Editorial

I was recently reminded of a 1912 article published in The Healdsburg Tribune which reported that Healdsburg would soon have eight passenger trains daily. The article describes the increased convenience for Healdsburg businessmen who would be able to make a round trip to the City in one day, and for the San Francisco businessman “whose family might be spending the summer at one of the many resorts” in our area. I assume the link across the bay to San Francisco was a ferry from Sausalito. Anyway, it sounds pretty good to me and I hope I'm alive and kicking if and when the SMART train is running along the same route as 1912 trains and replicates their service.

Last Thursday, Laura Tietz of Fire Free Fitch, Dave Henderson, president of the Fitch Mountain Association and I met with Fourth District Supervisor James Gore, Sonoma County Fire Chief Al Terrell and Fire Inspector Steve Mosiurchak to discuss the pilot fire protection program being proposed for implementation on Fitch Mountain.

This week, in the middle of a calendar encapsulating patriotic 9/11 remembrances, the holiest of Muslim holidays, football players refusing to stand for the National Anthem and a presidential campaign full of racist epithets, our county’s Board of Supervisors passed an official resolution declaring Sonoma County as an “Islamophobia-free community.”

When you read the text of Healdsburg’s Measure P, it’s clear that, compared to the wording of most ballot measures, YES means NO and NO means YES. Please follow on with me and come to your own conclusion.

The more arguments that are presented in support of Measure A, the quarter-cent sales tax increase on the June 2 ballot, the stronger our opposition becomes. First it is called a “road tax.” Now “Yes on A” campaign literature features a firefighter and a public safety message. What is Measure A, really? It is a “free pass” for our Board of Supervisors and their labor union contributors to avoid fixing their unfunded pension problem and other budget imbalances.

This is Part 2 of the “Cost Savings” commentary. In Part 1, the councilmembers discussed factors that led to the current budget conditions, as well as actions that have been taken in the past year to address the budget issues.

I promised myself that I would give the whole gun control issue a bit of a break. I find it depressing in the extreme and it only exacerbates my feeling of helplessness. I broke that promise to myself because a) no matter how I tried my thoughts still carom back to the subject, b) I had my fingers crossed when I made the promise and c) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get the words ‘exacerbate’ and ‘carom’ in one paragraph.