sales tax levels by FY16.

In case you’re interested in the City’s investment portfolio, 28.39% is invested in Federal Home Loan Banks, 24.03% is invested with the U.S. Treasury, 28.39% with Fannie Mae, 18.40% with General Electric Company plus other numerous investments including Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (0.73%).

Who would argue that teaching is not a demanding vocation? Consider, after, all, the two greatest exponents of the art, Jesus and Socrates. One was crucified, the other poisoned; both in the line of duty.

Not that it takes the ultimate sacrifice, though, to qualify teaching as a challenging line of work. Ask any parent, who play the ultimate teaching role, and they’ll tell you. Kids don’t readily absorb wisdom through their pores. That is why lecturing is mostly an exercise of in one ear, out the other.

After all, we’ve learned that no one size fits all. The best teaching employs multiple approaches with the understanding that no two kids are facsimiles. Then factor into the equation the proven theorem that kids love to do the opposite of what you tell them and you can see the wisdom of the Socratic method. Showing is better than saying but the penultimate success comes from the art of suggesting. A practiced teacher pokes and prods self-discovery. Good teaching is, in the end, doing. Paradoxically, it is learning inside out.

Given, then, that even under the best of circumstances effective teaching is a tricky and nuanced proposition, imagine the dicey mission  we have now put at the doorsteps.  In this global economy and age of of lightning-fast information teachers are asked to deal with kids who wire down when they enter the school portals. They are asked to keep this wired generation engaged while producing minds that seamlessly communicate, collaborate and thrive on critical  thinking. They face this already daunting task while asked to be equal parts disciplinarian, entertainer, coach, social worker, counselor, motivator, sociologist and statistician.

Strikingly, one elementary teacher was telling me that years back it was expected that  you might have one or two ‘problem’ kids in any given class, a child suffering a.d.a. or impulse management or maybe from a troubled home. Control issue, yes, but the juggling came with the territory.

Nowadays, the teacher reported, that classroom management factor typically runs 6 or 8 or 10 kids, with gripping issues such as homelessness, parental unemployment, child abuse, family addictions, latch-key environments, or stressed out commuter parents. That’s a lot of fires to put out.

Broken families? That phrase from another age that once stirred concern now sounds hopelessly old-fashioned in its’ lament. Facts are, more than half of marriages dissolve and some communities have born out of wedlock rates at 70%. As backdrop, Antioch has seen a 250% increase in group homes and a 200% increase in foster homes.

Then throw into this mix the jolt of assimilating  an explosive pace of urbanized migration and transiency; an increasingly permissive, materialistic, violent and instant-gratification addicted society; and a culture where the authority of teachers is casually questioned by students, parents and the ACLU alike. It spells an uphill battle.

Not to mention yearly pink slips and the No Child Left Behind pressures of  test mania; nor the difficulty of doing all of this in a state where classroom size and the staffing ratio of counselors, nurses, psychologists and librarians scrapes the very national bottom.

Tough gig? I say! Hopefully on Tuesday, May 8th, which is the National Day of the Teacher, we thank these unsung heroes and heroines for what they do. Let’s remember that  a teacher in teaching our son teaches our son’s son, that his or her influence has no end but ripples to the shores of eternity.

Walter Ruehlig

Antioch

Ruehlig is a Trustee on the Antioch School Board

The Contra Costa Clean Water Initiative, whose ballot results won’t be known for a few weeks, was basically a deceptive shakedown which not only didn’t present an opposition argument but, due to the requirement that only property owners, rather than registered voters, approve the fee, the process was able to bypass the independent Contra Costa County Elections Department!

Homeowners already pay an annual “Federal Storm water” charge so why the need for this new tax which needs only majority approval to pass? Advocates claimed that the money is needed to address new state and federal clean water mandates and that, without additional funds, local communities could be forced to pay large fines and be subject to third party lawsuits if not in compliance with strict new clean water mandates. If this was a righteous argument who not present an oppositional viewpoint in the numerous mailers sent to property owners?

Frankly, I don’t react well to threats and I voted no on this unjustified tax as did Contra Costa County Supervisor Mary Piepho and the Antioch Unified District school board. Regrettably, after a discussion on the subject by the Antioch City Council on March 27th, it was decided by Council action that that city ballots not be voted, when the vote failed on a 2-2 tie.

There are some serious problems with the proposed Clean Water tax (they call it a fee, but any time government takes our money it’s a tax) and the election being run to get it passed.

First, the election ballots have the property owners name on them, so it’s not a secret ballot. Those compiling the results of the election get to know how someone voted. That goes against the American way of elections.

Second, foreigners can vote. Since it’s a Proposition 218 election, in which only property owners get to vote – which I don’t have a problem with, since they’re the ones who will be paying the additional “fee” included in their property tax bill. But, many properties in California are owned by foreigners and/or foreign companies. That means they get to vote. That’s not the American way of elections, either!

Third, the campaign being waged to pass the tax is being run by the county’s Clean Water Program, and the mailings to promote it are funded by our tax dollars! Tax-dollar funded campaigning to pass another tax? Really? The craziest part – although to be fair, Clean Water Program Manager Don Freitas stated it was a mistake by a staffer at the company that was hired to print and mail the campaign material – the first mailing hit the homes on the day of the vote by the county Board of Supervisors, when they decided whether or not to allow the vote to go forward. (The election was going to happen anyway, since there wasn’t enough protest votes to stop it).

Fourth, ballots will be counted by a certified public accounting firm, Carol Keane & Associates, based in Walnut Creek and not the County Elections Division of the County Clerk’s Office. So, how can there be any accountability or public oversight when the ballots are counted, like other elections?

Fifth, and the most important part, is the tax really necessary? While if it passes, it will generate about $8 million a year, that’ s only a third of the estimated $25 million a year that’s claimed to be needed to clean up the water ways in the county. While I agree there’s a need, since it’s such a high priority, why doesn’t the county budget for the entire $25 million in their budget of $1.2 billion?

With all the flaws in this election this proposed tax should be rejected and the Board of Supervisors should just reprioritize their spending for 2012-13 and include the $25 million cost for the clean water program in next year’s budget when they adopt it in June.  Your ballot must be received by 5:00 p.m. on April 6, 2012, which means you need to mail it a few days before.

In addition, it’s clear some new state legislation is needed to clean up the Proposition 218 election ballot process, eliminating the name on the ballot of the voter to keep it a secret ballot and eliminate the right of foreign property owners from voting in American elections.

Allen Payton, Publisher

P.S. Just got this additional problem from a reader –  “Another problem is that the list of property owners is not current and I have personal knowledge of a property foreclosed last January and the ballot was still sent to the foreclosed property owner.” So, now some renter or renter can vote that ballot and mail it in.

It is anticipated that the BART Board will award the contract to build BART’s $3.4 billion fleet of new train cars to the lowest bidder, Bombardier Transportation, a Canadian company, which priced a single car at $2.95 million, 2% below Alstrom, a French firm, and 4% below Hyundai Roten, a South Korean manufacturer.

Bids were to be scored on several factors, price being the number one factor, experience, design, approach to work, delivery speed and energy efficient the other factors of importance. (Federal law requires transit agencies must buy rail cars from companies that produce 60% of the car’s total value in the United States.)

However, there may be a fly in the ointment – the quality of the product.
Perhaps the cheapest bid isn’t always the best, especially when you consider what happened when the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) chose Bombardier to manufacture 706 new train cars.

The 40 new CTA rail cars which debuted in Chicago in April 2010 were taken out of service shortly thereafter after inspectors found flaws in the wheel components manufactured by one of Bombardier’s Chinese suppliers. Bombardier and CTA immediately began more inspections and found issues with other castings. The plant shut down production and CTA took the trains containing the flawed parts, out of service. Bombardier ultimately agreed to replace parts in all 52 rail cars already delivered to CTA. Molly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for CTA downplayed a Chicago Tribune report regarding possible derailments and Maryanne Roberts, another spokeswoman for bombardier, said BART riders shouldn’t worry about the safety of the company’s rail cars.

Frankly folks, if BART gives the go ahead to Bombardier I think I either drive to wherever I’m going or just wait for the long anticipated Antioch ferry service.

Restore the Delta would like to thank  our supporters, the members of the Delta Coalition, members of LAND, the fishing community, and our friends in Discovery Bay for turning out for Tuesday’s (March 13, 2012) legislative hearing.

About 100 people who care about the Delta came out to make sure their objections to the BDCP and the Delta Plan were heard. Contrary to the  repeated comments of Jerry Meral, the Delta is united.

And contrary to the comments of Phil Isenberg, the people in the Delta are just beginning to make themselves heard.

Special thanks to our friends who drove from Berkeley, San Francisco, and San Jose to make public statements on behalf of the Delta.  We appreciate you very much.

We also know that many of you wanted to make statements, or longer statements, and a number of you ended up watching the hearing in the hall or in the cafeteria.  We thank you for being there.  Being there (in bodily form) is a statement in itself.

It’s going to be a long, hard fight.  But step by step, we know that our message of reduced water exports, improved levees, and local water projects to increase water supplies throughout the state, will be the winning message of the day — not just for the Delta, but for all Californians.

Yours in service,

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Jane Wagner-Tyack, Jessica Iniguez, Brett Baker

Based in Stockton, Restore the Delta is a grassroots campaign committed to making the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable to benefit all of California. For more information visit www.RestoretheDelta.org.

Dear Editor:

By Barbara Zivica

I was amazed to read that the Chamber of Commerce nominated the Antioch Unified School District as one of the two contenders for the title of Large Corporate Business of the Year; the other contender being Allied Waste Services who ultimately won the title.

Folks, the Antioch Unified School District (AUSD) is NOT a corporate business. Corporations, which come in two different forms – the C corporation and the S corporation, are the most complex and structured of all legal business structures. Corporations operate as a separate entity from their owners and shareholders and can make income and suffer losses. A Corporation can sue other parties when its rights have been violated and can be sued by other companies or shareholders. A school district does not hold stock or shares which investors can buy or sell.

The Antioch Unified School District does, however, have a huge portfolio of land not being used for school sites or other district use, land which if sold could used for capital projects or improvements, such as facility renovation or building new schools instead of asking voters to approve another bond measure. (Ongoing maintenance is supposed to come out of district operating funds, districts being required to dedicate 3% of their general fund budget for this purpose.)

Furthermore, AUSD is going to structure the proposed $59.5 million June ballot measure to modernize Antioch High School, whose principal is the son of Councilwoman Mary Rocha, in the same manner as the previous 2008 $61.6 million bond measure, by forming a school facilities improvement district (SFID) which is similar to a Mello Roos district, but which requires only 55% voter approval rather than two-thirds voter approval.

In addition to voting no on this bond measure, voters should “pink slip” district administrators and school board members that support this unjust parcel tax measure.