| Sound Off Opinions, Views, and Thoughts |
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| Everyone makes resolutions for the New Year -- I purpose that everyone in Lincoln Village try to make our neighborhood a better place for all simply by -- Keeping lawns trimmed -- they don't have to be perfect -- heck, even crabgrass looks good when it's mowed because it's green. Plant some new flowers for Spring - Walmart has great buys in the garden dept & a little color can make a big impact. Keep you dog out of your neighbor's yard-- nobody likes to clean up after someone else's dog - Karen |
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| 20 Nov 2007 First Things First In reading the latest Sound Offs -- I'm more concerned (about) water quality here in Lincoln Village than an old drive-in. Further, we currently have an abandoned facility here in our own neighborhood -- the closed Ralph's store. The drive-in is across Hwy 50 from us and doesn't directly impact our neighborhood -- the closed Ralph's does impact Lincoln Village. I would love to see some investor go in and open up a bookstore, restaurant or some other appropriate business -- but nothing related to liquor -- we have too many liquor stores here in Lincoln Village as it is. Once our area gets "cleaned up" -- then we can worry about what needs fixing in nearby neighborhoods. Let's take care of Lincoln Village first. - Karen |
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| 4 Nov 2007 Wants Drive-In Kept ! Is there something we can do to save it? And fix it up? We need another shopping center like a hole in the head. -Jodie Hughes |
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| 13 Sep 07 Safe Water concerns I consider the greatest problem in Lincoln Village to be clean water. Over the years several of our wells have been closed due to pollution from Mather and Aerojet General. Thousands of new homes are being built in Rancho Cordova now. Where is the water for these homes coming from. What effect will this have on the water table and will the plume of rocket fuel from Aerojet General be sucked into our wells as the groundwater table drops. Our water rates have risen 500% over the past 5 years, and now they are going to install water meters. Will we get a 500% increase over the next 5 years? Rancho Cordova is serviced by 7 or 8 different water companies, so the Water problem in Lincoln Village is not a major concern. I believe the short term solution is for Rancho Cordova to purchase the local assets of all 8 water companies to provide one city wide system. That way we have a city to take on Aerojet and the Federal Government, in court if necessary. If anyone thinks we can appeal to the water company, be advised it is owned by a German corporation. I also feel that the long term solution to the problem is a state of the art Rancho Cordova water treatment plant that can process Wastewater and storm runoff into safe drinking water and pump it back into our homes. - GM4horse |
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| 3 Sept CRPD and oversight [Editor Note - This "Sound Off" had minor editing for space and clarity.] I have attended public board meetings during the past six months of our park district, Cordova Recreation and Park District (CRPD), and I want to share what I have discovered. My initial reason for attending these meetings was the fact that the CRPD Board and Administration were less than truthful in their explanation for requesting homeowners to approve a Benefit Assessment tax. CRPD used false claims about the status of CRPD, which was then used to sway homeowners into support the tax. In fact, no one in CRPD has denied their role to me when confronted. In essence, their response was, "So What!" It is interesting to note that very few homeowners attended these meetings. In fact, most of the time, I was the only homeowner present who was not part of the Board or the Administration. For years we have been told that the only way to control taxation is at the lowest level of government. In the case of the CRPD this is absolutely incorrect. Nobody comes, nobody cares and nobody has time to get involved. Therefore, a few people control the use of our tax money without any public input. I would venture to say that if you combined all of the local park districts in the state, you would see an excessive abuse of budgeting and overspending. But who cares? So What? The first fact that I want to share with you is that the assessment district tax, which was approved, represented a 27% tax revenue increase for CRPD. You see, that is what a $20 tax per homeowner amounted to. You bet CRPD is happy that the assessment passed! CRPD was able to shift money from park maintenance programs to the addition of more Administrative staff and improved benefits costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars each year within the General Fund. It is obvious that the majority of the Board do not even know what the Assessment District is and just blindly vote to increase taxes because more funds will be allocated to the district. That type of behavior is unacceptable. Why do we have Board members sitting as our representatives who do not understand the concept of the Benefit Assessment District? Second, in 2005/06, the CRPD Board approved a defined benefits pension program for salaried employees. That vote wiped out the park maintenance budget; ergo, an additional revenue source or an assessment district was necessary to recoup funds that were lost to the pension program. What’s interesting about the new pension program is the fact that defined benefit pension plans have been causing havoc with private businesses and industries, such as airlines (Delta, Northwest, American), auto (General Motors, Ford), technology (IBM, Intel, Boeing), etc. Most of these industries and companies have dropped these pension plans recently. Instead, most of these industries and companies changed to the defined contribution plans, such as 401K. Why did CRPD and its Board vote for a defined benefit plan in 2005/06, when this type of plan was causing firms to declare bankruptcy? Didn’t they know the costs of maintaining the pension plan would run into the millions that could have been used on our decaying parks? The answer is that the Board members do not have any financial experience to understand the complexities of this effort. Again, the Board response is, So What! Third, it was discovered over the past two years that back in 1983 the CRPD Board approved a policy that allowed salaried employees to convert unused sick leave (96 hours a year) to vacation time that had to be used in the following year. Back then, the park administrator said that it was a gift, and the converted sick leave was not debited. This has two implications: First, a second-year salaried employee could take 1 day short of 5 weeks of vacation starting in the second year on the job. Second, all yearly-unused sick leave was not debited, even though it was converted to vacation time, and the sick leave accounts continued to increase year after year. The net result, using the case just stated, is that an employee gets 4.8 weeks of vacation each year from Year 2 through Year 5, and then in Year 6, vacation increases to 5.4 weeks per year thereafter. Further, sick leave accumulates, so at the end of Year 6 the account contains 576 hours or 14.4 available weeks. The net effect of this policy resulted in the district losing perhaps millions of dollars over the years that could have been spent on the parks. Do you really think these benefits are justifiable? Yet, the independent auditor stated that the sick leave conversion to vacation leave without debiting the sick leave account was not acceptable. He had stated that it was important that this stop immediately. At one meeting I demanded that the Board issue a cease and desist order regarding this policy since it was excessively draining revenue from the district. What is truly amazing is that the district’s lawyer came to describe the events from 1983 to the present as thus: “there was no financial impact to the district because the district would have paid these individuals the same amount of money whether they were at work or on vacation.” So you now know what is happening. For example, the district’s lawyer basically says that all of the Administrative staff can take a year off from work….why?…because the district would still have to pay the same amount of money. And of course the Board buys into it. At the present, the CRPD Board has not taken any formal action to cease the conversion of sick leave to vacation with debiting the sick leave account. Who Cares? Fourth, the percent of the General Fund tax revenue that is used for Administration and Benefits for the 2006/07 fiscal year is roughly 70%. I find this figure very disgusting. How does 70% of a budget set aside for Administration and Benefits translate into Safer, Cleaner and Greener Parks? The administrative staff has increased so much during the past few years that now CRPD has to find more space to put the new administrative staff. This is costing the District tens of thousands of dollars to find new buildings to rent and new office equipment to purchase. Who cares? Fifth, while I know that some of you are pleased with the new playground equipment at Prospect Hill Park in Gold River, it should be noted that this project did not appear in the 2005/06 budget. Where did the funds come from? It is important because the district had identified certain parks that needed upgrading, but Prospect Hill Park was not one of them. So the parks that were identified for an upgrade did not get any funds for improvement. That should make everyone happy, especially the Gold River homeowners. Yet, based on campaign literature mailed to you by CRPD for the Benefit Assessment District ballot measure those improvements to this park should have increased you property values. Think again! Sixth, after going through two budget cycles, I came to realize that there is no way to check whether or not a project planned in one year actually happened. I found, for example, line items appearing in this year’s budget which were similar to last year’s budget. It appears that money planned for one project was used to pay off another project during a fiscal year. How and why would this happen? I observed at a few meetings that some approved projects were based on estimates that greatly increased over time. One estimate had a White Rock Park renovation project costing $130 thousand increasing to over $400 thousand. At another Board meeting, the CRPD Administrator asked the Board for an additional $1.2 million to complete the Mather Sports Complex Project. Since this additional money had to come from other funds, one must assume that these funds were taken from other approved projects within that fiscal year. From my perspective, the CRPD Board lacks budgetary knowledge and financial discipline, because there is never a discussion about where the money is to come from when these increases in estimates occur. It is recommended that CRPD produce at the end of a fiscal year a financial report to the Board and public showing what projects were proposed for the year and what the status presently is: not accomplished, in progress, completed. This status should show budgeted amounts, amount spent, and percent complete. The park district uses every opportunity to explain why the parks in the district have fallen on disrepair. For example, you often hear about the impact of Proposition 13, which passed in 1978, and the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund (ERAF), which began in fiscal year 1992-93. While these two measures did cause some monetary problems for CRPD, these measures affected every California government agency down to the lowest government agency in the same way. In my opinion, it was not Prop 13 and ERAF that caused the problem; it was the mismanagement of the park funds by both Board and Administration that exacerbated the district parks’ decay over the years. We, the public, have a choice to make: Do you want CRPD to operate as it has done for the past 20 years? While CRPD has been successful granting excessive benefits to its employees, the net result was to steal maintenance money to pay for the benefits, which led to park rot. And then, the homeowners rewarded CRPD by passing a new tax! This is the wrong message. It is time for the public to take back the park district. It is time to get people elected to the Board who would oppose the assessment district tax, to formally reject, once and for all, the sick leave conversion to vacation leave as the independent auditor has claimed to be unacceptable, and to redefine the pension program by switching to a defined contribution system. It is time to emphasize the parks, not the benefits. After all, CRPD is a park district, not some critical, stressful business. While we continually hear from park officials insisting that we make the parks safe, clean and green, then CRPD needs to stress the need for improving maintenance and security staffing and de-emphasize the role of non- productive administrative staff. And let me remind you that the vast majority of park maintenance manpower is not salary full time, so they do not receive the generous benefits that the office, non-productive, salaried workers get. It is time to change directions and find new people with, hopefully, a financial and budgetary background to seek a position on the CRPD Board. I would definitely support an individual who would vote to rescind the Benefit Assessment District, an individual to stop the sick leave conversion program, and an individual who would vote to change the defined benefit pension plan to a less expensive 401K type plan. Those changes would get CRPD back on track for emphasizing our parks and freeing up the much needed money to get the parks Safe, Clean and Green. In the final analysis, the CRPD has become a district with a multitude of benefits that many of us do not enjoy. It is time to switch from a park benefits district for the enjoyment of the CRPD administrative staff to one that is friendly to the idea of making our parks; Safe, Clean and Green for those of us that live in the district. Simply put, the money has been there all along, but the funds have been utilized for the wrong purposes. The choice has been there over the years: increase the administrative staff and benefits or use the money for making the parks Safe, Clean and Green. The Administrators and Boards for some unknown reason have elected to let the parks Rot. What a Shame! - David A. Ivazian |
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Read old SOUND OFF letters from: |
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| December 2006 |
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| Early 2007 |
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| Mid-2007 |
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| So Sound Off. Tell us what is on your mind about Lincoln Village. Here are the guidelines: - To have your views posted in Sound Off send them in an e-mail to Admin@LincolnVillage.org - Make certain to have "Sound Off" in the subject line. - Include your full name at the bottom of the e-mail. - If you wish to use a pen name for Sound Off postings you may do so, but we still need your real name on the bottom of the original e-mail. Here are a few suggestions: - Try to limit yourself to one page per topic. - If you have multiple topics to chat about, send in one posting per topic. - If you are extra mad, upset, or ticked off when you write your contribution consider waiting until the next morning before you hit the "send" button, because once it's here it's fair game for posting. The Administrator's policy - I will post nothing that is illegal. - I will edit words and phrases that I don't want people under 18 years of age reading on this site. - If you ramble, I will edit you to less space. - Graphics, attachments and images don't always work on this website as well as on your pc at home. I reserve the right to trash them, rather than post them. - The website is about Lincoln Village. Postings should be of a local nature. (Lincoln Village - great! Rancho Cordova -usually ok. Sacramento County or the metro region - try the Bee. Anything of a state wide, national, or international nature - no way, get real people.) - I will TRY to post items the same week your email is sent. (Remember, I am not getting paid to do this, it actually cost me time and money, so bare with me.) - The Administrator reserves the right to add any other policy points he/she needs to. |
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