Page 4 - Reedley Exponent 6-14-18 E-edition

The Reedley Exponent A4 Thursday, June 14, 2018 Editorial & Opinions
Serving “The World’s Fruit Basket” since 1891
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
Jon Earnest — Editor
Chris Aguirre — Sports Editor Felicia Cousart Matlosz — Panorama Editor Budd Brockett — Editor Emeritus
QUOTE
“Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.”
Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832)
Although the “jungle” primary election on June 5 did produce some surprises, it primar- ily (no pun intended) held up for public display just how chaotic and dysfunctional politics in California has become — which was graphically detailed by the length of the ballot. I’m sure every candidate who ran for public office is a wonderful person, but it’s difficult to vote for them when one knows little or nothing about who they really are or what they stand for! In California, it’s often difficult to figure out what the real agenda of incumbents might be because they say one thing and do another when elected.
Workshop on mobile food vending provides some tasty food for thought
Fred Hall
If you missed dinner and were hungry the evening of June 12, the Reedley City Council Chambers was not the place to be after 8 p.m.
That’s because Rob Terry, the city’s community development direc- tor, conducted a 45-minute workshop to discuss an urban trend that’s quick- ly growing in popularity — mobile food vending. In lay terms, that would be food or catering trucks. Any mobile eatery on wheels, in other words. Con- trary to the old “greasy spoon” truck, these new trucks and trailers in an outdoor food court venue are seeing increased success in a controlled op- eration.
Terry’s presentation displayed numbers showing that popularity. Since 2012, revenue has increased 8 percent a year compared to just 2 percent annual growth among brick and mortar restaurants. That revenue reached $1.2 billion in 2016; still less than .001 percent of the $709 billion restaurant industry in America.
Registered food trucks are also in- creasing. The 5,000 figure reported in 2015 is expected to swell to more than 10,000 by 2020. The New York Times and The Daily Meal report that 30 of the top 100 food trucks in the country are in California.
And the interest isn’t limited to just regular food trucks. Trailers and outdoor food court venues have experienced success in a controlled operation. Terry’s photo presenta- tion includes venues and parks from around the nation. Two listed were in California — the Soma Streatfood in San Francisco and Gazebo Gardens in Fresno. Terry shared how the locale
in central Fresno routinely hosts the Central Valley’s top food trucks and also has weekly live music.
Terry said that Gazebo Gardens’ site owner calls their mission very simple: “He wants to provide a place that simply celebrates local integrity and community.” He said the food truck park — started in 2013 — draws a mix of people every weekend.
“The owners have said that this has grown into something much more popular and much more supported by the community than they ever really thought they were going to see,” Terry said.
In his presentation, Terry said that operations for mobile food vend- ing could fit within existing city poli- cies with one minor adjustment. That adjustment allows for multiple food trucks to be within 1,000 feet of each other in an approved location only. That would be a change from Reed- ley’s existing ordinance. He said all other city regulations can be main- tained with more specific language added to clarify the regulations. He suggested that an interim policy can be implemented for a 12-month trial period and then reviewed. The city’s current ordinance would remain in place for vendor operations within public right-of-way.
The whole mobile food vending idea is an interesting concept. It’s likely to attract support from young- er millennials, and probably just as much opposition from existing eatery businesses. That’s a fair argument. Reedley resident Tony Jewell pointed out that traditional restaurants have to comply with Americans with Dis-
abilities Acts guide- lines for handicap access.
But there also
is the argument
that more dining
options, especially
if it’s the outdoor
variety, can end
up a benefit to all
involved. Terry even used the local example of Ortega Taqueria. The business first gained renown as a food truck in 2010 and eventually expand- ed to open a restaurant on I Street in 2014.
For now, the topic is merely in the discussion stage. But it makes for some interesting possibilities in the future.
•••
One other interesting development
transpired at the June 12 council meet- ing: the council unanimously approved three items which results in the an- nexation of property at the northeast corner of Manning and Buttonwillow Avenues. The plan is to develop the 19-acre site for development, start- ing with a new United Health Centers medical clinic.
David Phillips, community direc- tor for UHC, said “We’re going to add significantly more services for Reedley residents.” The project will employ 60 people during construc- tion. Phillips said the organization is hoping to have the clinic ready for full operation by January.
More on this in the June 21 issue.
Jon Earnest
We were told — repeatedly and often — by a local newspaper just how awful and evil Devin Nunes is and that the race between himself and Andrew Janz was a referendum on Donald Trump and had nothing, basically, to do with either of them. Detractors loudly proclaimed it was about Trump and Nunes’ defense of our president. To us, it appeared Nunes was only pursuing the truth and defending the rule of law.
That bit of wisdom of the election really being about Trump, men- tioned above, was penned by a sportswriter, with a subsequent at- tempt by his organization to walk it back a bit. They appear to claim they were talking about the general election while explicitly stating otherwise in the headline for their piece.
Jim Costa, longtime Democratic and left-leaning sycophant of the party apparatchik as well as do-nothing Central Valley Congressman from the 16th Congressional District, had the fight of his life against a virtual unknown in the political world, Elizabeth Heng. When one considers the extremely thin margin separating these two candidates, one should also realize that this district leans Democrat by more than nine percentage points, making it the 125th most Democratic district in the entire nation.
Since about 1960, voter registration in California has become so left-leaning and liberal that it’s sometimes difficult to imagine any sce- nario under which Republicans might win an election. The “blue wave” seems non-existent and hope does remain in several races. Once one gets outside the huge metropolitan area of this state, there even seems to be a few Democrats who could be considered moderate. Sadly, those big cities, of which I speak, tend to give us a litany of lunacy.
Considering the tremendous edge of registered Democrats over their Republican counterparts statewide, there appears to be little hope in the near future of a conservative restructuring of the politi- cal scene as is being witnessed in other states. We do, however, take solace in the fact that there is an ever-growing number of California cities that are joining the United States government in its lawsuit to rid this state of its ridiculous notion of being a “sanctuary state.” How like the Old West we have become when there are entire areas which are to be considered safe zones for outlaws.
What kind of message do you suppose that sends to the worst among us?
Even prior to statehood, this was an extraordinary area, beautiful, expansive, rich in minerals, pastureland and rich soil for farming.
Why should the strong people who built this great state stand by and watch as politicians destroy and denigrate everything we’ve worked for so they can build their personal coffers and bankrupt the rest of us?
We believe that common sense — while it indeed is in short sup- ply today — is a singular guiding force for millions of Californians. Perhaps it is time to rise up and declare, “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.”
But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.
For many, 1968 marked a year of lost innocence
By Mark Hendrickson
Guest columnist
This past weekend, I celebrated the 50th anni- versary of my high school graduation with most of the surviving classmates of the Cranbrook (Mich.) School Class of 1968. They became accomplished men (it was an all-boys school then), whose greatest common achievement has been to be solid family men.
Looking back, though, ours was not the typical exuberant graduation day. Our scheduled commence- ment speaker, U.S. Senator Robert Griffin (R-MI), had to cancel at the last minute to attend the funeral ser- vice for a fellow senator— Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), who had been assassinated in California just two days earlier after having won that state’s Democratic presidential primary elec- tion. While we were all grateful to receive our di- plomas from an extraordi- nary school, the tragedy of RFK’s murder cast a som- ber pall over the occasion.
Indeed, 1968 was the year when many baby- boomers — and in particu- lar all the high school class- es of ’68 across the country — lost our innocence. Our class had grown up during one of the happiest times in American history. We weren’t quite old enough to remember the Korean War, and so growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s, it seemed as though peace, prosperity,
and carefree times were the normal, natural conditions of life on earth. We were naive, of course, but it was, comparatively speaking, a glorious period.
In the ‘50s, we middle- class suburbanites never locked our house or car. The ‘60s seemed to open up lim- itless, brighter possibilities — from black-and-white TV yielding to color to the giddi- ness ignited by the Beatles to the breathtaking marvel of sending astronauts to the moon. There were occasion- al interruptions of the near- idyllic world of the Class of ’68 — the assassination of President Kennedy in No- vember 1963, periodic racial conflict, and the emerging tragedy of getting bogged down in a no-win military venture in Vietnam — but until 1968, hope, happiness, and optimism prevailed.
1968 was the year that the illusory bubble of a carefree world was popped for the Class of ’68. That was the year we lost our in- nocence. I’m sure that the several older graduating classes of baby boomers, having outgrown the cocoon of high school and entering into the responsibilities of adulthood during the mid- ‘60s, had already left inno- cence behind, but for the Class of ’68, our naive, shel- tered childhood came crash- ing down with a bang in that eventful year.
On April 4, 1968, the country was stunned by the assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. I had grown up believing that fair play, respect, and freedom were universally accepted as “the American way,” but King’s murder violently showed that prejudice, hatred, ig- norance, and injustice were far from vanquished.
Just two months and two days later, on June 6, 1968, RFK was also killed by an assassin’s bullet. For the second time in two months, a shocking and monstrously wicked deed battered the in- nocence in which I, and ma- ny of my contemporaries, had grown up. Those two assassinations were slaps in the face to the Class of ’68: Grow up, kids, the party is over, your society is coming apart at the seams, you’re getting your draft cards this year, and it’s now your turn to deal with the sometimes- grim challenges of adult life. (Please don’t feel bad for us. We all take turns grappling with difficult challenges. The ones who really had it tough in ’68 were the Americans then serving in the Vietnam War. They had to experience the horrors of war while hear- ing about the apparent dis- integration of the country they longed to return to.)
In 1968, American soci- ety entered a grim period of discord and tumult. The as- sassinations were followed by such convulsive events as the counterculture’s clash with Chicago police at the Democratic National Convention that August, the
increasing incidence (and in some cases appalling anti- Americanism) of antiwar protests, the explosion of reckless drug usage, the ac- celeration of the trend away from church attendance, the exploding sexual revolution that glorified casual sex and spawned a wave of broken families and an abortion ho- locaust, etc.
Indeed, 1968 was a piv- otal year for me, for mil- lions of my contemporaries, and for our country. Fortu- nately, I have learned a few worthwhile things in the de- cades since. I have learned that the USA, despite too of- ten falling short of our high- est values and ideals, is still the world’s last, best hope, and deserves our patriotic support. I have learned that this world will always be in a perennial battle between good and evil — the tares and wheat — and we owe it to ourselves and others to cherish and emphasize the wheat. Life in this world isn’t always easy or fair. But life gives each of us re- peated opportunities to do things that make life worth living. Most importantly, I have learned that a merci- ful and loving God exists and will comfort us with a peace beyond anything this world can provide.
Mark W. Hendrickson is an adjunct faculty member, economist, and fellow for economic and social policy with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City (Pa.) College.
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