Friday's May 5, 2006, issue of the Santa Maria Times presented an interesting commentary from Joan Leon titled County Split: No Grassroots Effort.
She begins her commentary by pointing to the example of government process in the movement of Measure D from public meetings to placement on the ballot. She cites the many public meetings, workshops, people speaking for and against, and the April 21st hearing. "All this happened before any decision was made to put the item on the November ballot," she says.
She then compares the above process to that of the proposed County Split. She mentions the original $25,000 paid by the Citizens for County Organization (CFCO) to fund an 18-page study.
Interestingly, this original study came to the conclusion that a new county would face an $11.5 million deficit and suggested raising taxes or reducing government services to overcome the deficit.
Yet CFCO continued forward with a petition drive anyway. Not being able to make the signature deadline, they stopped the drive. Jim Diani, owner of A. J. Diani Company, obtained a loan of $212,500 -- "on his own personal guarantee" -- to pay for professional signature gatherers, and the petition drive was on again.
When the commission was appointed to study the feasibility of a County Split (for the second time), this new group came to the conclusion that the new county would not be facing an $11.5 million deficit -- it would be $30 million. This study had cost the county -- as of April 2005 -- $623,700.
As Leon says, "CFCO did not trust us to be involved in deciding if we needed to undertake this expensive process that is costing our county so much money. Now they are asking us to approve a new county that would begin with a huge deficit and an uncertain future.
". . . The desires of a few people is an expensive process that we are all having to pay for."
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