D.I.Y.  Vallejo

4/17/08

By Marc Garman

This Saturday another installment of Vallejo’s all volunteer graffiti eradication program (VFOG) is continuing the ongoing effort to improve our City’s appearance.  Volunteers should be at  Building 535 on Walnut Ave on Mare Island at 8:30 AM SHARP. Closest cross street is A Street.  MAP

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The VFOG program is a good example of the type of program we need more of in Vallejo.  All volunteer and with no fiscal impact to the budget. Remember, we have no money.

Of course everybody is hoping for some grand and sweeping fiscal vision of faeries and sugarplums to belch forth from City Council Chambers on April 22.  Got news for you.  NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.  Whatever deal the City and the Safety Unions cook up it ain’t gonna be splendid. Based on the City Council Agenda it seems the mighty OZby  is delaying the whole thing anyhow.

The fact is nobody is going to pull a huge pile of money out of their keister anytime soon.  The public safety unions still seem to believe that the City might be hiding money.  Bet finance director Rob Stout is pacing his office right now shouting “SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!”  at a picture of IAFF 1186 President Kurt Henke.

The unfortunate bit is that we, citizens of Vallejo, are the ones ultimately left holding the bag (you know what’s in the bag).

Logically there are only two places extra money can come from in the short term:

•   More fees for everything the City can think of.  Expect to pay more for the scant few City services  remaining.

• Taxes.  Methinks some foul smelling tax connivance may be brewing.

Yes, yes revenue and business growth are good things but they take time.  More time than we have before Vallejo reaches total insolvency.  So, all you revenue hawkers might have had a point 3 or 5 years ago…but right now the problem is too acute for business growth to solve the problem.  Don’t get me wrong now…business growth and revenue are a good thing, but they won’t help us until we fix the structural issues in Vallejo’s budget.

The bottom line, and conclusion to this diatribe is this:  If  we want to see anything get done in Vallejo we had better get used to doing it ourselves.

The graffiti program is a good start.  But Vallejo is going to be in a slide for a while folks.

We had better start doing a lot of things ourselves in Vallejo.

D. I. Y. – Do It Yourself.

So, consider this a challenge.  I challenge YOU my friends to use some of your brainpower and civic energy to work together and come up with new and innovative ideas to help the City and each other.

Attached to this rant of mine is a blogspace.  Let’s talk about it and see what we can come up with together.   And you thought VIB was just about finger pointing!!!