More than $2,000 raised

By Walter Ruehlig

A community’s educational positioning is like a three legged stool; it balances by taking the support of students, teachers and parents/community. More so than ever, we can’t do it alone.

Before even contemplating the academic No Child Left Behind challenge let’s start with the financial dilemma facing the Antioch Unified School District and its AUSD has suffered a staggering $74 million in state cuts over the last four years, with no end in sight to the crippling attack.

It’s a heady challenge; needing to train a globally competitive workforce while in the societal throes of an endemic breakdown of the family and simultaneously adapting to the radical transition of youth’s attention to a wired world; all the while addressing tumultuous change with far scanter resources.

The recent arson and vandalism incidents that shut down the Diablo Vista Elementary School kitchen and decimated the playground at Lone Tree Elementary were low blows, then, to an already tottering budget and besieged morale. As if money was free and easy, the tab for some thug’s mindlessness is now running upwards of two hundred thousand dollars.

Monday evening January 8th Take Back Antioch, led by Brittney Gougeon and the Lone Tree Elementary PTA, led by Patty Ward, said no to victimhood mentality. They demonstrated a fighting, proactive community spirit by holding a spaghetti dinner and raffle at the Red Caboose Restaurant to raise funds for the damaged schools,
particularly for enhanced security measures.

Lone Tree Principal Melanie Jones, Diablo Vista Principal Wanda Appell and School Board Trustee Walter Ruehlig addressed a packed crowd that included Mayor Jim Davis, Mayor Pro Tem Wade Harper, Councilman Gary Agopian and School Board President Diane Gibson Gray.

Good company, good food, good cause.

By Capitol Resource Institute

A recently amended bill in the California Legislature would allow boys to access the girl’s locker room, bathrooms and play and compete on girl’s sports teams, starting in elementary school. Assembly Bill 266 had been a bland bill dealing with sports teams and arenas. But with a quick amendment on Wednesday the bill now allows for self-selection of gender by students in California schools.

The modified legislation now states:

A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs, activities, and facilities, including athletic teams and competitions, consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.

By amending an existing two year bill, the modified legislation avoids certain hearing and public input requirements and perhaps some of the expected public opposition.

“The promoters of this legislation are exploiting children’s gender confusion with their proposal to let each student choose the bathroom and locker room where they most desire to be,” said Karen England, Executive Director of Capitol Resource Institute. “Does anybody really believe it is a good idea for either the troubled or the tempted to be told it is up to them to decide whether they should use the boy’s or the girl’s bathroom?”

AB 266 will be heard in the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday January 11.

Please contact your Assemblymember and the Assembly Education Committee members and urge them to oppose this radical piece of legislation.

Assembly Education Committee
Assemblywoman Brownley (D) (Chair)
916-319-2041

Assemblyman Norby (R) (Vice Chair)
916-319-2072

Assemblywoman Buchanan (D)
916-319-2015

Assemblywoman Butler (D)
916-3192053

Assemblywoman Carter (D)
916-319-2062

Assemblyman Eng (D)
916-319-2049

Assemblywoman Gaines (R)
916-319-2004

Assemblywoman Halderman(R)
916-319-2029 Assemblyman Wagner(R)916-319-2070

By Heather Gass

*****East Bay Tea Party Call to Action*****
Patriots,

Apparently the management at MTC (Metropolitan Transportation Commission) and ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) are so afraid that there will actually be REAL citizens showing up at their One Bay Area “Kabuki” theatre visioning meetings that they have intentionally been rigging the attendee list.

This goes to show how far these agencies will go to hide what they are really planning on implementing. They know that if the public really knows what SB375 (Sustainable Communities) and AB32 would really do to our economy and private property rights that we would say NO!

As of yesterday almost 95% of the citizens that have signed up for workshops around the bay area have either NEVER received a confirmation or only received one if they signed up identifying themselves as a “Social or Environmental Justice” advocate.

I have never heard of a PUBLIC meeting requiring the public to preregister for the event and identify and/or characterize themselves as either; “concerned citizen”, “smaller role of govt.”, “social advocate”, “social justice”, etc. MTC purposefully set a maximum attendance at each meeting to 100 people.

Currently all of the meetings are waitlisted. If so many want to attend they should be postponing the event and finding a bigger venue to hold it in. Many of these concern citizens signed up in early December and have never received an email confirmation. When they call MTC to inquire they never get a call back.

In late December Greenbelt Alliance, who is a strategic partner in One Bay Area and also co-sponsored and facilitated the visioining sessions last spring put out a desperate call to all their supporters advising them that REAL citizens would be showing up to these meetings and pleading with them to attend as well.

This is a Major conflict of interest and should not be tolerated. These meetings are meant for PUBLIC input not shills and stakeholders who seek to benefit by the outcome of these meetings. All of this is clearly their way of weeding out who is pro-One Bay Area and who is not prior to the meetings. They are only holding One public input meeting per County for all nine Bay Area counties.

These 900 attendees will be the only ones providing public input about the fate and future of over 7 million people in the Bay Area for the next 25 years! To have a government agency display such blatant disregard for the public is a travesty. MTC has clearly been controlling who is being allowed to attend.

I’ve had enough of this crap. Yesterday I filed a formal complaint with the DOT about the shenanigans going on with the signups with MTC. I also specifically emailed a complaint to Ted Matley with the FTA (Fed Transportation Association). You can also file a complaint directly with Mark Green, the chair of MTC.

My suggestion is that everyone on this list should do the same. We need to flood their in boxes with complaints. The Federal Transportation Association and Fed. Highway Assoc. will be holding a hearing next Tuesday to ask the Public how MTC is doing. This should give them something to talk about!

File complaints with DOT, FTA and also with Mark Green the Chair of MTC. Here is there contact info. We need to fight fire with fire. Do it today.

1. Ted Matley FTA Region IX office at (415) 744-2590, or by email at ted.rnatley@fta.dot.gov

2. DOT/FHWA Complaint Online OIG Hotline Complaint Form – E-mail to hotline@oig.dot.gov

3. Mark Green – MTC Chair markg@unioncity.org

——————————————————————————–

At this point….. don’t bother trying to sign up and register for these sessions. The process is obviously rigged. I say just show up. After all it’s your future and your tax money paying for all of this!

ONE BAY AREA JANUARY VISIONING SESSIONS
ONE BAY AREA
JANUARY VISIONING SESSIONS

Register Here: http://www.onebayarea.org/workshops/

Website: www.theeastbayteaparty.com
Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=78604449572
Twitter: http://twitter.com/EastBayTeaParty

By Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
Executive Director, Restore the Delta

Assemblymember Alyson Huber is sponsoring AB550 — a bill that would require the legislature to vote on the merits of a peripheral canal after a full cost analysis.

We believe that Assemblymember Huber’s bill is one of the most important pieces of proposed legislation for Californians. Can California tax payers and water rate payers afford to pay more out of pocket for a project that will benefit a few powerful water district leaders and corporate agribusiness growers?

Below, you will find Restore the Delta’s letter in support of the bill. Feel free to use it as a template to send your own letter to Assemblymember Jared Huffman, Chair of the Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee. The Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee will be taking up the bill on January 10, 2012.

We encourage you to take the time to support this important piece of legislation. The letter can be faxed to 916-319-2196 and/or dropped in the mail.
—————–
January 4, 2012

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, Chair
Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee
1020 N. Street, Suite 160
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Assemblyman Huffman:

Restore the Delta supports Assemblywoman Huber’s bill AB 550. AB 550 would prohibit the construction of a peripheral canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta without a full fiscal analysis and a vote of the Legislature.

Restore the Delta maintains that the people of California deserve to know that due process will take place before tax payers and rate payers are asked to spend billions of dollars on a peripheral
canal. It is imperative that our state’s Legislature continues to oversee large-scale projects and does not delegate its authority to unelected bureaucrats who are not held accountable by voters.

While you were busy celebrating the holidays and the Antioch City Council was taking a break from their usual biweekly meetings, a lot was happening elsewhere.

At year’s end Governor Jerry Brown announced he signed 745 new bills passed by the Legislature this year, many of which he deemed “useless” but commenting that for many lawmakers it’s the only thing they have to show for their time at the Capitol!

Regional planners also announced they would soon be holding public workshops to present alternatives to a new plan they call One Bay Area” – a state-mandated plan to promote “smart growth” policies, purported to be the solution to urban sprawl, highway congestion, air pollution, blight and social inequity by encouraging high-density, mixed-use housing adjacent to transit corridors.

The plan being developed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments, which would further deteriorate local control, is similar to a $750,000 plan entitled Shaping Our Future (SOF) adopted the County Board of Supervisors back in 2006 and similar to a regional plan “Focusing Our Vision, adopted by ABAG, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District shortly after the county adopted SOF.

The One Bay Plan, which would apply to all transportation and development planning in the nine Bay Area Counties through 2035, however, is more draconian as it could deny cities and counties that fail to follow the mandates millions of dollars in grants and incentives from the regional agencies.

Ironically, the first “transit village” built in Contra Costa County at the Pleasant Hill BART area didn’t increase ridership on public transit. A survey showed that 69% of the people who worked in the Pleasant Hill BART transit development area drove to work in single occupancy vehicles, 12% carpooled, 14% took public transit and 2% walked.

Governor Jerry Brown remains determined to pursue a ballot measure on tax increases next year rather than address the state’s consistent, structural spending inefficiencies supported by taxpayer dollars.

A 2007 California Performance Review states that 100 board and commissions could be eliminated without impacting the operation of state government. (The executive branch currently has 530 discrete institutions – 11 agencies, 79 departments and more than 300 boards and commissions.)

However, neither our state legislators or the governor, who created 20 new state agencies in his first term as Governor 28 years ago, seems motivated to do so or even address the two primary causes the review found for the high cost of operating the California government.

First, “responsibility for agency functions is scattered among numerous departments.” Secondly, “there is significant duplication of common administrative and leadership functions.” It’s estimated that integrating Departments to facilitate information sharing and eliminate redundancy, reducing the number of administrators needed in the process, would save the state an estimated $22 billion and make it easier for residents to apply for services.

Specific departments cited for lack of coordination and overspending are the Dept. of Health and Human Services (CHHS), the Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Dept. of Education. Texas, for instance, manages its HHS agency at just slightly over 1/3 cost of operating CHHS and with 6 departments to CHHS’s 13.

The Texas prison system, with a comparable number of prisoners (as of the end of 2009) had a budget of only $3.1 billion compared to California’s Dept. of Corrections and Rehab budget of approximately $9.5 billion (as of the end of 2009). California spends $47,000 annually per prisoner, 50% higher than the national average and almost 3 times that of Texas, whose recidivism rate is half that of California’s.

Education funding is California’s single largest collective expenditure, and takes over half of General Fund expenditures in the Governor’s 2010-2011 budget. The state, however, consistently fails to monitor how the funds are spent, wasting tens of millions of dollars that do nothing to further the state’s education system where approximately 30% of high school students fail to graduate.

Some examples of waste were the Dept. of Education, through an associated non-profit, paying $2.6 million to rent a vacant building for 2 years, and $80 million in unnecessary spending at U.S. Berkeley resulting from overstaffing, fragmented purchasing and redundancies in student services.
(During the past decade the student population in the UC system increased 40%, the faculty 23% and the ranks of senior management 97%!)

Unfortunately, for local government, the Governor just lucked out in a tossup at the California State Supreme Court, allowing him to dissolve the state’s nearly 400 redevelopment agencies and seize $1.7 billion in redevelopment monies. The Court struck down a separate law that would have allowed redevelopment agencies to stay afloat if they agreed to relinquish a large share of their funding to the state.

By Cynthia Ruehlig

Public officials and the media are flooding the news with hype on the urgent needs of the Delta as a prelude to the Prop 218 election. Still, vital questions are left unanswered on this new property-related fee, which will be imposed throughout Contra Costa County.

1. The Delta is bounded by Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Solano. Is the Delta clean-up shared by counties who equally benefit from these waters? Or is Contra Costa dirtier than others?

According to an environmental justice case study: “Since 1989, there have been 35 major industrial accidents in Contra Costa County, California. This makes it one of the most dangerous places to live in the nation. In fact, between 1989 and 1995, there were over 1900 different incidents reported in the county, making it the eleventh worst area in the entire United States with regards to toxic accidents.” http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/sherman.html

How much of the Delta’s problem was caused by the 2008 Discovery Bay and 2009 Richmond sewage spills or the toxic leaks and gas releases from industries on the rim of our county, which all eventually end up in the water?

2. Contra Costa collects $14 million for stormwater yearly. The clean water fee could possibly increase funds by 50% with no promise to build new or repair existing infrastructure. Are we splashing more money for the same purpose to continue the same solutions which apparently has failed despite a $14 million budget? Is there an assurance that the $14 million will not be diverted for other uses such as salary increases and OPEB liabilities as restricted money from the new source comes in?

3. The clean water fee apparently is a parcel tax in disguise. The amount charged will be imposed on the parcel/person as an incident of property ownership. The charade to use the word “fee” rather than “tax” apparently justifies the special election process adopted for the Clean Water Initiative. This fee passes on a majority vote rather than the 2/3 voter approval required to impose a parcel tax.

Additionally, many strategies to sneak through a parcel tax in a stealth election are being utilized: expensive consultant, informational campaign paid by public resources, scare tactics by politicians and media, simple friendly sound bites that “it is only a few dollars” while embarrassing the opposition as cheapskate, scheduling a quick and probable low turnout but expensive election by mail in April despite 2012 being an election year.

If Prop 218 is as good as the glossy flyers allege, why engage in deception?

Finally, watch the next election and connect the dots from known industrial offenders to the well oiled campaign coffers of politicians supporting Prop 218.

By Walter Ruehlig

If you’re like me, the standard fare New Year’s resolutions have turned a bit stale. After all, how many years running can I try and convince myself that this is the year that I’ll swear off New York cheesecake, be in bed with the farmers, and floss my molars between meals? I’m afraid, resolutions, in one year, out the other.

This time, then, I’m trying a not so me-directed resolution. I’ll focus on being a better neighbor., plain and simple. Who, after all, wouldn’t agree that Antioch has lost much of its’ small town charm? Assumed true, who wouldn’t agree that that’s a crying shame? If, after all, we wanted big city anonymity and practiced indifference we could elect to live in Oakland or San Francisco.

Here are some simple behavioral adjustments I’ll adopt with hopes that the neighborliness rubs off on others.

I plan on switching some of my time spent in the back yard to the front yard. Front porches, regrettably, may be an artifice of the past but I’ve certainly got a sidewalk-facing garden I too rarely enjoy. The frontage connects me to potentially talkative passerbys; the back yard isolates me in my own world, save a random chattering squirrel or two.

When a new neighbor moves in I vow to go over and say “welcome”; heck, I might even bring over homemade jam. It’s an opportunity to break the silo-like isolation of modern urban life. It’s also a chance to affirm with newcomers the message of a tight-knit, friendly, but non-intrusive block. That first meeting can set a tone of a street that watches out for each other’s safety and banners decorum and pride. Well-begun is half-done.

I will encourage more regular Neighborhood Watch meetings- hey, the concept works. Getting to know your neighbors, having their cell or work numbers, and agreeing to watch for strange vans pulling in driveways can do wonders. Fact is, far too many houses get their bones picked by trucks with fake company logos backed into garages pretending to be on servicing calls while the neighbors merrily “mind their own business”.

Neighborhood Watch, though, stresses vigilance, unity and strength in numbers. When the Police, Animal Control, Code Enforcement, Housing Authority or Health Department get calls from multiple parties they simply pay more attention. In this day and age, we don’t want to be a lone sheep waiting to be picked off. Antioch Police Chief Cantando has, in fact said that much of the 16% drop in violent crime last year had to do with the alert eyes and ears of the community.

I vow also that when I walk over to neighboring Hillcrest Avenue or County Hills Drive I will bring a trash bag to pick up litter. If only a fraction of us did likewise in our neighborhoods the city would continually sparkle. Small things do matter as the grafitti initiative started by Mayor Rudy Guliani demonstrated in New York. Unkemptness breeds chaos, tidiness breeds order.

Lastly, I will encourage a few new faces to join our neighborhood’s annual holiday progressive party. It’s a take off on the neighborhood block party. At this event, you contribute to one food choice. House number one is an appetizer stop; house two, soup and salad; house three, main course; house four, dessert and maybe a secret gift-giving/stealing exchange, which can be a hilarious way of getting folks to better know each other.

This, then, is a practical resolution and one worth keeping. My profound hope and prayer for you all this New Year, and I hope your hope and prayer for me, is that we are the kinds of neighbors we wish those on our street to be.

Lady Bird Johnson had it right; “While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier because neighbors were so few, it is even more important now because neighbors are so many.”