According to the Union newspaper this morning a gaggle of people, many children included, will descend on the Capitol in Sacramento to present a petition with 10,000 signatures. These people will also voice their displeasure in the closing of the two parks here in Nevada County. We say "good luck". If you all are successful in changing the outcome, more power to you.
We see the problem and the solution a bit different but desire the same outcome. The question should be, "how can a bunch of democrats controlling our state (for fifty years) be so incompetent to allow a $29 million segment out of a $90 billion budget to happen?" We shake our heads in amazement. What we have come to understand in our politics in California is this, it makes no sense. If the democrats can't find 1/3 of 1% within the budget they have control of, then our state is toast.
Parks, cops, firemen, libraries and other high visibility items are the things the politicians use to raise the "fear". If we don't give these scofflaws more money, they will cut out the things we all like, that is always their strategy and it always works. The people are hosed over and over again and the left running our state loves it. We think these men and women sit in a room, smoking their cigars and chuckling about the knuckleheads we all are. How they get away with the "fear" factor once again.
What we don't understand is why the state has added so many "parks" and other government owned lands and then cuts the funding to allow the people to use them? Is this not the best exemples of the dysfunction Sacramento has become? Of course it is. Yet year after year these people place more lands into the public domain and tell us how important they are for the "people" to enjoy and save for future generations. Give us a break!
These Sacramento politicians continuously pass laws to force private property owners to do their bidding. We have so many hoops to pass through to do anything with our own private property and they force us all to pay for the privilege of being regulated. Look at General Plans, zoning ordinances, fees for a parcel spilt and even your property line fence heigth. Check out the costs to Water boards, fire departments and now even the Calfire budget. They are charging us all in the rural areas to fight fires yet leave the urban folks alone. Those urban folks that come and enjoy our forests we get to pay to protect! One report states "The new fee, if implemented as proposed, could raise $50 million in FY2011/12 and as much as $200 million annually thereafter, easing the strain on the state's general fund, although the general fund would still provide the majority of money for firefighting."
The fire fee alone would be sufficient many times over to pay for the parks wouldn't it? Yet, in order to free up money to buy off their constituents in the urban areas, the democrats in Sacramento come after our pocketbooks. Fee for service, what service? It seems to us the passage of Prop 26 in November 2010 means nothing to these people, including the Governor. They don't care what the people voted on the fees and tax issue, they will shove another one down the throats of the people.
This is what California has come to. Our democrat controlled legislature locks up lands for parks and then overspends elsewhere and threatens to shut them all down. They are unfit to run the place in our opinion. If they can't even find $29 million dollars in a 90 billion dollar budget to keep the very parks they are in charge ofopen? They should all, well at least the democrats, resign and let people who can live up to our Constitution take their place. They are a embarrassment that even the Greeks can mock.