That's Chutzpah!

Ever since Fort Ord closed almost twenty years ago local veterans groups have been trying to establish a veterans cemetery on the former military base. It is and always has been a laudable and appropriate tribute to the soldiers who passed through Fort Ord prior to putting themselves in harms way for their country.

Unfortunately, their progress has been slow, apparently due to the massive bureaucracies and sluggish processes that affect most land use matters around here. Funding also appears to have been a problem. Understandably, cemetery proponents have grown frustrated by the whole process. 

But sometime in the past couple years the veterans' tactics took a dark turn. Cemetery supporters hitched their wagon to the controversial Monterey Downs project, a proposal to build a massive horse racetrack, hotels, and other big things on a pristine old-growth oak forest. Monterey Downs and the cemetery would then occupy different areas of the same parcel of land. Evidently, the arrangement the veterans made with the racetrack developers would have provided the cemetery with a suitable piece of land and funding to develop it. In return, Monterey Downs would gain a veneer of civic responsibility and a political wedge to help justify their own development.

It was sneaky politics, and nasty things followed. Suddenly anyone who dared question Monterey Downs, and there are a lot of legitimate questions, was branded as being anti-veteran. If you opposed Monterey Downs you were, in the eyes of cemetery supporters, against the cemetery plain and simple.

As the past year wound down some sensible public officials found a way to disconnect the cemetery project from the Monterey Downs planning, allowing the cemetery to occupy a portion of the parcel without being contingent on the approval of the racetrack. A more appropriate source of funding was also found.

Fast forward to recent weeks. A new concern has been raised about the cemetery plans. Some people are saying that the land was cleared of hazardous, and possibly explosive, materials only to a depth of four feet. Since graves are dug six feet deep there might be a problem. I'm not qualified to assess the legitimacy of this concern, but that's not why I'm writing now, anyway.

No, I'm here today because I read a guest commentary in Tuesday's Monterey Herald written by Richard Garza of the Central Coast Veterans Cemetery Foundation. I almost fell off my chair when I read this sentence:

"The most frequent tactic used to try to derail [the veterans cemetery] involves attempts by various groups to link it to the proposed Monterey Downs development."

WHAT??? It appears that cemetery supporters are now blaming others for their own stupid mistake. The cemetery wasn't even remotely controversial before its proponents linked up with Monterey Downs. Now they're suggesting that this well-documented relationship was a myth cooked up by cemetery opponents to discredit the cemetery project. What chutpah!

Keep the Steinbeck Forum

The ball has started rolling on a major remodeling of the Monterey Conference Center. The project is still in its initial stages, with nothing set in stone, but it has received the official blessing of the Monterey city council.

I don't have any strong feelings about the project in general, but one specific proposal has me disturbed. A consultant has recommended that the center's Steinbeck Forum, a 494 seat theater-style lecture hall, be eliminated and replaced with a plain, flat, empty room with four walls just like every other room in the conference facility.

Bad idea.

The Steinbeck Forum is unique among local conference venues. For starters, it's very comfortable, having permanent theater-style seating instead of the firm and tiny portable chairs used elsewhere in the conference center. Also, because the seating area is raked at a fairly steep angle, each row of seats is much higher than the one in front, making for unobstructed sightlines and excellent views from every seat. Contrast this with conventional meeting rooms where every chair is on the same flat surface. In such rooms, everyone's head is at the same level, so views are often blocked by the people sitting in front of you. The Steinbeck Forum also has an ample stage suitable for lectures, panel discussions, films, musical bands, and other forms of popular entertainment, plus a complete control booth for sound, lighting, and video technicians.

But the consultants say it's not versatile enough. A plain flat room, they say, can do more things. Well, true enough. You can't, for example, hold a roundtable discussion or a high school prom in a theater. But for reasons already stated, a flat room can't necessarily do everything well. A well-rounded conference center requires a variety of venue styles to best meet the diverse needs of different types of events. One size or shape does not fit all.

Furthermore, flat conference rooms are a dime a dozen on the Monterey Peninsula. The conference center already has several, as do the adjoining Portola Hotel and neighboring Marriott. In fact, every major hotel from Seaside to Pebble Beach has several of them. One more isn't going to make Monterey more marketable as a conference destination. 

On the other hand, having a unique, very comfortable venue in the conference center gives it an advantage over other conference facilities on The Peninsula. Let's not eliminate that advantage.

The Steinbeck Forum was done right. It's a wonderful venue. Don't mess with it!

Doesn't hold water.

I have a small book called “Gumpisms” which is a collection of sayings by the movie character Forrest Gump. My favorite Gumpism (sanitized by me for your protection) says “Keep your B.S. detector in good working order.” That's good advice, particularly when reading the propaganda being put forth by our private utility companies of late. I've written about PG&E's B.S. in the past, and now it's time to take on Cal-Am, our water company.

An insert in our latest water bill attempts to explain away a sudden rash in inexplicably high water bills that some customers are getting. We're talking about bills that suddenly jump from under $50 to a couple thousand dollars with no detectable explanation. Cal-Am is blowing these spikes off as unrepaired leaks, even when licensed plumbers can find no leaks. One likely culprit, according to this flyer, is toilet leaks. Here's what they said:

“By far, the most common source of lost water in a home results from a leaky toilet. And unlike a broken irrigation line, it rarely leaves a trace. That's because all the water leaks back down into the drain unnoticed and can waste more than three gallons a minute. This can add up quickly.

“Let's say you have a modest leak at one gallon per minute. That's 1,440 gallons per day and more than 43,000 gallons a month. Add that to the water you're already using and you could be facing a very high water bill as a result. There's no puddle, no water damage and worst of all, toilet leaks are often intermittent which means they may be overlooked by a plumber.”

This sounds plausible because there is an element of truth to this. Toilet leaks are indeed very common. Chances are very good that you've had one within the past couple of years. Most likely someone on your block has a toilet leak right now, though it's not costing thousands of dollars.

But when they say that toilet leaks leave no trace, their logic starts to get murky. This is true only of the oldest toilets still in use. With old toilets, if water trickles out of the tank, the fill valve would open ever so slightly and refill the tank at the same slow rate, making no noise. But modern water-saving toilets, those made in the last 25 years and which nearly all of us have by now, are designed to alert us to leaks. The fill valve opens up only after the water level in the tank drops an inch or so, thus turning on the water full blast so you can hear it running. If you hear the toilet running and you haven't flushed it, that's the alert signal that you have a leak. So unless you have an very old toilet, leaks do, in fact, leave an audible trace that all but the hard of hearing can detect.

As we read on, Cal-Am's numbers on toilet leaks start to venture into fantasyland. Typical toilet leaks release a few gallons per day, an amount that won't add more than a few dollars to your monthly bill, as it has done to ours from time to time. The one gallon per minute leak in Cal-Am's example is not “modest” by any means. Unless you're on vacation, you'd notice it pretty quickly because you'd not only hear your toilet running almost constantly, you'd probably see the water running into the bowl as well. Furthermore, you'd notice that your toilet won't always flush properly because the tank would be half empty half the time. At three gallons per minute (a gallon every twenty seconds) water would be rapidly rushing through the bowl. You'd have to be blind, deaf, and thoroughly stupid to let that run more than a minute, much less a full month!

Finally, Cal-Am insults the plumbing profession by asserting that they will overlook intermittent leaks. This sounds like an excuse to dismiss reports that plumbers have inspected the homes of people with spiked bills and found no leaks. An experienced plumber would certainly consider this possibility and provide dye tablets to their customers to place in the toilet tank. If the dye shows up in the bowl without flushing, even after the plumber has left, you'll know you have a toilet leak. You can also do this yourself with dye tablets from the hardware store, or just ordinary food coloring.

So when Cal-Am tells customers that thousand-dollar water bills are caused by toilet leaks, their argument just doesn't hold water.

Lawsuits I expect to see.

Now that Samsung has to pay Apple a bazillion dollars for allegedly copying Apple's rectangular phone with rounded corners, a number of other companies have no doubt realized they can now sue their competitors for anything that bears a resemblance to their own products. I expect we'll soon see other lawsuits such as....

• Ford suing GM, Chrysler, and Toyota for mounting their cars on four wheels like Ford does.
  
• GM countersueing Ford for stealing their idea of putting a radio in the dashboard.
  
• Post suing Kellogg's for stealing the idea of mixing sugar coated raisins with bran flakes.
  
• Kleenex suing Scotties for stealing the idea of interlacing tissues to keep them popping up out of the box.
  
• The Sunshine Cookie people suing Nabisco for stealing their idea of placing vanilla cream between two round chocolate wafers.
  
• Boeing suing Airbus for copying their idea of mounting jet engines on each wing.
  
• Aerospatiale suing Boeing for stealing their idea for mounting jet engines on the rear of the plane's fuselage.
  
• Webster suing American Heritage for stealing the idea of listing words in the dictionary in alphabetical order.
  
• John Kerry suing Mitt Romney for copying Kerry's strategy of being for something before he was against it.
  
• The Republican Party suing the Deomcratic Party for stealing the idea of making false statements in attack ads.

Now that the precedent has been set, these sorts of lawsuits are inevitable.

Quote of the week

Nothing in Carmel is ever simple. There's been an ongoing debate over a plan to replace decades old porto-potties at the south end of Carmel beach with real rest rooms. Just when we thought the problem had been solved and designs were approved, neighbors came out with machetes and pitchforks demanding that the plans be scaled back.

So a special joint meeting of the city council, planning commission, and the hired architect, was held, according to the August 10th Carmel Pine Cone, and a most bizarre discussion ensued.

The architect was told to redesign the rest rooms to be small, simple, and at the same time "world class." He was further instructed that those were not contradictory concepts. 

One nearby resident said she and her neighbors had decided that the facilities should only include toilets, but not sinks for hand washing. Their reason being that a knee-high faucet (used for washing feet and dogs) already existed on the nearby beach stairway, making sinks unnecessary. One must assume these folks don't think it's all that important to wash after using the toilet. (Public health advisory: Steer clear of Carmel's southern beach-area residents when they want to shake hands!)

After further debate about size, shape, landscaping, etc., etc. one woman stood up and said “I’m assuming we want people to use this, so there’s got to be some way for them to recognize it’s a freaking bathroom, right?”

I'm glad there was at least one person there who had their head screwed on right.

A pocket guide to local water politics.

Is anyone besides me having trouble keeping track of the diverse cast of agencies trying to solve our water problems? Based solely on what I read in the newspapers, here are what I understand to be the major players in the ongoing failure to secure a legal and sustainable water supply for the Monterey Peninsula.

The State which decreed that we must stop most of the pumping of water from the Carmel River aquifer by 2016 or else.

Voters, who in 1993 and 1995 rejected not one, but two water supply projects which would have solved the problem long ago.

A Water Board which has been unable to come up with any significant solutions since voters rejected both of the projects it developed in the 1990s.

A neighboring Water District that is still licking its wounds after failing to take control of The Peninsula's water supply by pretending to be the agency that would save The Peninsula from the ineffective Water Board.

A County Board of Supervisors which has arbitrarily decided that any desalination plant in the county must be publicly owned.

A Private Water Company that is responsible for providing water to The Peninsula. After several failed attempts to work with public agencies, it has decided to ignore the county ban on private desalination plants and build one anyway.

A Prominent Local Businessman who claims he can build a desalination plant much cheaper than the Private Water Company.

A City Council that has taken it upon itself to be the public agency responsible for the Prominent Local Businessman's project even though it would be built in another community twenty miles outside its jurisdiction.

A variety of grassroots citizen groups and business associations, each of which say they have the answers if we just listen to them and not those other groups.

A Water Authority composed of a group of mayors from every city on The Peninsula determined to make sense of this mess, a process that looks more and more like herding cats.

So there you have it. There are too many cooks in the kitchen. If we can't get this list whittled down to one lead agency pretty darn fast we're gonna be toast.

The right words

From the very first days of The Monterey Peninsula Toy Box the following quote has served as our introduction:

"In six days God created the Heavens and the Earth. On the seventh He made the Monterey Peninsula."

I first heard words to that effect one weekend long ago while watching the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament (now called the AT&T tournament) on TV. I didn't know if the announcers were quoting someone or had just made it up on the spot. But the words, or at least the general message, stuck in my mind and it seemed appropriate to put it on the Toy Box home page from day one.

The quote remained untouched for the last fourteen years and eleven months. It is now touched. A couple weeks ago a visitor to the Toy Box kindly informed me that the original quote was from Cal Brown, and was first written in a Golf Digest article. It was later re-quoted in the 1974 book Great Golf Courses of the World by William H. Davis. The correct quotation is:

"In the Bible it says that God made the world in six days and on the seventh, rested. But I think that on the seventh day he created the Monterey Peninsula."

Giving credit where it is due, I have now posted the correct original quotation, accompanied by Cal's good name, where my illegitimate version previously stood.

Cal Brown certainly had the right idea. I understand that he had several golf books to his name, including one called The Golf Courses of the Monterey Peninsula, which, evidently, he was somewhat familiar with.