Consolation Prize
File this under “something is better than nothing” appointments have finally been made to the Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) board, not to be confused with this Weta. And according to Inside Bay Area, Vallejo and Alameda both have seats at the table:
…Schwarzenegger appointed Vallejo’s Anthony Intintoli Jr. to be vice-chairman of the board and Perata named Alameda’s Beverly Johnson as a board member. Both were mayors until last year’s municipal elections…
Erik Nelson clearly doesn’t write the Alameda beat does he? Must have been a shock to Beverly Johnson to know that she was a mayor only until last year’s elections.
Some other folks appointed included someone from Colma and Berkeley. I assume that these are two cities that the new and improved WETA would like ferry service to be routed to and that is why they were brought on as members of the five person board.
So even though Alameda and Vallejo, the cities, have lost local control of its ferry services, we can be comforted by the thought that we have representation on a five member board. But at least we’ll be able to get to work in the case of a huge earthquake that disables all infrastructure throughout the Bay Area.
Seriously though, between the doomsday financial scenarios that have been going on in the comments section and the doomsday earthquake scenarios that have been presented in the newspapers, we’re going to need to hand out Zoloft like candy to cure everyone’s depression.
Lauren,
Don’t forget global warming! Though that could easily fit in the category of economic catastrophes too, and it is a more gradual process than an earthquake, though it should accelerate exponentially as feedbacks intensify. Biodiesel ferries anyone?
Comment by Mark I — March 24, 2008 @ 7:29 am
And add the unusual freaky Sun activity to that ever growing catastrophic list. We’ve just got to do something about it. Think of the children. Instead of Zoloft, I suggest a lyre lesson be added to the school curriculum so Apollo can be appeased.
Comment by Jack Richard — March 24, 2008 @ 8:38 am
Hi Lauren — While I generally hate to see the loss of local control on pretty much anything, the state’s takeover of the Alameda-Oakland ferry system may actually turn out to be a good thing. From a funding standpoint, the agency has received an initial budget, I believe, of $250 million. With this money, in addition to building more ferry terminals, the agency should be able to buy more vessels and step up the maintenance schedule on the existing boats. We’ll just have to see. And, yes, if things do go south, we will at least have our mayor on the panel to point it out. Re Eric Nelson: Nice guy and generally, a very competent journalist. While it doesn’t excuse his gaffe, Eric’s the Trib’s transportation writer, not their politics person. What the error actually exposes is the Tribune/Bay Area News Group’s increasing lack of depth in the critical areas of “line” or content editors (formerly known as city editors) and in traditional copy editors. Due to the company’s steady workforce cuts, buyouts and reductions, especially in the ranks of copy editors, the quality of the news copy we read can’t help but continue to degrade. Normally, your city editor or a copy editor would catch or at least inquire about a fact that doesn’t look right. Now, because these good folk don’t have enough time on the job to know better or because of the tremendous production and deadline pressure they’re now under, traditional fact-checking and scrutiny of copy is sadly becoming a luxury. What that increasingly means is that once a reporter “files” or sends a story from their terminal, whatever is there — for good or bad — will likely appear in the paper.
Comment by Jeff Mitchell — March 24, 2008 @ 9:50 am
My last comment regarding my study of comparisons. ( I promise) Anyhow, I made a photo album from my trip. I took photos of several different cities, national parks, the home I grew up in, as well as detailed photos of Chattanooga that shows what a modern, smaller metro can function as. You will clearly see the contrasts.
I did this because by reading the comments on this blog, it sounds like the quality of life in this state is bordering on being outright rotten. The budget, schools, and so forth sounds like a fairly serious issue. The cost of living is another. Everyday annoyances like traffic, congestion, and overcrowding are just to add to the stack.
So… the question that has to be asked is why are some of you, with kids, staying here? I’m sure that for many, the reasons are family, political and cultural climate, and professions. But I would also hope that some of you have at least considered alternative choices. I fail to see the advantage in raising kids here, that is unless you happen to be really well-off. I’m not criticizing you if you do, as well have our own choices to make. But the fact that most here seem to be from somewhere else: Ohio, PA, IN, and so on makes me wonder if you moved then… then why not now?
Anyhow, here’s the slide show. I’ve tried my best to be descriptive here. Enjoy.
http://s265.photobucket.com/albums/ii226/bobwilson1977/
Comment by edvard — March 24, 2008 @ 10:06 am
Tell us again why you’re still here?
Comment by yawn — March 24, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
“Tell us again why you’re still here?”
Why? Because maybe I like to suggest ideas that aren’t on the shelf. Of course I expected such a reply. My post was meant to draw a honest, direct comparison between California and another state. This can be used to make a number of conclusions. Either one can look at it and say
” Hey- there’s some good ideas there… let’s try and apply some of those to California, or my own CA town”
or-
“Hey, you know what? It sure sucks that my commute, mortgage,and never-ending budget problem concerns and so on all kind of suck… Maybe I should consider all options for the welfare of me and my family.Is California really the best choice?”
Or perhaps the response I’m sure most think here which is:
“California is the best state in the whole country, everybody else in all the other states are losers, so I guess I’ll go have some fun and patrol around with my little protest sign over the latest round of BS the state has to offer me.But that’s ok, because that’s called progressive politics”
Anyhow, as mentioned, I did this to perhaps show others what else exists out there and how that California is just one of 50 states, of which many have totally different lifestyles and cultures of their own, of which may or may not be of benefit to you.
Comment by edvard — March 24, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Edvard,
I really enjoyed your photos. It looks like there’s some fine hiking to be had there. Thanks for posting them.
Susan
Comment by Susan — March 24, 2008 @ 4:35 pm
It is always smart to try and learn from the mistakes and successes from others. That is true on an individual level or city, state or nation.
Thanks for sharing.
Comment by Davew Kirwin — March 24, 2008 @ 4:45 pm
Tell us again why you’re still in the Bay Area.
Comment by yawn — March 24, 2008 @ 4:55 pm
Thanks for the pics, edvard. My wife has a little six acre place a little north of Marion Kentucky. We used to visit her parents whenever we could but haven’t been back there in years (since the old folks died). Whenever we flew we would land in Nashville then drive to their farm in Kentucky. The drive from Nashville to Marion is a very nice scenic drive.
My wife’s folks came to Alameda during WWII and returned to Kentucky when my father-in-law retired from the Port of Oakland. It’s beautiful country but there are several factors that keep me from retiring there. Number one is Crittenden County (where Marion is located) is a dry county. In order to stock up on adult beverages we had to drive to a ferry crossing at Cave-in-Rock Kentucky and take a very slow ferry across the Ohio river into Illinois. Lot of hassle to sip a tall cool one. The other major factor is the weather. It gets too damned hot and too damned cold. I grew up in Colorado and had all the weather extremes I ever care to experience.
School teachers in the Marion school district start out at $23,594 and the highest possible salary in 2008 for a teacher of 20 years with a Masters plus thirty hours above a Masters is $50,200.
Comment by Jack Richard — March 24, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
Outside large cities, almost all of KY is dry, Jack. Damn fools.
Comment by dave — March 24, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
No problem Jack. I’ve been gone from that area for over two years. Coming back, an awful lot of things had changed. I can remember when I was in College, you could drive to Knoxville and park anywhere because frankly- the town was dead. Last week, we had to park in a garage because it was packed with people. A former furniture store on Gay Street was made into a brewery. We ate there and I had Ahi tuna which was something you wouldn’t have found there long ago.
All three cities I visited were drastically changed. All showed fresh growth and development. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It seems that there’s a lot of out of staters coming in. I met people from virtually every state in Nashville. A waitress at Cracker Barrel was British. Some areas which had previously been literal ghettos, like East Nashville were getting yuppified. Homes that used to be 40-50k were 100-150k.
Something I found distasteful was the enormous amount of mega-mansions being built in what was once farmland. Flying into Nashville, you could count 10-15 brand-new housing developments alone. These all had asking prices of 250-350k, which sounds cheap to people from other states, but totally unfordable to locals. So there’s a sort of a newcomer/oldtimer misbalance scenario.There’s still such a massive price difference between much of the Southeast and the rest of the country that you get the feeling that there’s a sort of reversed in-migration occurring.I saw a lot of out of state license plates. I’m not a big fan of gentrification. But I suppose that’s unavoidable.
But that said, it was nice to see all of these places developing so nicely. The cool thing is that you could still drive 10-15 minutes out of any of these cities and be in the country. Old, normal sized homes and farms are still reasonably priced, and the freeways except within the immediate confines of the cities are relatively light in regards to traffic.
As far as KY, we spent a day up there. It’s crazy how totally different it is from TN. There seems to be signifigantly more poverty. Some of the small towns I saw as a kid look exactly the same. Secondly, it was desolate in the area we visited which is sort of freaky after living in the Bay Area. The TN/KY border had about 20 liquor stores.It makes no sense that most of KY is dry because KY makes such a massive amount of bourbon, Vodka, and liquor.I’m not sure I could live there either. It does get a lot colder up there. I had forgotten about the humidity. It was in the 70’s when I was there, and it felt pretty humid. But I sort of miss that. Believe it or not, TN has had warmer winters for the last 4-5 years ( at least where my parents live) than the Bay Area. Call it global warming or whatever, but I recall as a kid, it snowed maybe once a year. It hasn’t done that in years.
As far as teacher’s salaries, my Mom has taught for 30 years and makes a little over 50k. My dad makes maybe 35k. That doesn’t sound like much, but the pics I have of the home I grew up in was paid for with a lot less of a salary than that, and even now, my parents could still afford to buy what they have at the present value. So You have to look at salary versus the cost of living.There’s still a large delta.
Anyhow, I had a good time there. I think next time I’m going to investigate Johnson City, TN, Memphis, and maybe
Comment by edvard — March 25, 2008 @ 8:06 am
I spent one winter in Millington Tennessee (a little north of Memphis) and the next winter in Alaska. The TN winter, because of the humidity, seemed far colder.
Strange (or not so strange) thing about dry counties, there are far more alcohol related car accidents in dry counties than wet counties. The ditches along the roads from the Cave-in-Rock ferry into KY were filled with empty beer cans. Dangerous driving. We finally found out, from one of the natives, some guy in his trailer about half mile up the road was selling. Had to keep an eye on his porch light. White light meant he had beer, yellow the hard stuff for sale. Didn’t ask about the red light.
Comment by Jack Richard — March 25, 2008 @ 8:46 am
A similar analogy would be the Autobahn in Germany. They have no speed limits, and drivers regularly drive over 100MPH. But oddly enough, there are few accidents. Far fewer than in the US. On another Note, Montana had no speed limit starting in the 90’s, but soon had to repeal it. The reason?: too many traffic accidents. But interestingly enough, a large percentage of them were from German tourists, who wanted to have the ability to drive fast with no traffic interruptions.
Funny you mentioned alcohol. When I was home, the biggest moonshine bust in state history happened when a fire was reported on the property of “Popcorn” Sutton”, a guy who’s made Moonshine all his life. Well, they found around 750 gallons of the stuff in his barn. Unbelievable. Many of his neighbors said it was kind of silly that they were bothering him since there’s such a crystal meth problem elsewhere.
Comment by edvard — March 25, 2008 @ 12:44 pm