A potential solution to our depressing animal overpopulation problem has been staring the Board of Supervisors in the face for months now and they’ve done nothing.

I’m not talking about a theoretical solution (and no, not mandatory spay/neuter, either).
This is tried and true and not just in far-away places like Calgary, Canada. This technique has worked right here in Kern County and Bakersfield.

Getting it done takes political courage, however, and so far Supervisors have only been willing to talk, talk, talk, about animal control problems. Time to walk the walk, fellas.
It’s all about licensing.

We need to ramp up our public outreach to let people know A) they need to get their dogs licensed B) how to get them licensed and C) what will happen if they don’t get them licensed. Then follow up.

In Calgary, which has a very aggressive and successful licensing program, they’ve shown that once you can get people and their pets into the system, you can work with them to get their animals fixed, return lost animals and deal with problem owners. Licensing also brings in the money to pay for it all.

We actually had survey crews years ago that did this, but foolishly got rid of them to save costs. We’ve watched our unwanted pet population, and costs, skyrocket ever since.

The program sounds simple, even a bit tedious. But it works.

The city did a four-month trial starting last September, sending a team of two people door-to-door 40 hours a week in randomly selected neighborhoods. They used one city-owned vehicle.

Costs for salaries, benefits and the truck were $24,649 during that trial period, September to December last year.

License and rabies vaccination revenue jumped — substantially —  each of those months.

Overall license revenue increased 81 percent over 2007 for that four month time period and rabies vaccination revenue (at the low-cost clinics) jumped by 107 percent.

The program not only paid for itself, the city made a net profit of $14,836.

The county, meanwhile, knew all about this program and Animal Control officials were trying to get Supervisors to cut loose with some money so they could try it as well.

They aimed way too high, though, asking for more than $400,000 last summer to pay for three outreach teams and fund a low-cost spay/neuter program.

After much delay, Supervisors wouldn’t give up the money and said to do it with existing staff.

At the time I rolled my eyes (I do that a lot). But their shortsighted, invertebrate-edness, so to speak, ultimately underscored how well this approach works.

County Animal Control officers fit their outreach duties in as best they could, maybe canvassing neighborhoods one or two days a week. A county report lists only 106 hours spent in field work between January and April.

And STILL the program made money.

After all the costs were subtracted (including volunteer time, which struck me as odd) the county made more than $4,000.

When I spoke with Guy Shaw, director of Animal Control, he was somewhat timid about the program. He agreed, that, yes, it had made money but, “it’s just not feasible using existing staff without hurting our customer service.”

And he’s about to cut five positions, including Animal Control Chief Denise Haynes, who had coordinated the outreach program — the only program ever to make money for the department — one other person and the department’s extra help.

He said he was hoping to wait until after all the budget dust had settled before going back to Supervisors about the outreach program.

“The problem is you have to pay up front so you have to really sell it to the board so they’re sure this $300,000 will work,” Shaw told me.

There’s that $300,000 again, which I think is overshooting.

Tammy Davis with Bakersfield Animal Control told me her department just got the OK from the City Council to spend $40,000 on another six-month trial that will again use their team of two plus a blitz of advertising.

When I spoke with Supervisors Ray Watson and Don Maben, both supported the idea of bumping up outreach. But $300,000 wasn’t going to fly.

A $20,000 or $40,000 program, now that’s different.

“We could invest a little, get one team going full-time and then look at it from there,” Maben said. “Hopefully, if we gave it some seed money, it should grow and fund itself.

He wasn’t sure about the other Supes, though.

“I’ve heard comments about ‘people before animals,’ so it could create some conflict.”

We’ve been “working” on this problem for nearly five years, however, without much progress and this is the first real glimmer of hope. It’s worth the seed money.
Maben agreed.

“I don’t want, 20 years from now, my grandkids seeing barrels of dead puppies and kittens on the front page of The Californian again.”

Believe me, we don’t either.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her  column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Last summer I called for a ban on personal fireworks.

Hoo boy! The reaction was swift and furious.

I was called a Nazi, hysterical, told I should move out of Kern County and likened to a “sheeple.”

You’d think I would have learned from that experience, but no. I’m hard-headed that way.

We absolutely must BAN ALL PERSONAL FIREWORKS.

Perhaps you feel that would impinge on your freedom.

Yes, it would.

And that’s too bad.

But we’ve gone well past the tipping point where “safe and sane” fireworks are used responsibly versus morons endangering large swaths of the community so they can make things go boom.

In other words: Your freedom to explode stuff shouldn’t trump my freedom NOT to have my house burn down.

Other communities have banned personal fireworks and their worlds did not collapse. The charities that relied on proceeds from fireworks sales found other ways to make money, people found other ways to celebrate, enforcement against illegal fireworks became easier and so on.

Rest assured, however, the political landscape on this issue hasn’t changed over the last year.

The only local politician who supports a ban is Councilwoman Sue Benham (her main issue is air quality).

Councilman Harold Hanson continues to support the use of personal fireworks on the grounds of tradition.

“It’s a patriotic deal for me,” Hanson said.

Even if the city did ban personal fireworks, it wouldn’t work without the county joining in, Councilman David Couch reminded me.

Nope, I got no takers over at the county either.

“I’m for fireworks,” Kern County Supervisor Mike Rubio told me. “It’s one of the greatest celebrations we have as a nation.”

Supervisor Mike Maggard said the focus should be on curbing illegal fireworks and Supervisor Don Maben said he would only support a ban if the Fire Chief told him it was absolutely necessary for the sake of safety.

Fire Chief Nick Dunn wasn’t ready to go there.

“If they’re used as intended, I don’t think fireworks are a hazard,” he said.

That’s the problem (well, that and the unbelievable number of illegal fireworks brought in for the “festivities).

Bakersfield City Fire Chief Ron Fraze has unapologetically led the crusade to ban personal fireworks here.

“Yup, I’ve been singing the same song for about 11 years now,” he said. Fraze and I both believe the professionally run shows should continue. Perhaps we could even have more and make them more cost-friendly for families.

But we have to get incendiary devices out of the hands of the masses, who might be the nicest folks you’ll ever meet in broad daylight but whose “brains fly out their backsides,” as Bakersfield Fire Capt. Ed Watts cogently noted, when the sun goes down and they get ahold of a little cardboard and gunpowder.

Last year, 30 teams of firefighters and law enforcement spent the 4th of July racing around metro Bakersfield responding to hundreds of calls and scanning the skies for tell-tale streaks from bottle rockets and Roman candles.

Watts expects this year will be much like last, when the following happened:

• More than 60 citations were written (that doesn’t include those issued by regular engine crews).

• Six people were arrested.

• More than 1,000 pounds of illegal fireworks were seized .

• There were five fireworks-related fires (including two houses).

• At least one person suffered a severe eye injury.

• And there was one armed robbery of a fireworks stand.

Happy Birthday, America!

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her  column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

Fireworks basics
Anything that explodes or leaves the ground is illegal (that includes throwing or launching otherwise legal fireworks)

Buy fireworks only from licensed booths

Only “safe and sane” style fireworks are legal to buy and use in Kern County

Children shouldn’t be allowed to light fireworks without adult supervision

Make sure a water source is nearby

If you’re caught possessing or using illegal fireworks in the city you will be issued a misdemeanor ticket.

In the county, you will be issued a $1,500 fine.
 

As usual, when it comes to sprawl, the Board of Supervisors is talking out of both sides of its mouth.

It happened again last week when supervisors denied one mega, leapfrog project making all the appropriate “smart growthiness” noise about stretching services too far, traffic impacts, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Then they turned around in the very same meeting and approved a different mega, leapfrog development and tabled yet another, which will likely be approved in August.

Good work, Sybil.

This all comes right on the heels of a what should be considered an ominous visit by a representative of the state Attorney General’s office earlier this month.

The deputy AG came to Kern to discuss how we’re planning to meet tough new state mandates on sustainable growth and greenhouse gas reductions.

Given the AG’s recent spate of successful lawsuits over other cities’ general plan updates that haven’t met those standards and our tradition of sprawl-to-the-wall, you’d think supervisors would sit up and take notice.

But no.

Instead, they happily approved the Bakersfield Land Investment project on 238 acres — 1,110 houses, no commercial, no industrial — waaaaaay out west at Greeley Road just north of Rosedale Highway.

I say they did it happily because as part of the approval, they required the developer to reduce the project’s greenhouse gas emissions by 29 percent.

Planners told me the greenhouse gas reduction requirement is unprecedented in Kern County and most other cities and counties.

Oh, psh! I can’t even muster a golf clap for such a backward baby step, nor for the other requirements of narrow streets and more open space.

This is sprawl, pure and simple.

It will tax our already overtaxed law enforcement and fire services, increase traffic and likely get us in dutch with the AG’s office.

As for the greenhouse gas requirement, may I just say “DUH!”

If they had denied the project there wouldn’t be a need to reduce emissions because there wouldn’t be any in the first place.

I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes about the greenhouse gas issue.

Regardless of whether you buy that humans are causing or hastening global warming, the laws on greenhouse gases are being vigorously enforced and we can ill afford our tax dollars being squandered in defense of dumb planning decisions.

I spoke with the deputy AG, Harrison Pollak, about his visit here and he said it was just a meet and greet.

“There was no threat at all,” he said.

Uh, yeah and when a Mafia wise guy comes over for coffee, there’s no message there at all.

Pollak said the AG’s office just wanted to know more about planning efforts in the Central Valley so they made a stop here, in Fresno and Madera.

He was very encouraged that Kern County planners will be using a $250,000 grant to create a climate action plan as part of the city/county general plan update. The city, on the other hand, doesn’t believe it has to account for greenhouse gas emissions in environmental documents.

“We would strongly disagree with that position,” Pollak told me.

Uh oh.

“One of the other concerns we have is that it looks like projects are being approved that aren’t consistent with the general plan update so far as it’s been done.”

He’s referring to growth boundaries roughly mapped out by planners that show a currently developable area called the “urban core,” which is more than 200 square miles by the way, then an outer ring that’s not supposed to be developed until after 2035 and a further ring where development should start after 2050.

Guess where the Bakersfield Land Investment project is? Smack in the 2035 ring.

It’s all the more galling when you consider that we already have more than 50,000 yet-to-be built, approved housing lots on the books (and, no, I’m not including the ones in developments that have gone belly up).

“I guess our question would be, why not wait?” Pollak asked.

Good question.

Too bad the only answer I have is double talking politicians.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her  column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

I stuck it on my other blog. Check it out!

http://www.bakoview.blogspo...

Creep, creep, creep.

Here they come again — the government.

Specifically, this time, it’s the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District circling restaurant charbroilers.

On Thursday, the board will consider amending an existing rule to bring more restaurants into its regulatory fold.

Right now, the rule affects only restaurants using “chain-driven” charbroilers, which, essentially, move meat through a tunnel of flame and are used by larger fast-food joints.

The amendment being looked at would include “under-fire” charbroilers.

These are used by smaller restaurants and, according to the San Joaquin air district staff report, make up 72 percent of all commercial cooking emissions in the district.

Wow, that must be a really big problem.

Hard to say, actually. Staff doesn’t know how many restaurants are cooking this way and so has no way to form a baseline emission inventory.

Well, these charbroil emissions must be some toxic stuff then, right?

Nah, not really. At least not as far as the district knows as there’s never been any toxic studies done on this type of exhaust.

But the emissions do contain particulate matter, tiny bits of dust and soot, and as that’s the current boogey man being chased to heck and gone by federal and state agencies, by all means, get out the regulatory noose and find a tree, boys!

Here’s my oft-repeated rap on particulate matter: some studies have shown particulate matter, specifically PM 2.5, is associated with premature deaths. The authors of those studies, however, have never allowed their data to be independently examined and their results have never been replicated.

Other studies have found little to no relationship between premature death and exposure to PM 2.5, particularly here in California.

To me, the scientific jury is out on the deadly effects of PM 2.5.

Even if you believe PM 2.5 is knocking us all off in droves, however, this pending charbroiler rule is ludicrous and being pushed with unnecessary haste.

At this point, it would only affect restaurants that cook 800 pounds of meat a week or more. That’s a lot of meat. So, the truly small guys are exempt, as long as they register their charbroilers and keep extensive records to prove they’re under the limit.

Believe me, though, it’s only a matter of time before that limit drops to 600 pounds, then 400 and so on. (Deep fryers, beware, you could be next!) And anyone building a new restaurant with a charbroiler, regardless of how much meat you’re planning to cook, will be under the new rule.

In doing its reports, the district estimated it could cost between $30,000 and $100,000 for under-fire charbroil operations to retrofit using any number of devices from filters to scrubbers to more sophisticated systems. Over time, the district concluded, that would work out to just a few thousand dollars a year.

Wrong, Skip Slayton, owner of Jake’s Tex Mex told me.

First of all, he said the lowest cost option recommended by the district, a HEPA filter that clears out anything down to six microns, can’t be used without a front-end system to extract grease otherwise it’d be plugged up and useless within a day.

Any one of the systems would require customization, which adds to the cost, upkeep and cleaning, another cost, repairs, more costs, and potential upgrades, cha ching, cha ching.

Perhaps most importantly, no one knows what the standard is they’re supposed to be shooting for, Slayton said. As in, how much PM 2.5 comes out of your chimney now and how much should come out after you retrofit?

“The district says it has a test, but nothing’s concrete as to what it is or how it’s applied,” he said. “They don’t have it down anywhere about how you pass or fail.”

Yup, that’s regulation California style, all right.

The district’s report says the rule amendment will remove between .26 and 2.6 tons of particulate matter per day from the air once all affected restaurants come into compliance by the 2014 deadline.

Doesn’t sound like a lot to me, especially when you consider the upheaval it will cause small businesses.

It also seems like another rush to regulation when the marketplace is already headed toward lower emissions on its own. The one good thing about Slayton’s involvement so far, he said, is he’s discovered a lot of really interesting hood/emissions/grease systems being made that weren’t even discussed by the air board.

“I don’t disagree with the need for clean air,” he said. “I just want more empirical studies so we can make intelligent choices.”

That’s crazy talk.

ATTENDING THE MEETING

Thursday, 9 a.m.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District board meeting in Fresno will be broadcast live over the Internet and interested persons can participate by showing up in person at the Bakersfield office, 34946 Flyover Court, Bakersfield, CA 93308.
Full agendas can be downloaded at www.valleyair.org.

You can call the local office at (661) 392-5500.

Directions:
Heading north on CA-99 N:
Take exit 30 for State Highway 65 (Porterville Highway).
Merge onto State Highway 65 (Porterville Highway).
Turn left at Imperial.
Turn left at Flightpath.
Turn left at Flyover Court. Building will be on the left.

Heading south on CA-99 N:
Take exit 31 for 7th Standard Road/Merle Haggard Drive.
Turn left over Freeway 99.
Turn left at State Highway 65 (Porterville Highway).
Turn left at Imperial.
Turn left at Flightpath.
Turn left at Flyover Court. Building will be on the left.

Bill Bruce (not the West High principal) looks nothing like a rock star.
Far from it. The bureaucrat from Calgary looks a lot like our own homegrown bureaucrats, middle-aged and somewhat, er, rumpled.

Given the awed reaction to his methodically delivered PowerPoint Wednesday evening, though, he could have been wearing leather pants, strutting across the Kern County Board of Supervisors chambers bare-chested, belting out a sweaty encore of “Emotional Rescue.”

The audience — mostly women — was riveted.

It was a long presentation so I’ll cut to the heart of Bruce’s Jagger-esque magnetism:  Calgary, population 1.1 million, euthanized a total of 419  dogs and cats in 2008.

Here in Kern County, population 827,000, we killed 19,742 dogs and cats last year.

That’s beyond crazy. It’s warped, sick, horrifying and it has to stop.

Wednesday’s audience — and many in the community who care for animals or just hate waste — are desperate to know, what does Calgary have that we don’t? And how can we get our hands on some of that mojo?

You’ll be happy to know it’s all there for the taking.

Clear communication, partnerships, accessibility, accountability and education.

Gad! That sounds like work.

And it was. According to Bruce, 20 years’ worth. That’s how long it took for him to get Calgary out of the depths of animal control woes to become the shining light of success it now is.

But, he told the audience Wednesday, that time frame includes all his mistakes. Knowing what he knows now, he said, he could help a community do it much faster.

There were a lot of unique aspects to Calgary’s program — state of the art equipment and information technology — but I was most impressed by how they handle two basic concepts: licensing and education.

In Calgary, 91 percent of owners have their dogs licensed. Bakersfield’s dog licensing rate hovers near 10 percent, according to city animal control staffers.

Bruce achieved those numbers by bombarding citizens with the message that a license was their dog’s ticket home. And he made getting a license ridiculously easy and fairly cheap ($31 fixed, $52 non-fixed).

You can get a license online, at the bank, the corner store and any number of other places. They don’t even require proof of a rabies vaccination. They go on your word.

Not sure if that would work in California without Legislative intervention as state law and local ordinance require a rabies vaccination to get a license. But I’ll bet there’s a Kern County Senator running for Lt. Gov. (Dean Florez, hint hint) who might tackle the issue if the headline count is right.

Giving away licenses like gumballs actually increases compliance with rabies laws as well as spay/neuter goals, Bruce told the Wednesday crowd. Calgary doesn’t have a mandatory spay/neuter law nor an animal limit, by the way.

Once you get a license, your dog is in the system and can be monitored, which makes it easier for the city to get you to pay for the license year after year. Calgary’s animal control budget is about $5 million all fee produced, no general fund monies. Kern’s budget is $4.6 million, most from the general fund.

Calgary uses its money to fund myriad animal control programs, including an in-depth educational component.

I was very intrigued by this.

They don’t just have animal control officers take a dog to a few assemblies a year. They have a certificated teacher who has created grade-appropriate curriculum.
Animal control officers provide all the materials and teach kids about pet ownership, the safe way to deal with strange dogs, what the city’s laws are, etc.

Brilliant!

Not only does it instill responsible pet ownership values in children, those kids go home and shame their parents into doing the right thing. Hey, it worked with recycling.

Guy Shaw, director of Kern County Animal Control, has shown since taking over the department that he’s willing to try new things, including a small but growing foster program, opening the door to more rescue groups and transferring Kern’s animals to shelters that don’t have many animals.

As for Bruce’s ideas, he said he’s eager to look at what might fit here.

Maybe we can’t give licenses without proof of rabies shots, but Shaw has considered an “amnesty” day so fines or  problems could be swept away for a current license. And he’s going to start offering online licensing in the next few months.

“I’m willing to listen to anything that anyone has tried that works,” he told me. “The least that can happen is it doesn’t work and we’re no worse off than we were before.

“But we won’t know unless we try.”

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her  column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

LOW-COST SPAY/NEUTER OPTIONS

HOPE, a low-cost spay/neuter service, runs a twice-monthly transport to Fresno through the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on Gibson Street.

Costs for cats are: $55 for females and $45 for males.

For dogs, the costs vary depending on size, from $75 for a female and $65 for a male weighing up to 64 pounds and $115 for a female and $105 for a male weighing more than 100 pounds. All appointments must be made through the SPCA at 323-8353 and must be paid in advance.

The animal must be brought to the SPCA before the appointment to be weighed and medically checked. On transport day, the animal must be at the SPCA on Gibson Street off Rosedale Highway by 6 a.m.

Owners must pick up the animal the following day between 11 a.m. and noon.
All animals are required to have a rabies vaccination. If proof cannot be provided at the time of registration, owners will be charged $12 for a vaccination before boarding the transport.

Angel Dogs is a mobile spay/neuter service that comes to the Kern County Animal Shelter, 201 S. Mount Vernon, the first Wednesday of each month.

Cost is $90 for cats and $110 for dogs. You can obtain a $20 voucher from the Kern Humane Society toward that cost.

Contact the shelter for more information at 868-7125.

Kern Humane Society has vouchers toward the cost of animal alterations. Contact them at 325-2589.

KERN'S SAD NUMBERS

Last year, Kern County Animal Control was forced to euthanize 19,742 unwanted animals. Here’s how the numbers compare from last year to this year for January 1 to June 12.

Intake (animals coming to the shelter)
2008
Total: 12,824
Cats: 5,478
Dogs: 7,221
(Remainder is livestock, birds, etc.)
2009
Total: 14,237
Cats: 6,126
Dogs: 7,990

Euthanized
2008
Total:  7,655 (64 percent killed)
Cats: 3,811 (75 percent)
Dogs: 3,752 (58 percent)

2009
Total:  7,790 (56 percent)
Cats: 4,389 (76 percent)
Dogs 3,356 (44 percent)

Adopted
2008
Total: 1,594
Cats: 349
Dogs: 1,229 dogs
2009
Total: 1,812
Cats: 388
Dogs: 1,413

Sent to rescue groups
2008: 1,748
2009: 2,012

Tranferred to other shelters
2008: 42
2009: 645

If the Governor and Legislature are still taking ideas for which parts of state government to lop off, I have one!

Can the Regional Water Quality Control Board. (You thought I was going to say cut former Assemblywoman Nicole Parra and her do-nothing-$128,000-a-year salary, didn’t you? Come on now, you know it.)

OK, maybe the board shouldn’t be eliminated all together, but I think it’s ripe for some drastic changes. 

Just looking at the section of the board that affects us most directly, Region 5, here are the stats:

It stretches from Modoc County in Northern California to the valley portion of Kern County.

It has three branches, in Redding, Sacramento and Fresno, employs about 260 people with a budget of $38 million a year and has a wide range of duties including inspecting everything from corner gas stations to major waste water treatment plants as well as jumping on major leaks and spills.

That last part is where I think we can do much better given the board’s recent actions — or inactions.

In three high-profile cases of water contamination, board regulators have sat on their hands, saying they weren’t staffed well enough, didn’t think there was reason to do more, or just haven’t responded.

This is the safety of our groundwater we’re talking about. The stuff we put in our bodies on a daily basis.  Kind of important.

In the most highly publicized incident, the board didn’t even know the effort to clean up 20 years’ worth of spills and leaks at Big West Refinery had stopped until The Californian broke the story in the summer of 2007.

Regulators had been sending Shell Oil letters asking the former refinery owner to please, really PLEASE! clean up its mess — but nothing else until our story ran. The  board finally sent Shell and new owner Flying J an abatement order telling both entities to get busy — or else.

Lonnie Wass, a supervising engineer with the water board, told me Tuesday that even through Flying J’s bankruptcy, the work continues.

Then there’s Hondo Chemical. Matt Constantine, director of Kern’s Environmental Health Department, tells me he’s begged the water board to look into whether Hondo has  been dumping “leachate,” (the scum that leaks out from the bottom of landfills) on property right over the Kern River Water Bank, but can’t even get a response.

Wass acknowledged he didn’t know much about Hondo but thought Kern was handling it.

And just last week, the owners of Starrh and Starrh Cotton Growers in Lost Hills again won a lawsuit accusing Aera Energy of letting toxic waste water from their Belridge Oil Field seep into groundwater used for irrigation on the Starrh land. The oil waste water had been dumped into unlined sumps for years until farmer Larry Starrh sued after discovering it was tainting his aquifer. He also tried to get the water board to intervene, to no avail.

Wass said it was his understanding that Aera was now injecting that waste water deep underground where it wouldn’t affect the groundwater. An Aera spokesperson confirmed the waste water is now being recycled as steam and used in waterflood operations or is being injected, all of which was done by Aera with no urging from the water board.
Aera wouldn’t comment much further; Starrh may appeal to the 5th District seeking higher damages.

Starrh’s attorney, Ralph Wegis, contends the bigger issue is that Aera dumped so much polluted water over the years, the ground is saturated and still leaking into Starrh’s groundwater supply.

“Aera’s own testimony was that it would continue to drain into the water basin at the same rate for the next 30 to 40 years,” Wegis said. Right now, it’s only affecting Starrh, but Wegis says in time the plume will destroy far more than the water below one grower’s land.

And the water board stood by and let it happen, he said.

“They react by drawing 1,000 lines in the sand...and then drawing another line.”

Hmm. Sounds familiar.

In previous stories, water board officials told us they were doing as much as they can with severe understaffing. And I was told that again by Assistant Executive Officer  Richard Loncarovich of the board’s Sacramento office.

“There was a report to the Legislature a few years back that looked at what we regulate and our resources and showed we’re understaffed by 30 percent,” he said.
It’s probably true. I mean, how many times has the state mandated programs at the local level and not paid for them?

But maybe the answer isn’t to throw more money at the board.

Why not look at the programs it runs and see A) if they’re all absolutely needed and B) which could be taken over by another agency that does the same stuff anyway, like perhaps county environmental health agencies?

I asked Constantine if he thought his 50 employees could handle that. He’d need more resources, but the short answer was “yes.”

His people have the expertise, knowledge and contacts to make it work. Besides, they’re no strangers to taking over state work. The state used to inspect above-ground storage facilities, but gave that function to the counties.  Constantine said it was the same story:They took the fees, but didn’t do much else.

Constantine’s people keep up with all the inspections necessary to manage 12,000 permits. They take complaints on a wide array of topics, which they post on the web so the public can see their response times. And Constantine is directly accountable to the Board of Supervisors, which is accountable to us.

Beyond all that, I like the idea he’s here drinking the same water as the rest of us.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her  column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

They say getting old ain’t for sissies. Boy, they’re not kidding.
   

Especially in a state that has essentially abandoned its task of protecting old people in the very facilities and hospitals where they need the greatest care.

Last October, Gov. Schwarzenegger “saved” taxpayers $3.8 million a year by cutting all the state’s funding to the Ombudsman program, which exists in every county using mostly volunteers to visit nursing home patients and check out abuse and neglect complaints.

The idea was that since the Health Department already does yearly inspections, that’s good enough.

Yeah, right.

Aside from the fact that all state departments are strapped for people and money making even minimal inspections a tall order, yearly inspections just don’t cut it.

It wasn’t a routine state inspection that uncovered a nursing home in the Kern River Valley where patients were being drugged to “keep them quiet.”  Three people — someone’s mom, or grandmother or grandad! — died from the overdrugging, according to charges filed by the Attorney General’s office.

No, it was the Kern County Long-Term Care Ombudsman’s office that blew the whistle on that horror show.

“Because of our presence, the fact that people know who we are and about the program and they trust us, people who were directly affected contacted us,” said Nona Tolentino, director of the Ombudsman office.

That’s the whole idea behind the program, which was created in the 1970s by federal law and later enhanced by state law.

“It brings the community into the facility,” Tolentino told me. “We’re not a regulatory agency or law enforcement. We’re there to talk to the residents, take a look, listen and speak up for the resident.”

The other thing the Ombudsman’s office does is maintain public files where you or I can check a nursing home’s record. You can read reports written by real people from our own community who have walked the halls, talked to patients, seen what kind of food was served and know if the place is clean or not.

That kind of information is invaluable, even more so than the online resources provided by the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform and Medicare, both of which rate facilities at the local level.

The Ombudsman is a simple, low-cost program that is highly effective.

Even so, it does require some money and, more important, people — which I’ll get back to in a second.

Tolentino, who’s spent her career helping children and the elderly in Kern, has a very non-adversarial philosophy about the job.

She and the volunteers she trains don’t want to shut down homes and hospitals. They work with management and staff to resolve problems, improve practices and make life better for residents.

Up until last October, Tolentino  had a budget of about $100,000 a year that paid her, another staffer and all the administrative stuff needed to recruit, train and manage a host of volunteers. The state’s cut has dropped her budget to about $50,000 a year, from a mix of federal and county monies. As of June 30, she will have to let her lone staffer go.

After that, it will be just Tolentino and about 16 volunteers to make visits to 19 nursing homes and 107 residential care facilities (that’s about 4,000 patient beds combined).

Ideally, she said, she would like to have 68 volunteers not only to make visits and handle complaints but to help staff the phones, make copies, go to recruiting seminars and help with training.

There’s a bill in the Legislature right now that will attempt to restore about half of the $3.8 million from the state. But considering the condition of the alleged budget and all the other hands already out there, I’m not too hopeful.

Some people have asked Tolentino about creating a new non-profit to fund the Ombudsman office.

But, she said, there are already a lot of non-profits out there, many competing for the same resources. She doesn’t want to add to that stew.

Instead, she’s hoping an existing organization might want to “adopt” the Ombudsman’s office and raise money, awareness and hopefully even some volunteers.

Kern County is a generous place. I have no doubt there are several organizations that could whip up a golf tournament, charity run or Harley ride to keep the Ombudsman in paper clip money.

Even more important are the volunteers.

This is no easy task. You have to submit to a background and fingerprint test and successfully complete a 36-hour course. Tolentino asks for a one-year commitment, serving a minimum four hours a week.

Once you get past all that, the real work begins, visiting patients and building relationships that will certainly enrich your life even as they may break your heart.

Creating a strong, caring, locally based program independent of fickle state fortunes is, however, an investment in our own futures.

Because the other thing they say about getting old is also true: We’re all gonna be there someday (if we’re lucky).

The Ombudsman’s office is administered by Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance and shares office space with them at 615 California Ave.
To volunteer, donate money or help out in anyway, please call 323-7884 or 888-292-4252.
Or visit their site online at:
www.gbla.org/ez.php?Page=3242
There is also a state crisis line available after-hours, weekends and holidays: 800-231-4024

To check out how nursing homes rate you can go to the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform website at:
http://www.canhr.org/
NH_Data/
Or you can go to the Medicare site at:
http://www.medicare.
gov/default.asp
And scroll down to “Compare Nursing Homes in Your Area.”
This site also gives a lot of information about what nursing home dosts Medicare does and does not cover.

I got a call this morning on my Zack Scrivner column.

She thinks I'm full of hatred. No WAY! I wouldn't hate on politicians like Zack, what would I write about withOUT them?

So, Alexander Haig is alive and well, and apparently serving on the Bakersfield City Council in the guise of Zack Scrivner.

Lest there was any question, Scrivner answered it last Wednesday with a Haig-esque “I am in control here,” op-ed piece about just who’s pulling the strings on negotiations with the police union (fire too, I presume, but he didn’t mention them).

“Let’s be clear — the city manager is an agent of the City Council; he follows the council’s direction,” Scrivner wrote in reference to a recent ad campaign by the Bakersfield Police Officers Association lambasting City Manager Alan Tandy for holding up negotiations over the 3-at-50 retirement benefit in which an officer retiring at 50 gets 3 percent of his salary for every year worked.

Okaaay, Mr. Vice Mayor, you want credit for this mess, you got it.

The police union leadership has publicly stated that they’d be willing to negotiate ways to help save the city money on 3-at-50, a program that so rankles a certain faction of the Council (Scrivner and Ken Weir), if only the city would talk to them. And the fire union even made formal offers to save the city money including giving a percentage of any pay raises to help defray costs and having new employees pay the city-funded portion of their pensions to CalPERS.

At every turn the city’s response  — I guess that’d be Scrivner’s response — has been a resounding “POUND SAND!”

Police have been without a contract for two years and are now at impasse.

Firefighters have been without a contract for over a year, but are still in negotiations.

Wow, excellent work, Scrivner!

While he was asserting his authority on this matter, Scrivner also included a little IED in his editorial.

In earlier negotiations, the city had been demanding that new hires for both unions begin with a 3-at-55 retirement benefit.

But in his op-ed column, Scrivner said: “Other plans are available, such as returning to the formula of 2 percent at 50, which was the rule until December 2003; that guaranteed a 30-year employee 60 percent of his salary. This was a generous benefit; returning to it would save the city millions.”

Union presidents told me that a day or so after his editorial, they both received notice from the city that a letter to withdraw all previous offers would be on its way.

Hmmmmm. Lets review the timing:

• May 20, the City Council met in closed session and voted to give their negotiator new directions.

• May 27, Scrivner’s column appears, casually mentioning a 2-at-50 retirement benefit.

• May 28 or 29, both unions get notice that 3-at-55 is off the table.

“We’re still waiting to see if they’re going to pull the trigger on that,” police union representative Bill Ware told me. “If they do, we’ll be looking at the legality of these kinds of shenanigans.”

It could be considered regressive bargaining, or bad faith, agreed fire union president Derek Tisinger. His union’s lawyer is taking a close read of the editorial as well, which Tisinger characterized as a “huge blunder.”

I called Blunder Boy for a comment, actually called all three of his phone numbers and left messages as well as an email, but received no communication back.

I’ve said numerous times, I think 3-at-50 is overly generous.

But changing it to 55 or even 2-at-50 isn’t going to save us money now, during the current fiscal crisis, which Scrivner alludes to as the reason for wanting to change the benefit.

If the city accepted the union’s offers to increase employee contributions or possibly give back a percentage of their raises to defray retirement costs, that would save the city big dollars right now when we need it most. As we go forward, the city could continue to negotiate more savings, which the unions have said they’re willing to do.

But having a healthy dialogue that saves the city money now and in the long run isn’t a part of Scrivner’s real agenda.

He wants to be the guy who broke the 3-at-50 benefit, which would be a first in the state and would virtually guarantee Scrivner ascent to higher office.

And that, shudder, has always been Scrivner’s true goal.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her  column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com