There’s just nothing stinkier than a sewer.

Except maybe the whiff of double standards for the rich and powerful.

On the one hand you have county residents on Kimberly Avenue in middle-class northwest Bakersfield facing annexation because some homeowners there want city services, specifically, sewer.

On the other, you have county residents in the wealthy enclave of Old Stockdale getting city sewer hookups without even a whisper of the “A” word.

How come?

Apparently just asking the question is irritating, as I discovered when City Manager Alan Tandy testily demanded to know why I was asking about it. Otherwise, he said I was wasting his time. Ultimately, he referred me to City Attorney Ginny Gennaro.

A much less annoyed Gennaro told me that, yes, mistakes were made in allowing some residents of Old Stockdale to hook up to city sewer.

Throughout the city, she said, sewer agreements and contracts were entered into over the years that don’t fit with current policy but must sometimes still be honored to avoid lawsuits. And then there were some flat-out errors, as happened in Old Stockdale.

My conclusion: Our sewer system is schizophrenic and we should consider a more regional approach that focuses on efficiency and public health and safety instead of lines on a map.
That, or the city needs to bite the bullet and annex county islands like Old Stockdale not only out of fairness to other areas, such as Kimberly Avenue, that have to chose between no sewer or annexation, but also to follow its own ordinance passed in 2002 that states no one outside city boundaries can have city sewer service.

Ever since the annexation debacle of the late 1990s however, the city has been annexation shy.

Back in 1998, the city annexed a neighborhood near Olive Drive and another near Palm Avenue. Residents sued and detached from the city in 2000. State law changed as a result, putting most annexation powers in the hands of the Local Agency Formation Commission. (Except in certain cases.)

Now, the city only begins annexations of populated areas when residents ask to be annexed. That’s what’s happening on Kimberly Avenue. LAFCO will likely take up the issue in the next month or two.

I’ve never understood the annexation angst. Your basic property taxes don’t change; neither do rules about animals, despite what you may have heard.

Since the county went to mandatory garbage collection, the only real difference these days is sewer.

In recent years the county has tightened up its sewer/septic tank rules, requiring dry sewers in new subdivisions and hook-up fees so when sewer lines are built, homeowners can connect.

If you’re already on a septic tank, the city won’t force you on to the sewer, I was told. You hook in if you want to, or if your septic fails and the state deems the situation a health hazard.

Cost is an issue.

But it all depends on how close the trunk line is. For Kimberly Avenue residents, the trunk line is relatively close, so it will cost $11,800 per household (residents can pay that back over three to five years with no interest) and the yearly sewer fee is $155.

It’s not cheap, but for those who really want the sewer, it’s worth it.

Back in 2005, Old Stockdale residents Frank Cantelmi and Tracy Rogers each were planning remodels and wanted to hook on to the city sewer. A neighbor, Tharrell Ming, had done it the year before with no hassles, Ming told me. Cantelmi and Rogers were both initially approved and then denied. Cantelmi dropped the issue as too expensive to pursue, but Rogers kept at it and succeeded.

Cantelmi was given several reasons for his denial, including that state law prohibits a government entity from extending services to residents of another government entity. True, sort of, except if the city got permission from LAFCO, then it’s cool.

Cantelmi said he was also told that others, such as Ming, had “slipped through the cracks” and the city couldn’t compound its error by allowing anyone else to get on the sewer.

Not exactly true, either.

The city had an agreement with the Stockdale Country Club in 1980 allowing the club to build a line out to the city’s sewer line. The club could recoup its costs by allowing a specific set of nearby homes — 39 — to hook into the club line, at the homeowners’ expense.

Over the ensuing  years, 24 Old Stockdale homes have hooked up to the sewer, including Ming and Rogers who were both part of the original 39 allowable parcels. Five of those 24 homes, however, weren’t part of the 39 and Gennaro said those were mistakes. But you can’t unhook them now.

“It’s a tricky deal,” Cantelmi acknowledged.

As for when a city can annex without LAFCO approval, state law allows it for true “islands”  — such as Old Stockdale — that are substantially or totally surrounded by the city.

Considering how much effluent hit the fan the last time Bakersfield tried to bring Old Stockdale into the fold, I’d say that ain’t gonna happen.

Which brings me back to my original conclusion: the city and county need to come up with a more rational approach to the sewer issue in metro Bakersfield.

I've received so many calls and e-mails from people regarding horror stories of how their PG&E bills skyrocketed after the so-called "smart meters" were installed in their homes, that I'll likely be doing a follow up on that issue.

In the meantime, people have asked how to complain.

That info was in the column, but perhaps not prominently enough.

Here it is again:

First you need to call the Customer Service number on your PG&E bill. Don't worry if they give you the run around or don't seem to take you seriously.

What you want is to get it ON RECORD that you've complained about this issue and asked for them to investigate to make sure the usage numbers and charges are correct.

Next, call the California Public Utilities Commission and complain to them. They are the only oversight PG&E has and if you don't complain to them, you're pretty much spittin' in the wind.

Here's CPUC info:

You can call and file a complaint online. I recommend BOTH.
www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/forms/Complaints/

The main office is in San Francisco:
505 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel: 415-703-2782
Fax: 415-703-1758

For their Los Angeles office:
320 West 4th Street, Ste. 500
Los Angeles, CA 90013
Tel: 213-5760-7000
Fax: 213-576-7007
 

THEN, call the watchdog group TURN, The Utility Reform Network, and let THEM know you've filed a complaint and be prepared to fax them your bill as well.

TURN follows complaints to make sure the CPUC is doing its job, they watch the watcher, if you can believe that.

TURN info:

1-800-355-8876

www.turn.org/index.php
E-mail: turn@turn.org
Fax: 415-929-1132
Or mail: 711 Van Ness Ave, Suite 350, San Francisco 94102

This may seem like a lot of trouble, but it's got to be done or CPUC will NEVER make PG&E even double check it's smart meters.

I don’t think anyone will accuse me of being soft on the city.

So when I read about local hoteliers frustrated by Bakersfield’s take over of the Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, I was all set to howl about the city’s arrogance, its bullying tactics or, at the very least, its absolute incompetence!

Sigh. No such luck.

After researching the situation, I have to commend the city for taking on the bureau, which I believe could result in substantial growth of a previously overlooked and undernourished revenue source. This same source is downright anemic in the county.

I’m talking about “transient occupancy taxes” (hotel taxes) and other taxes we collect when visitors buy things like gas and food.

These are good taxes because the people paying them don’t hang around and expect services in exchange for their money. They leave and we keep the loot.
But we gotta get ‘em here.

The bureau’s job is to entice visits of large groups of tourists, such as we recently had with the March Meet and California Interscholastic Federation wrestling championships.
Groups like that don’t materialize out of thin air.

People at the bureau, and similarly the Kern County Board of Trade, spend years shaking hands at conferences and scouring trade publications to connect with these groups and pump up Bakersfield, or Kern, as the best place to hold their next event.

Unlike the Board of Trade, a county department, the bureau was a private, non-profit group. It survived on membership dues mostly from hotels and restaurants and a share of the city’s transient occupancy taxes, about 11 percent. The bureau’s total annual budget is about $875,000.

Leadership turnover and other issues resulted in Bakersfield taking the bureau’s reins (with the blessings of its board of directors) last summer.

There was a lag in the marketing effort as the city wrote new job descriptions to suit the bureau mission and adhere to Civil Service rules, establish accountability standards (reports were haphazard at best before, I’m told), set up computer systems and re-hire staff.

Hoteliers worry that lag will mean fewer “heads in beds” in the next 12 to18 months.

That may be a fair criticism.

What’s not fair are the hits new bureau Manager Don Cohen has taken for not having been incubated in the hospitality industry.

Come on. This is a guy with a Masters in Business Administration and a law degree. He thrived in management in both the oil and real estate industries, neither of which are lightweight worlds.

He started in February, that’s last month, folks. Already, he’s hired a marketing/events person, one of two sales people and made a solid presentation to get the CIF football championships away from Carson (we were one of only seven cities to get our pitch in, by the way). Doesn’t sound like a slacker to me.

Now, here’s what we really need to focus on.

In the City of Bakersfield, the transient occupancy tax is 12 percent. In the County of Kern, it’s 6 percent. Six percent!!! Even Taft has a 10 percent hotel tax.

Last year, the city took in $7.6 million in hotel taxes while unincorporated Kern only took in $1.5 million. So, if Kern matched Bakersfield’s tax, we could double our haul.

But this is a tax that needs voter approval and the last time Kern voters had a whack at it in 2004, they defeated it by 60 percent. This is a tax on visitors, not us!

There was speculation at the time that voters thought it was a tax on homeless people.

But I’m not that cynical. I think you all just saw the word “tax” and went into auto “NO” mode. OK, that’s still cynical.

Despite its history, I hear the county is gearing up for another run at the hotel tax.

Pay attention this time, Kern County.

A higher transient occupancy tax equals payback for other people tearing up our roads, leaving trash in our parks and having our Search and Rescue teams haul their LA butts out of the river.

All the marketing in the world won’t help us if we don’t help ourselves.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. E-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

If this newspaper stopped running ads for puppies and kittens tomorrow it would not stem the tide of unwanted animals that Kern County Animal Control officers are forced to kill each year.

The argument that The Californian  is “hypocritical,” as Animal Control Commission chairman Mike Yraceburn said Wednesday, for focusing a light on the issue and still running ads, doesn’t hold water.

We write about our air pollution problem all the time. And we run car ads. Does anyone seriously think if we quit running car ads that the air would suddenly clear, birds would sing and children would dance?

No.

People would find other ways to advertise, it would be business as usual for car sales and our air would be just as dirty.

I’ve also heard the argument from Yraceburn that the newspaper should decline ads from anyone who doesn’t provide an animal breeder permit number (assuming the commission could get an ordinance passed that would require such permits, which they haven’t been able to do in two years.)

We do require license numbers from contractors and child care providers, per state law.

But it’s up to consumers to check the validity of those licenses, not our advertising department.

Assuming such a local ordinance for animal breeders were passed and we agreed to require that information, it would still come down to the consumer checking it out.

More questions: How would “breeder” be defined? The family trying to give away puppies from an “oopsie” litter? Who’s responsible for making that call? Us?

Oh, and if we were to shoulder all those obligations, the same obligations absolutely better fall on the shoulders of other advertising venues, including those on the Internet.

The animal problem is daunting.

But lets keep some perspective instead of resorting to emotional rhetoric.

We need a widely available, low-cost spay and neuter facility or service. (By the way, we’ve slipped a serious notch in this area. More on that in a minute.)

And we need a mandatory spay/neuter ordinance in all Kern County cities and in all rural areas.

If we pass such an ordinance for just metro Bakersfield, or the metro area plus the city, we’ll still have overpopulation problems in Mojave, Lamont, Dustin Acres and McFarland. Other counties have already been down this road and proven that a unified approach is the only way. Otherwise, the problem shifts location, but isn’t solved.

The draft ordinance the Board of Supervisors demanded of the Animal Control Commission by June 10 would only cover metro Bakersfield. Big mistake.

To go along with that “stick,” however, we need the “carrot” of low-cost spay/neuter services.

Right now, unless you have enough money to take your dog or cat to a private vet, you have to keep an eye out for sporadic clinics put on by the Bakersfield SPCA or get a voucher from one of a handful of animal organizations, such as Kern Humane Society.
We did have a transport that came every two weeks from Fresno that gave people a great deal on spay/neuter services and would pick up and drop off the animal free of charge.

But the H.O.P.E. Animal Foundation wasn’t able to continue because so many people made appointments and then flaked out. They were also hoping a local animal organization would step up and offer to take over the appointments, payment, confirmations, etc. That never happened.

So, H.O.P.E.’s last transport will be Monday, said director Stacy Houk.

“There’s a real lack of community support in Bakersfield, that goes for animal groups as well,” she said.

H.O.P.E. was able to pull off successful transport programs in Stockton, Kings and Tulare counties. But not Kern.

“It’s not about the money,” Houk said. “It’s about someone stepping up and showing some interest.”

Houk sent notices to local animal organizations and politicians letting them know the transport was in jeopardy if no help was forthcoming. And none was.

Even so, she said H.O.P.E. is not lost to Bakersfield. They’re ready and willing to come back if we can muster the wherewithal to give them the support they need.

But, apparently, we’re too busy finger pointing and calling names.

Where to go for low-cost spay/neuter services

Bakersfield SPCA
3000 Gibson St. 323-8353
Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Closed Sunday.
www.bakersfieldspca.org
The SPCA has cat or dog sterilization days about once a quarter and is planning a cat and dog sterilization events in mid-May and mid-June in conjunction with the county but dates haven’t been set. Check with the SPCA for those dates.
It also has a feral cat voucher program available any time.
Get three vouchers at a time, which you can take to the vet to have the cats fixed. It recommends that you catch the cat(s) first as the vouchers are only good for 30 days.


Kern Humane Society
900 21st Street
Phone: 661-325-2589
Thrift store hours
Tues. - Sat. 11:00 A.M. - 4:30 P.M.
Vouchers available
 

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

I have to do some management stuff (reviews and such).

Sorry, but I'll be back with another rant on Sunday. So stay tuned!

I’d like to give Pacific Gas & Electric Company the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, right. The stuff I’ve seen PG&E pull on customers puts them in an automatic trust deficit with me.

I’ll never forget reporting the story on a single mom working as a waitress who fingered and helped convict druggies stealing power off her line. She provided all that information to PG&E and they still threatened to cut her off unless she paid for what the thieves stole.

This time around, it’s skyrocketing power bills in Bakersfield. We all expect a bump in summer, but winter?

I’m talking about bills that are double or even triple what they normally are for winter months.

And this isn’t happening to just one or two people. Apparently it’s happened to dozens. Several ladies at a local hair salon have even started a petition that they’re planning to send to the California Public Utilities Commission.

People have compared notes and think the excessive bills started shortly after PG&E installed so-called “smart meters” at their houses.

PG&E got the go-ahead from the commission in 2006 to switch all its customers over and Baketown is ground zero for the new meters. Of the 350,000 PG&E customers now on the smart meters, more than 200,000 are in Bakersfield.

These meters don’t require a PG&E employee to physically look at them and take down your usage. They record your exact usage and time of usage down to the minute and zap it directly in to the billing department.

So far, PG&E and the watchdog organization The Utility Reform Network (TURN) haven’t received  widespread complaints about billing problems with the smart meters. (TURN has other issues with them, which I’ll get to.) After three days, Utilities Commission staffers told me they still didn’t know if they’ve had complaints and would get back to me on Monday. My tax dollars at work, huh?

In fact, the only complaining so far has been on KGET Channel 17, which has done two stories and is still getting complaints about wacky bills.

Esthetician Diane Tifft was flummoxed by bills like the one she got in December, double what she typically pays for that month. Though others believe they’re being charged more for the same usage month over month, in Tifft’s case, the bill says her usage doubled for that month.

“It’s hard to argue with because that’s what their machines show, but that’s not what my daily living is showing,” Tifft said.

She works all day and wasn’t home any more than usual that month, she didn’t add any new gadgets and her house was empty for two weeks in December. In the months since, her usage has inexplicably dropped back down. Again, with no change in lifestyle.

“How can that be?” she asked.

She said clients, friends and co-workers are having similar problems and they’re wondering if the smart meters are to blame.

PG&E spokeswoman Cindy Pollard said the company hasn’t received a large number of bill complaints connected to smart meters and in the few they did investigate, increases weren’t caused by meters but by poor usage decisions. She urged customers with problems to contact PG&E directly.

The smart meters have been thoroughly tested and are “incredibly accurate,” she said.

“There is always the possibility that people are using more than they thought and they weren’t being charged for it before.”

Tifft would accept that theory except her usage before and after December was in line with previous years.

“I’m not worried about me. I’ll grumble all the way to the post office, but I can pay my bill,” she said. “What about people on fixed incomes? Or what about when it’s a choice between food and diapers or paying your bill? It’s those people we should be concerned about.”

Smart meters were actually supposed to benefit all consumers.

The idea is if you know exactly how much power you’re using, and when you’re using it, you can tailor your lifestyle to use less or only use appliances in off peak hours.

The pilot program in 2003-2004 showed customers on smart meters did reduce usage by about 13 percent. But only when prices were artificially increased by 500 percent in a control group that was testing “critical peak pricing,” a pricing model that charges more when the system is stressed by demand, such as hot summer afternoons.

“That means you have to hurt people — a lot — before they reduce their use,” said Marcel Hawiger, a staff attorney for TURN, which thinks the smart meters are an unneeded and expensive means toward conservation.

PG&E was allowed by the PUC to spend $1.7 billion on the meters and has recently requested to spend another $623 million because the meters already need an upgrade, he said. That all gets repaid by the ratepayers — us — by the way.

I’m all for new technology, especially if it helps consumers reduce and save.

But something seems amiss with the smart meters, at least in Bakersfield.

The commission should order a diagnostic check of the meter-billing functions here to make sure we’re not experiencing some kind of glitch. And PG&E needs to do a lot more outreach to educate consumers about the new meters.

There could be absolutely nothing wrong with the meters, but given PG&E’s track record with customer service, it’s no wonder people are suspicious.

How to complain about your power bill

Contact PG&E
24-hour customer service number (800) PGE-5000
People can also log onto pge.com and click on “Contact Us” at the top right of the page which will take them to a form that allows e-mail communication. PG&E also offers customer support lines in languages other than English.
Spanish:   (800) 660-6789
Chinese:   (800) 893-9555
Vietnamese (800) 298-8438
TDD/TTY (Speech/Hearing-Impaired) (800) 652-4712
 Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf and Other Language Services: http://pge.com/myhome/custo...

Contact the watchdog group TURN (The Utility Reform Network)
http://www.turn.org/index.p...
E-mail: turn@turn.org
Fax:  (415) 929-1132
Or mail: 711 Van Ness Ave, Suite 350, San Francisco 94102
 
Contact the California Public Utilities Commission
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/
To file a complaint with the PUC:
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/...
The main office is in San Francisco:
505 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA  94102
Tel: (415) 703-2782
Fax: (415) 703-1758
For their Los Angeles office:
320 West 4th Street, Ste. 500
Los Angeles, CA  90013
Tel: (213) 5760-7000
Fax: (213) 576-7007

To see KGET’s story, go here:
http://www.kget.com/news/lo...

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. E-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

Bakersfield City Councilman Harold Hanson apparently didn't like my take on how he voted on the Ten Section project. I thought he should have voted NO .

So at last night's meeting, he joked with City Hall reporter James Geluso that perhaps I should tell him how to vote in the future. He meant it as a dig and it was said with a level of sarcasm, so I'm told.

But I'm not offended in the least!

In fact, I told Geluso to have him call me anytime and I'll gladly tell him how to vote on a host of issues.

I'll be standing by...

For all the details on how this conversation transpired last night, go to Geluso's blog.

http://people.bakersfield.c...

I just heard back from the Sierra Club (they didn't call me before I went to print, grrrr!).

They are consulting about whether to sue the city over the Ten Section project.

We shall see where this goes...

It’s official.

There is no development so crappy that it can’t get past the Bakersfield City Council.

The so-called Ten Section project in the extreme southwest proved that when council members approved a zone change for it Feb. 27. Next up will likely be the DeBerti project in the far northeast, which doesn’t have even the hope of paved roads at this point but keeps boomeranging back to the council.

Both are prime examples of leapfrog development where a splotch of houses is approved far from urbanized areas, ensuring problems connecting to sewer lines, inadequate roads and promising longer, air-fouling car trips.

There was a small moment when I had hope that our local politicians actually gave a rip what this community will look like. We had a hillside ordinance, building in the county was stopped until a viable roads solution was found. Heady days, those.

Guess we’re back to business as usual.

I wish I’d written about the Ten Section project before the zone change was approved but I honestly thought, “No WAY” was it getting OK’d.

This was a project everyone loved to hate — the Kern Water Bank Authority, the Bakersfield Planning Commission, the Sierra Club and (initially) the California Department of Fish and Bakersfield Planning staff. Even the City Council rebuffed developer James Manley’s long-on-charm-short-on-facts request for a zone change in August, 2007.

He came back, though, this time with Attorney George Martin in tow and got his zone change. (Martin, by the by, was the managing partner at Borton Petrini, which gave the city an incredible deal — $9.5 million — on its renaissance brick building at Truxtun and 17th. It now houses the City Attorney and City Manager offices. How cozy.)

Ten Section is a 220-acre project with 780 houses south of Panama Lane bordered on the west by Nord Road on the Kern Water Bank to the east.

During the housing boom Ten Section was dwarfed by other projects in the area, including a 7-square-mile development called Gateway and another, smaller development called Flying 7 Ranch.

Both of those projects are dead now. Developers for Flying 7 withdrew their application to the city last November and Gateway developers followed suit two weeks ago.

Now Ten Section is all alone, hanging off the the southern edge of the McAllister Ranch project like a tooth. McAllister Ranch, by the way, is no sure thing at least in the foreseeable near future.

Construction has stalled and developer SunCal has racked up nearly $15 million in liens and lawsuits from subcontractors. Though the city planning commission approved several maps for the project last month, there is no certainty it will go forward any time soon.

Manley said it’s a long way from his zone change to actual construction, especially with the housing market in tatters. And he’s not worried about McAllister ranch. It has its maps approved and hard infrastructure in the ground, he said. Even if SunCal “takes it on the nose, someone will come in and buy it. McAllister ranch will never go away.”

Even so, Ten Section had bigger problems. According to Fish and Game it encompasses land that is prime habitat for a number of Kern’s endangered and threatened species. And the way it snuggles up to the water bank, there are major worries about mosquitoes and conflicts with future residents over smells and possible flooding.

Manley agreed to some mitigation measures, an 18-acre buffer with a six-foot wall next to Kern Water Bank lands and a warning to home buyers about the mosquito/smell situation.

That was enough for Fish and Game, but not the Water Bank, which still opposes the project, according to General Manager Jon Parker. A lawsuit hasn’t been mentioned by his board yet, Parker told me. Given Bakersfield’s track record for getting sued over EIRs, though, it’s not the worst bet you could make.

I wouldn’t be sorry if the city were sued on this one. There was no reason to approve Ten Section, despite Councilmember Harold Hanson’s nonsensical statement that the project is “morally OK.”

Hanson told me he was concerned that in a few years, Manley might not have gotten approval.

“The way things are going with environmental issues and things happening in other parts of the state that are slowly creeping into Kern County, with us putting more and more demands on developers, there was a chance he could have lost out,” Hanson said. “It was important we get those entitlements on the land now.”

I couldn’t disagree more.

Three things: 1) We don’t owe Manley anything. 2) Yes, there likely would have been greater demands on the developer later (higher fees or other requirements). The city hasn’t made development pay its fair share, so we’re playing catch-up. 3) Rushing ahead to avoid environmental issues despite knowing the land has endangered species doesn’t seem “morally OK” to me.

Bakersfield already has more than 70,000 housing units approved but not yet built.

The only reason for the push was to benefit one developer.

On the other side of town, it’s the same situation with the DeBerti project, a 60-acre with 300 houses proposed by Douglas and Sandye  DeBerti. It had clung like a barnacle to the side of the massive Watermark project on Breckenridge Road. Watermark has stalled and the city is asking developers to fish or cut bait. So, like Ten Section, without Watermark the DeBertis have no way to hook on to expanding infrastructure.

But Councilman Ken Weir keeps postponing the vote. 

It’s coming back before the council — again — for a zone change request on May 7, despite the Planning Commission’s and Planning Staff’s recommendation for denial.

The Council needs to say “no” to the DeBertis. It’s not the right time. 

Then councilmembers need to step back and remember they work for the entire community, not just developers.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. E-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

For those of you against mandatory spay/neuter laws, I say fine. Have it your way.

But you have to trade places with an Animal Control worker for a week.

Lead a happy, healthy dog into a room with a bare concrete floor and a drain. Wrap the rope around his snout as he wags his tail. Then stick the needle in his leg and watch him die.

And do it over and over and over every day.

“Are we this callous?” asked a defeated sounding Dave Price, director of the County’s Resource Management Department, which oversees Animal Control. “I get reports across my desk every day, another 50 dogs. Think of what the staff is going through. These are living things and we act as if it’s nothing.

“What we are doing is wrong.”

(If you want to get a glimpse of what it’s really like, go to http://www.bakersfield.com and check out the video with James Burger’s story. I warn you, however, it’s difficult to watch.)

The solution to our pet overpopulation problem is clearly and simply for us to sterilize as many cats and dogs as we possibly can.

If you are not part of that solution, then you are the problem.

The last time I advocated mandatory spay/neuter laws, I was raked over the coals by people, mostly breeders, who had a host of reasons against such laws.

“Animals are private property!” Great, so keep your property out of my (tax-supported) shelters!

“Mandatory spaying and neutering increases kill rates!” I could not find evidence that this has actually happened. In San Mateo County, cited as a prime example of this phenomenon, the law was passed in 1992 and the kill rate has increased. However, the county shelter contracts with 20 cities and towns, many of which did not enact similar laws and the animal intake increased as well.

“Mandatory spaying and neutering punishes responsible owners!” The logic of this one escapes me.

The only thing that made sense was one person’s argument that Kern County lacks low-cost, accessible spay/neuter services. Without that, a new law won’t do diddly.

I agree.

Other than occasional spay/neuter events, a transport every two weeks to a Fresno clinic, and a small voucher program for feral cats run by the SPCA, we don’t have a widely available, frequent, low-cost  way to help people get their animals altered.  Of the $100,000 Kern County Supervisors designated last year to be used for spay/neuter programs, only about $5,000 has been spent so far because we don’t have a system in this county to do widespread sterilizations.

How lame is that? We can’t even figure out how to spend the money when we have it in hand!

Pet overpopulation is a national problem. But some counties (states even) are beating the odds. The recurring theme is aggressive spay/neuter programs.

In New Hampshire, a $2 surcharge was added to dog licenses in 1994 to provide spay/neuter services to low-income animal owners. The state’s euthanasia rate went from 12,000 a year to 3,000 now, according to Peter Marsh, a director of Solutions To Overpopulation of Pets, which helped pass the law. New Hampshire has nearly twice as many people as Kern County, yet we kill six times as many unwanted pets!

The only way to turn the situation around, Marsh said, is to shift the focus, and at least some money from enforcement and sheltering, to prevention.

In Asheville, N.C., the Humane Alliance provides low-cost spay/neuter services for 23 counties. They do 22,000 operations a year using no public money, all donations, Executive Director Quita Mazzina told me.
T

he Alliance also has helped open more than 30 similar clinics across the country, including the H.O.P.E. Animal Foundation in Fresno, which comes to Bakersfield every two weeks. Because the clinic only does spay/neuter on a volume basis, its prices are extremely low  — $65 for a female dog, $45 for a female cat. They also give discounts to low-income — $20 for cats either sex, $40 for dogs either sex.

Even with a free ride to the Fresno clinic and such low prices, however, they can’t get Bakersfield people to show up for their appointments, according to director Stacey Houk. They’ve had to resort to charging an automatic $20 fee to people’s credit cards because so many have flaked.

“The groups we’ve worked with down there are great,” Houk said. “Animal Control, the SPCA, Kern Humane, they’ve done their best to support us. But it takes community involvement and we’ve gotten minimal support from Kern.”

The next transport is March 24 and Houk will be watching the numbers closely.

Which brings me back to mandatory spay/neuter laws.  People would not miss that transport if they were facing a citation.

The Animal Commission created by Supervisors two years ago has tried to create some kind of animal control ordinance, but has only inched along because of small, vocal groups (mostly breeders and hobbyists) who don’t want their worlds to change. Mandatory spay/neuter isn’t even up for discussion. Spay/neuter isn’t even being discussed.

I say disband the commission.

Supervisors need to cowboy up and come up with an ordinance themselves instead of sloughing the job off because they don’t want to hear the whining from breeders.

Members of the commission, all of whom are dedicated professionals with a wealth of expertise on local animal issues, could better spend their time working as an informal task force to create a widespread, affordable, accessible spay/neuter program.

Dave Price nailed it  — “What we are doing is wrong.”

Low-cost spay/neuter options
H.O.P.E. Animal Foundation in Fresno.
(559) 271-0209
http://www.hopeaf.com/clini...
They send a climate controlled truck to pick up pets in Bakersfield every two weeks. The animals are kept overnight and returned the next day.
Costs are:
Male Cat      $35
Female Cat     $45
Male Dog     $55
Female Dog     $65
Feral Cat (Must be unhandleable)     $20
Medi-Cal Recipients*
Male or Female Cat     $20
Male or Female Dog     $40
* Must show Medi-Cal card. Limit two pets per card.
** Please note that additional charges apply for dogs weighing over 65 pounds.
They also do vaccinations, which are $10 each.

Bakersfield SPCA
3000 Gibson Street
323-8353
Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Closed Sunday.
http://www.bakersfieldspca....
The SPCA has cat or dog sterilization days about once a quarter and is planning a cat and dog sterilization event later this spring in conjunction with the County.
Check with the SPCA for the next upcoming clinic.
They also have a feral cat voucher program available any time.
You can get three vouchers at a time, which you can take to the vet to have the cats fixed. They recommend that you catch the cat(s) first as the vouchers are only good for 30 days.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.

At the risk of giving TMI, I went in for the dreaded screening today after having obtained my special authorization for a digital test, rather than film, from my medical group, BFMC.

I asked the gal at the counter wether it was certain that I would get a digital screening. Yes, she said after checking the paperwork.

I confirmed it with the gal who took me into the changing room. Yes she said, after checking the paperwork.

But when they led me into the room with the machine, it didn't look right. I asked the tech and, sure enough, I was in the film room. BFMC won't pay for digital, she said.

Oh, no, I told her. I'm not getting film. So 10 minutes later, she confirmed that I had authorization for digital.

SHEESH! Just goes to show, you have to watch 'em every step of the way.

Good thing I don't mind being pushy.

David Jacobson doesn’t look so good on paper.

And there’s a lot of it considering his lengthy criminal record, mostly for commercial burglaries.

But that’s not all there is to the soft-spoken, 47-year-old recovering rock cocaine addict.
He’s an animal lover.

Even while he was locked up, Jacobson, who also goes by Jerry Crook, shared food with cats, sometimes squirrels.

“You can’t turn your back on them, not if you’re human at all.”

He was in the minimum security section at Lerdo jail for about a year in 2005 and 2006 and befriended some of the many (he described it as hordes) feral cats out there.

But he was appalled — and still is — by what he felt was the jail’s harsh attitude toward the animals. They have a policy not to feed or aid the cats, which Jacobson said leaves many to starve or die of disease and injuries.

When I asked the Sheriff’s Department about this, I found that, yes, they have a “no interaction” directive. I also learned that every few years, or sometimes every year, they trap the cats, which are then taken to Kern County Animal Control where they are killed.
A couple of things:
A) Ignoring cats is a sure path to, well, more cats.

B) In an overly “catified” situation, trapping and killing leads to, well, more cats as other ferals take the place of the recently departed.

C) Taking away the multiplier effect by spaying and neutering is a better long-term, cost-effective solution than the old “trap, kill, repeat” scenario.

While an inmate at Lerdo, Jacobson took care of several cats, in particular two orphaned kittens that he hoped to take home when he left.

His next stop, however, was state prison.

But he couldn’t forget his little pals at Lerdo. He even wrote to Sheriff Donny Youngblood from prison in late January 2007 asking that something be done to humanely deal with the cats.

And he wrote to other groups including Little Lotus Hearts, a Buddhist organization in New York focused on animal rights. They, in turn, contacted the Sheriff’s Department and Alley Cat Allies, a national group that works with feral cat populations.

Jacobson hoped the cats could be spayed/neutered/
vaccinated/fed and allowed to continue living at Lerdo until the population naturally declined to a stabilized level.

That was exactly what Alley Cat Allies suggested in a letter to the sheriff last May.
They even provided newspaper articles from around the country showing how such programs have worked at other prisons.

The Sheriff’s Department never responded to Alley Cat Allies, but did respond to the Little Lotus Hearts.

The news was not good.

“We have been humanely trapping the cats once a week for the last several months,” Lt. Kevin Wright wrote in an e-mail last May.

Jacobson is now living in a rehab facility and about to start his first legit job in years.

He’s caring for a stray dog and, despite his cat allergies, another stray cat as well. He has no idea what happened to his orphaned kittens, but he fears the worst.

It’s hard to say how many cats were killed in last year’s purge. Animal Control Chief Denise Haynes remembers her officers going to the jail once or twice a week to pick up cats over the course of a couple of months.

While she thought the population was now under control, Sgt. Ian Silva told me they may need to trap again this spring.

I asked Undersheriff Marty Williamson if the department would consider a different solution.

“We don’t have an out-of-control problem out there now,” he said. “But if it does come up, one of those groups could be our answer.”

I think it’s worth posing the question.

CREATING A NO-KILL SOLUTION
No one should expect that changing from trap/kill to trap/neuter/spay/release at Lerdo  would be easy, according to those who’ve done it at California prisons.

Here are just some of the steps:

Get buy-in from the Sheriff’s Department administration all the way to detentions officers at Lerdo.

Programs typically work best when someone or a group of volunteers inside the institution take up the cause.

Each step of the program should be presented to, and authorized by the top brass. Any problems or conflicts should be settled by top supervisors.

Find a vet or a clinic that understands the program and might be willing to give a discount (this requires some research).

This should be all volunteer and paid for through donations or grants.

Alley Cat Allies provides a wealth of information on how to get set up and what to expect at their Web site, www.alleycat.org.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. E-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call 395-7373.

I've said this before and now it seems more municipalities are agreeing, we need mandatory spay/neuter laws!

I saw last week that the latest muncipality to fall in line was none other than the city of Los Angeles. This brings the big city in line with the County of Los Angeles which enacted similar laws a couple years ago, and other municipalities in the LA area.

We should keep an eye on how things proceed down there.

Meanwhile, we can't seem to get an ordinance in Kern County that addresses any substanative issues, much less the real issue — mandatory spay/neuter!

I've been raked over the coals on this issue by numerous people, most of whom I assume are breeders. And I've done more reading on it than I ever thought possible.

I still adamantly believe in mandatory spay/neuter laws. But I also have been convinced by my research that mandatory spay/neuter must be accompanied by low cost or even free (for income eligible) spay/neuter operations.

Opportunities to have your animal altered should be widely available and that means more mobile services. Our SPCA does an admirable job, but the community really needs to step up and either contribute to the cause voluntarily, or perhaps a new fee could be instituted.

We're paying already with overcrowded kennels, overworked animal control officers and, of course, our terrible euthanasia rates.

Just thought I'd stir the pot on this issue — again!