Page 3 - Sanger Herald 6-28-18 E-edition

By Dick Sheppard
SANGER HERALD 3A THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2018 EDITORIAL & OPINION
Our nation's birthday, is celebrated on July 4 every year, the date in 1776 when the original 13 colonies declared their independence from Great Britain by adopt- ing our Declaration of Independence.
•••
Random thoughts Happy birthday America ...
Our great country will turn 242 years old on Wednesday and it's looking pretty good for its age in spite of what some people on social media and at CNN might say.
242
The school board, at its June 26 meeting, took less than half an hour to review and approve a $137 million budget for the new fiscal year, starting July 1.
The City of Sanger is still working on
its budget for the new fiscal year and will undoubtedly get around to approving it some- time in the new fiscal year.
Last year it wasn't until August.
The councilmembers will get together in a special meeting at city hall this Saturday, the
Dick Sheppard
final day of this fiscal year, to attempt to pass a motion to extend the current year's spend- ing plan into the next fiscal year, which starts on Sunday.
Last minute issues related to the grand jury's criticism of the way the city has han- dled Measure S public safety money and con- tentions that the council has failed to respond to repeated requests to take action on a sports complex were primarily responsible for a council deadlock that prevented pas- sage of the budget at its final regular meeting of the fiscal year on June 21.
With any luck the council can get the next budget passed before the next grand jury, empaneled yesterday, comes to town.
•••
In response to the same question from
several people, "Will we see any changes in city government because of the most recent grand jury report?" No. Not likely. None.
Word got back to me a couple of days ago in the produce section of the grocery store - where I pick up cilantro, onions and tomatoes for my world famous Okie/Tex/Mex bean soup and most of the ideas for this column -
that one of the councilmembers has been let- ting everyone who will listen know that in his opinion the grand jury report was written by incompetents who were totally biased against the city and were way off the mark with their findings and recommendations.
Does that give you maybe just a tiny little hint about how seriously this council and city manager are likely to treat the report?
•••
Here's an interesting bit of grand jury trivia, Melissa Hurtado was on the citizens' committee that wrote the city's official response to the 2008-2009 grand jury report. That response pretty much agreed with everything the grand jury said.
This time around, Melissa is on the city council.
It will be especially interesting to hear her comments about the report.
•••
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
- Pogo Comments, complaints and suggestions
may be emailed to sangerherald@gmail.com or may be made by calling 875-2511.
GUEST local commentary
How to fix Measure S
In my OPINION
Tho$e $pontaneou$ demonstration$
By Vincent Wall
it can do it again. But, how should the council amend it to give the Oversight Committee some teeth?
In my opinion Section 66-217 should be amended as follows:
(a)(1) The committee may must adopt, and publicly post rules and regulations to govern proceedings and shall set a time for regular meetings which shall be held at least once each month. A chairman, vice-chairman and secretary will be elected.
(a)(2) At least at the second meeting of the calendar year the committee must review, may amend, and must approve and adopt the rules and regulations governing the proceed- ings.
(a)(3) the committee shall be governed by its adopted rules and regulations.
(a)(4) the public shall be allowed to partici- pate in process of adopting the committees rules and regulations.
In my opinion Section 66-218 should be amended as follows:
(a)(1) The citizen's oversight committee shall review expenditures of special revenue collected pursuant to this chapter only to determine whether such funds are expended for the purposes specified in the then-current public safety measure police and fire expen- diture plan, and
(a)(2) issuing Issue reports on their find- ings to the city council at least annually.
(a)(3) Committee members may must also review the annual financial or performance audits performed by an independent auditor.
(a)(4)The committee shall confine its over- sight specifically to revenues generated un- der this chapter. Revenue generated through other sources shall be outside the jurisdiction of the committee.
(b)(1) In order to preserve the integrity and independence of the oversight process, committee members shall not play a formal role in contracting, project management, or any other aspect of the public safety measure funding other than to verify that the funding under this chapter is used in accordance with this chapter.
(b)(2) The committee shall require at least annually that the city obtain multiple bids for an audit of the monies under this chapter. The role of the committee in selecting the
See GUEST LOCAL COMMENTARY, page 6A
The Sanger Friends of the Library are planning a day of fun on Saturday, July 28 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to celebrate the re- opening.
New furnishings are coming but may not be in place yet. But our day of fun will delight everyone. Come and see the changes.
There will be raffles and refreshments, magic and music, the color of ballet folklorico dancers, face painting and ice cream too!
Fun for everyone, youngsters and oldsters. Hope to see you there.
Rosa Huerta
An award winning 2018 member of the California Newspaper Publishers Association
The Sanger Herald is owned and published by Mid Valley Publishing, Inc, 740 N, Sanger, CA 93657 It is an Adjudicated Legal Newspaper
General Circulation in Fresno County, Order No 85500, Dec 1951 Sanger Herald subscriptions are taken by mail in advance
What we have learned
from the June 2018 Fresno
Grand Jury Report (“Re-
port”) is that Measure S
money is not being used
appropriately. In finding F5
of the report the grand jury
found that Measure S mon-
ey is being used for across
the board pay raises, about 13 percent pay raises, for police and fire departments. The grand jury recommended that to be consis- tent with the purpose of Measure S all pay in- creases for non-Measure S employees should not be taken from Measure S. Recommenda- tion R4. This finding and recommendation from the grand jury backs what the Measure S committee has been saying for a long time.
The city administration under at least Tim Chapa, and the city council, have been using Measure S as a slush fund to fund items from Measure S which are not in accordance with MeasuresS. Ithinkallcanagreethatapay raise for the police and fire is not a bad thing, although we may disagree that they needed
a 13 percent pay raise, but we can agree that if you are going to give non-Measure S police and fire personnel a pay raise that it needs to come out of the right pot of money. Measure S is not the right pot of money.
How do we fix this? How do we stop the city manager and the city council from us- ing Measure S money as a slush fund? The first step is what the Measure S committee
is already doing - attempting to clarify the definition of “supplement” and “supplant” in Section 66-214. As was being done in the Mea- sure S committee meeting on May 29, 2018.
The next step is to look at the Measure S ordinance. Measure S is contained in Sanger City Ordinary Number 1094, and codified
in Chaper 66, Article VI, Section 66-200 to 66-219, and recognize that under Section 66- 128(c) the Measure S committee has no, zero, absolutely no power to do anything. This is a problem. With this section the Citizens Over- sight Committee is toothless to do anything about inappropriate use of Measure S money.
The city council could change this just like it did with Ordinance Number 2017-02 when they amended 66-218(d). Since the city council has previously amended Measure S,
Save the date - Saturday, July 28
Yes, Sanger, the reopening of Sanger Li- brary is coming soon.
Established 1889 • Published every Thursday 740 N Sanger, CA 93657 • (559) 875-2511
Fred Hall, publisher Dick Sheppard, editor
Lifestyles editor: Mike Nemeth
Sports editor: Mike Nemeth
Front office: Sharon Mendoza, classified ads
Display Advertising: Paulette Garcia
Composition: Susie House
Press Room: Tom Flores, Phillip Marquez, Ricardo Fernan- dez and Geno Bravo
Mail Room: Anthony Dimmick, Sally Ramirez, Matt Gar- cia and Lorena Neri
By Fred Hall
Does anyone believe
that when hordes of rag-tag
young people gather to top-
ple statues, break windows,
destroy property and shout
down conservative speak-
ers with obscenities that
their actions are spontane-
ous? Fred Hall
If you're anything like I am, you watch some of the inane protests and demonstra- tions which are featured, with some regular- ity, on the television screens of the main- stream media and wonder what is the organi- zation or who is the individual that is provid- ingfinancingforsuchincidents. Certainly newspapers and social media via the web are not exempt from exploiting this craziness.
There can be little doubt that they are well financed and put together by an experienced organizingforce. Havinglivedmorethan
a few years, I no longer believe in coinci- dence. Electronic news outlets are notified in advance and the public relations side of these ventures is in full swing.
George Soros is one of those individuals who have become notorious through their efforts to place their thumbs on the political scales via generous cash infusions, but there are several others.
Many, especially in California, are young men who have amassed an incredible amount of wealth through their enterprising internet activities. TomSteyer, fromthe Bayarea, is utilizing his billions of dollars in available resources to carve a niche for himself and histwistedpoliticalvision. Manyhavegone to expansive lengths to use their windfall of cashtohelp fellowcitizensbutmorethana few have been unable to resist the siren song ofpoliticalchange. Makenomistakethat these people, as advocated by past president Obama would like nothing better than to “change America.” Truth is, most of us love America as it is, warts and all!
This latter group has found fertile ground among the corrupted thinking of many of our young people who have been conditioned— through the educational system—to arrive
at asimilarthoughtprocessasthefolksto whom we have assigned their education.
Today's youngsters have been so propa- gandized by their teachers and college pro- fessors because, at home, they were taught to respectthosepeople.. Isuspectthatmanyof us who are much older would find it difficult to accept the changes in what is now being profferedaseducationalmaterial. Ihavea granddaughter, attending Fresno State, who has openly been effected by politically active professors.
Vincent Wall
I have no problem with their personal political biases, but leave our children alone, especially in the classroom!
For every one of our kids, those early years of learning which should be dedi- cated to skills required to earn a living that will support a quality of life they want and deserve, have been usurped by corrupt individuals who, instead of teaching, are pro- gramming young minds.
Soros along with Steyer and their ilk would soon find that all that money they spend would be for nil once students were taught to think independently and logically. No longer would there be this endless supply of young people displaying such “lemming-like” behav- ior. So much for their protestations of being their own man or woman and an independent thought process on their part!
One of the most aggravating truisms of all time is that money is indeed the mothers' milk of politics. One has only to observe just how easy it is to buy the loyalty and obedi- ence of our politicians by special interest groups. This coercion is so prevalent that at any given time there are thousands of lobby- ists at work plying their trade of persuasion with our elected officials. Campaigns are won and lost by donated money by unions and special interest that swells the war chest of people who claim to represent us.
There seems to be no legal method to stem the financial infusion from these “Daddy Warbucks” kinds of characters under our current system of government. Our only defense is to be well and truly educated with an awareness that certain well-heeled indi- viduals and groups have no qualms about attempting to manipulate the politics of this great nation.
But, as always, that's only one man's opin- ion.
In addition to the Sanger Herald, Publisher Fred Hall oversees two other Mid Valley Publishing newspapers - Reedley Exponent, and Dinuba Sentinel. He can be contacted by phone at (559) 638-2244 or by email at fred@ midvalleypublishing.com.
SANGER HERALD(USPS 418- 340) is published weekly every Thursday for $25 per year for Fresno County residents and $29.50 per year for residents outside the county and $3150 per year for residents outside the state, non cancelable Periodicals postage paid at Sanger, CA and at additional mailing of ces
Postmaster: Send address changes to the Sanger Herald, 740 N, Sanger, CA 93657
Letters to the editor policy
The Sanger Herald appreciates letters
to the editor and encourages readers to participate in this public forum E-mail to sanger- herald@gmailcom Provide your name and tele- phone number The telephone number will not be published
No handwritten letters, please
Letters under300wordsandlettersfromwrit- ers who have not been recently published will be given preference
Letters may be edited for length, grammar and clarity
Letters that are libelous will not be printed