Page 4 - Mid Valley Times 10-3-19 E-edition

Thursday, October 3, 2019 | A4 | Mid Valley TiMes Editorial & Opinions
Serving the Readers of the Reedley Exponent, Dimuba Sentinel and Sanger Herald.
A Mid Valley Publishing Newspaper
Founded March 26, 1891, in a two-story building on the corner of 11th and F streets, by A.S. Jones
Fred Hall — Publisher
In my OPINION Californians shouldn't fund
gold-plated public pensions
It's a safe bet that if one were to ask most Americans what they love most about this country at least two words will immediately leap to mind; they would be freedom and equality. Both are in some jeopardy!
Random thoughts of experts, twins and sleeping in tomorrow morning
Rick Curiel — Dinuba Editor Jon Earnest — Reedley Editor Dick Sheppard — Sanger Editor
QUOTE
“It is by universal misunderstand- ing that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people under- stood each other, they would never agree.”
— Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
By Dick Sheppard
Once upon a time I rode with a friend from Sanger to a city in northern California. Neither of us had ever been there, so he asked OnStar for directions. Then he repeatedly argued with the mechanical OnStar voice giving us directions. We were late for our appointment because we had to backtrack a few times. He was absolutely sure his instincts were more correct than modern GPS tech- nology. He was wrong.
I am reminded of that ex- perience every time someone at city hall argues with an ex- pert, a voice of reason from an objective third party. It's hap- pened four times with grand juries and it's happening now with an audit firm.
It looks like James Miser and the most recent grand jury were on target with assertions of out of compliance spending of public safety money.
The long-awaited Measure S Compliance Examination (audit) of public safety funds was finally presented at Tues- day's Measure S Citizen's Oversight Committee meeting and the experts determined the city to be out of compli- ance to the tune of about $1.5 million during fiscal years "ended June 30, 2012 through June 30, 2018."
Miser, a CPA who served on the Measure S Citizen's Oversight Committee repeat- edly told the city pretty much what the report from Harshw- al & Company LLP CPAs says, money raised exclusively for public safety purposes is ap-
parently being misused.
The city, of course, argued with the experts, Miser, the grand jury and now the audi-
tors.
The auditors might have
been more critical if they had been given attorney opinions written in 2012 and 2013 about the use of public safety mon- ey and how line item account- ing should be used. For some reason, those letters, are not among the material cited by the auditors.
•••
Got an email last week from
Ralph Nasalroad asking if I re- membered doing radio play by play of Reedley High School basketball games when he and his twin Ray were on the team.
I have even more vivid rec- ollections of doing play by play of Reedley College basketball games when Ray and Ralph and Lloyd and Floyd Sanders from Sanger were on the team. Two sets of identical twins.
Even though I repeatedly messed up and used the name of the wrong twin, the long ago sports editor at the Bee heard one of the games and gave me a call when Bill Thompson was about to leave KMJ Radio and KMJ-TV, Channel 24, to join the San Francisco Giants broadcast team. I guess he figured anyone who could even get through a game with two sets of twins, should have a shot at TV.
A few weeks later I was sports editor at KMJ Radio
andTV.
•••
After a more than 50 year, mostly fun, radio/TV career in Dinuba, Fresno, Sacramento,
Los Angeles and the Bay Ar- ea I was lucky enough to wind up with a more than 15 year, even more fun, newspaper ca- reer in Sanger.
Dick Sheppard
Freedoms are being incrementally
usurped by our own government and
special interest groups who attack constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Equality is being openly contested when it comes to gender, race and other criteria. Government is one group who seems to be working on a daily basis to make sure one class of people is more equal than oth- ers. Themselves!
If one is fortunate enough to have a government job, it would appear that they live by a separate set or rules providing privileges which are underwritten (financed) by the citizen. The government employee is paid more than a similar private sector job and is provided per- quisites, including retirement and “Cadillac” insurance plans which are unavailable to most.
Obviously retirement, which is rushing head-long at all of us, is a universal concern for both the workers in the public sector as well as the private. The main point of departure is that government meddling, re- strictions, requirements and bureaucracy have made retirement plans unaffordable for private employers. Those people who head out every day with their lunch boxes must either turn to 401Ks, traditional savings or investments. None of these have performed extremely well in recent years.
Let's compare that private sector pension situation with the “cat-bird” position currently occupied by gov- ernment employees. Comfortable retirement payments have been promised to state and local government workers that either few or no private sector companies offer any longer because they are unaffordable.
Complicit politicians have jumped in to make these bloated plans even worse because they have failed to adequately fund their overly-generous pensions. The debt crisis is an existential reality due to its large and growing funding gap. The thing that all of us must real- ize is that these public employee guarantees of a com- fortable retirement have been legally assured by using the taxpayer as guarantor.
At this point, you might find yourself asking how bad can it be? A good point to begin to establish some sort of perspective would be to point out the fact that there are 40,000 government employees in California who took home over $100,000 in retirement pay thanks to the “sweat of the brow” of hard-working California citizens.
Also, for your consideration: The nature of short-term or early retirement is so prevalent in the public sec- tor that many were only so employed by a government agency for only about 45 to 60 percent of what would be considered a normal career. CaPERS and CalSTRS is often augmented by contributions from another job. Adjusting for what would be considered a full career, the average pension was worth more than $78,000.
Government is the one entity which one can expect to continue to grow in size, leaving one to ask, why should hard-working California citizens, many of whom face uncertain retirements, be asked to pay higher tax- es to insure the “trough remaining full.” The simple answer is that they shouldn't be expected to fund gold- plated public pensions.
If you're anything like most people, right about here is when you begin to ask why government can't live un- der the same terms they expect us to live. The entire system has become two tiered where one has essen- tially an indentured class working to support the elites who are in the ruling class. Most of us love our local officials, but this has to stop somewhere.
But, as always, that's only one man's opinion.
I had never
worked at a newspaper when publisher Fred Hall offered meajobandIwasnotcon- fident in my writing ability. The last couple of decades in broadcasting had been in man- agement, not in front of a cam- era or behind a microphone.
Eli Setencich from Sanger, one of the best columnists the Bee ever had, told me, "Dick you've always been a smart al- eck, so go with that and write the way you talk when you're mostly sober." I've been doing that ever since.
•••
This is my final column as
editor of the Herald/Mid Val- ley Times, I get to sleep in tomorrow morning. But, be- cause I'm not sure our city ad- ministration is ready to be left unmonitored, I'll still write a column now and then.
Thanks for reading what I've written over the past 15 years and I hope we're still friends, even if you didn't agree with everything I've had to say.
When you see me around town please let me know if you have any tips on successful re- tirement. I'm not sure I'm go- ing to be very good at it.
Retired Dick Sheppard can be contacted by email at dick- sheppard86@gmail.com
Fred Hall
October is Fiesta time in Reedley, this year's theme is 'Paint the Town'
One parade down, one to go.
Two weeks after Dinuba celebrated its annual Raisin Harvest Festival parade on its downtown streets, the city of Reedley will host its biggest bash of the year — the 54th annual Reedley Fiesta and pa- rade.
The parade along G Street in downtown Reedley will be- gin at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 12. This year's theme is "Paint the Town" and the city caught some of that spirit with a re- cent art hop event featuring local artists and downtown businesses.
The Fiesta is the event where the city truly celebrates itself and its community mem-
bers. Three such members will be celebrated in 2019 — Fiesta King and Queen Ron and Kathy Nishinaka, and Grand Marshal Susan Lusk. We'll profile Ron and Kathy in next week's issue of The Times, and Susan will be featured in our special Fi- esta section inserted with next week's issue.
As Reedley, Dinuba and Sanger have all drawn together to make up the new incarnation of The Times, the three com- munities are invited to come together for another major re- gional event. Sanger will host its own parade later this fall, the annual Veterans Day parade.
•••
I join the many in saluting
and thanking
Dick Sheppard,
the iconic long-
time editor of
The Sanger
Herald who I
had the great
privilege of
working along-
side for three years. Dick's fi- nal official day on the job was Sept. 30, as he's finally retiring and getting an opportunity to stop and smell the roses.
Not to worry. In the future, Dick will occasionally grace us with his written words of wis- dom. In this business, it's hard not to sometimes stop to sniff the press ink.
Jon Earnest