CABPRO Report

County Government shutdown due to snow

By John Spencer

Recently, February 29th, the community was functioning properly, doing the things they do every day, only we were in the middle of a storm that brought expected snow to our area mid-day. Around 2:00 PM it was getting kind of dangerous up at the County offices and the County CEO decided to close the offices and send everyone home. Not unusual, general public safety was a big concern.

Meanwhile, at our only local Title Company, because it was the last day of the month, the title officers were putting the final touches on some 12 escrow closures set to record that day. This wasn’t unusual, it happens all the time; our County Recorder does this same thing every month and day for that matter. These kinds of recordings are income producing, growth, a benefit to the whole community. What goes into putting together and finishing an escrow represents a huge amount of work by realtors, escrow and title officers, lending institutions, and buyers and sellers. All of this work is culminated by the Title Company to the point they bring the recordable documents into the Recorder’s office and record the transaction. This operation is probably one of the more important operations the Recorder does. The final culmination has a closure sheet where a whole host of numbers have been calculated to the penny for that moment in time. Everyone is in agreement, funds are set to be wired, people are ready to exchange house keys, and the paperwork has to record that day or everything does not work. If it is the last day of the month, it really has to record that day. If it does not record that day (and goes into the next month) everything has to be refigured, and you may have to go back to everyone to get re-approval. Re-approval may mean you can’t even do the deal, to say nothing about extra fees the bank will charge, losing a lock on your loan, penalties, and a recalculation on property taxes. When the County shut down the operation, some 12 escrows could not record. Big, big problem.

So who cares?

California Split?

By CABPRO Staff

From time to time the idea of splitting California into two or more states is floated out. This is precipitated by the sheer size and population of our state and its wide diversity of cultures and geography, as well as its problems.

There was discussion about California’s boundaries at the time of the founding of the state in 1849-50, just before the time of the Civil War, on up to as recently as last year when a Riverside County Supervisor again proposed dividing the state into two.

(www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/government/riverside-county-supervisor-proposes-splitting-california-into-2-states-487239.html )

A useful discussion of how states get split up, written by Michael Warnken at California Political Review, may be found at www.capoliticalreview.com/?s=splitting+california

Sometimes a proposal is for our state to become two separate states, as discussed here:

www.redstate.com/nickottens/2011/07/12/splitting-california-in-half/

while for others, three is the magic number, as described here:

www.3cals.blogspot.com .

For a proposal to join up parts of northern California with southern Oregon to form a new state called Jefferson State go here: www.jeffersonstate.com

Perhaps California was just too big and beautiful to begin with for its own good!

Down but Not Out

By Barry Schoenborn

My company, Willow Valley Press, isn’t “too big to fail.” We fall more into the category of “too small to succeed.” Yet, despite the Great Recession, and despite dramatic changes in the publishing industry, we have succeeded. We’re still in business, and poised to do better as the economy gets better.

I sometimes marvel at our endurance. This little company started in Nevada County in 1988 as  Willow Valley Software. To this day, we still operate WVS – the Technical Writing Company to do technical documentation. However, big American corporations have determined that our brothers and sisters in India can do a better job than we can in writing manuals in American English! So our tech writing business has been reduced. Well, maybe the corps figure the Indians need the money more than we do.

For those of you who (like me) were born in the Stone Age, you may remember John Cameron Swayze strapping a Timex watch to the propeller of an outboard motor and revving her up. He’d say “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Sometimes I feel like that watch.

A key point is that Willow Valley Press (WVP) is different from WVS. We publish books, and so we’re not beholden to cost accountants of corporate clients. We publish what the public wants. We are beholden to the marketplace, which is just fine with me.

We follow a few basic principles. You might think they apply only to micro-publishers, but they apply to most small businesses. At WVP, we have practices that can apply to any local manufacturer or retailer. Let me share them with you.

• Make or sell what people want to buy. We publish books that people are interested in reading. So they buy. This is so simple. I wish some local retailers would grasp this. Granted, people are price-sensitive, but an appealing product and the “in-person” buying experience are usually worth the money to the customer.

• Don’t make or sell junk. Don’t try it. China will kill you on manufacturing junk. The    Internet will kill you on selling junk. At WVP, we publish quality books, mainly “Greatest Generation” stories.

• Provide outstanding customer service. Local retailers sometimes don’t get this, to the point where critical letters appear in The Union! But it’s easy. At WVP, we respond promptly to every query and we fulfill orders fast.

• Use the Internet. For us, it’s a primary tool. Websites and Facebook are our friends. Locally, even restaurants should have a website. Note well: we did a website for a local Chinese  restaurant, and that was a giant boost for them.

• Spend your money on your employees.  Local manufacturers sometimes don’t get this. If you create “intellectual property,” as we do, plan on paying good money to the intellects who do the work. They are your “engine.” Since most of our talent is local to Nevada County, our salary dollars help mortgages to get paid and families to eat out at restaurants.

• Sell global, spend local. In the Good Ole Days of technical documentation, we made a lot of money from Hewlett-Packard Company, Roseville. But the staff spent the money locally. In the Good New Days of publishing, we use Amazon and Barnes & Noble to sell our books everywhere, but, again, we spend the money locally.

• Keep your sense of humor. People are sometimes outrageous. The government and big companies are often brutal. Not a day goes by where I don’t need to laugh at something or somebody. That includes laughing at myself.

Don’t forget the famous Horatio Alger theme: “Strive and Succeed.” It sounds really old hat, but I believe that the principles of hard work and utter honesty will get you through hard times.

Barry Schoenborn is the President of Willow Valley Press in Nevada City. He published “Dandelion Through the Crack,” by Kiyo Sato, which won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. He’s also the author of “Technical Math for Dummies” and “Medical Dosage Calculations for Dummies.”