9-10-09

 
9-10-09
Badlands Journal
The price of dirt, Part 3...Badlands Journal editorial board
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-09-10/007404
In a July 30 letter to state Assemblyman Juan Arambula, the Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote:

While certain liabilities are difficult to quantify precisely, it appears the state has over $200 billion of short-term, longer-term, and retirement-related liabilities to retire in future years. These liabilities will continue to put pressure on the state’s finances for years to come.
The Merced County Board of Supervisors next considered county-staff recommendations for cuts to the Human Services Agency.
Ana Pagan HSA, close to tears, addressed the recommendations. It is the second round of reductions for HSA.  We balanced our budget after the first round of cuts and then the governor came in with his veto and essentially decimated the agency, she said.  “He (the governor) cut Child Welfare, MediCal, CalWorks, totally eliminated some senior programs …we will be reorganizing and restructuring to see what we can salvage, she said.
Supervisor Walsh asked: We will be leveraging against federal dollars any chance we get?”
Pagan: “Yes.”
Walsh: “Are your award-winning child welfare programs sustainable now?”
Pagan: “Yes.”
Regarding CalWorks, she said there are two phases of cuts. Her present restructuring involved only the first phase of cuts. She doesn’t know what phase two will be.
Kristie Waskiewicz, the AFSCME union representative asked: “Why is the county seriously considering giving more than one million dollars of general fund money to two outside agencies, Merced County Office of Education and Merced Union High School district, who have not even objected to the cuts of staff for those programs?” She urged the supervisors not to approve manpower cuts and cut outside contracts instead.
HSA employees testified before the supervisors. We gathered some of their comments: 
 “We provide services for hundreds of people. With the economy at low right now, our services will be needed by more and more, which means our caseloads will only get larger and larger. How many more do we cut? Who will be available to help our clients?” 
“We’re in a unique position out at HSA. When the economy goes down, property taxes go down, people aren’t buying big ticket items generating a lot of sales taxes, more people unemployed, not increasing revenue to Merced County, the unemployed come out to us for services. We provide cash aid, medical, food. Many have dysfunctional qualities in their families, so it also spills over into social services, employment training department, also the administrative services department that provides support to make all these functions possible…This is Appalachia. I don’t understand why we can’t dip into the rainy day fund. That’s what it’s for. As eligibility workers, we’re held to standards – beware – as workers decrease, the quality of work is going to fall with higher and higher work loads. We’ll be liable to sanctions from the state and Merced will get hit in the pocket book again. Use the rainy day fund and consider furloughs at HSA. How many of you have been out there on the first of the month and seen the lines? None of you? The information people at the front of the line will be cut. They are vital to our services.”
“Ana Pagan worked really hard to develop alternatives to my house, and I urge you to consider those alternatives. Or there will be 44 more houses in foreclosure. Before layoffs consider furloughs. We’re willing.” 
“I’m single, four kids, in a masters program, trying to do better for my kids, family service representative, just the idea of losing my job creates a lot of stress. You should go down first of month and see what we do. Why wasn’t furloughs and pay reduction option considered? We knew our budget was in crisis last year. Why weren’t we prepared this year? This shouldn’t be like this. We should start furloughs and pay reductions now to prepare for next year. Not having a job is not a good thing. The stress is going to go up on the job and we do get sanctioned if we don’t meet our standards.”
“Six hundred and fourteen men, women and children will be eliminated from one home care providers’ program, a contract program effective Sept. 1. It puts people at risk for abuse, neglect, institutionalization”.
“If I lose my job, I lose my home. If I lose my home I will be at somebody’s door. Maybe out here where I see everybody else, at the county court park. At the canal you see all these people that are homeless now. We need to think about what we can do to save our county. It’s not just my job. It’s not just his job. It is the responsibility of all of us as a family, because we are a family at the county and you are our leaders. We elected you to look at what was coming up and we expected you to see what was coming up. And you have rainy day funds and you say you might save it because we don’t know what coming years look like. But we need to be a family now because next year somebody may not be around. I feel bad because I am a single parent and I’ve done everything to raise my kids to be respectful, to be law abiding citizens. Go out there and vote. Get themselves informed on what’s going on. I believe the rest of us have to learn what everybody’s doing – what our elected officials are doing – so that we can make an informed decision when we go out there in the polls and vote. So I am here to ask you again. Just as I am willing to take a pay cut, furlough day, you do the same. I’m willing to have my pay increases frozen. You do the same. You know -- lead us. And thank you again.”
The supervisors then began to ask questions and deliberate among themselves.
Walsh asked Pagan if the Valley is going to get a break based on the size of our needy population. Pagan said she’d heard nothing about that.
Supervisor O’Banion moved to accept staff recommendation.
Walsh: “After 30 years in this career, 25 in human services, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sacramento do this to the safety net. We need to let our legislators know what the impacts of their decisions have been to our community. We need to clearly communicate how unacceptable those decisions are to our community because when you have a community with 35 percent receiving some kind of public assistance. These cuts are disproportionate to us as a county and to the Valley. I will convey that message but we need community members to do it too.” 
O’Banion: “If there is an alternative means of bringing some of these programs back I certainly hope staff will work on that. The brown bag program costs $21,000 – we need to act on all of this but I’d like to consider a proposal if one came along.” 
Supervisor Kelsey expressed a sense of powerlessness and despair (without reference to tapping into the rainy day fund):  “There was a suggestion to replace the brown bag program with congregate meal service, but brown bag serves many more areas. With that cut out, you’re going to see a tremendous increase in hunger. That is an anomaly in a farming area like this one. You wouldn’t expect it. It’s sad. We’re dismantling programs and we don’t have any knowledge of what’s going to happen in the future. This won’t be happening in Newport Beach or Santa Barbara. You won’t see the devastation that this is going to cause in our county. Not much hope in Cardoza’s plan (to designate the Valley an economic hardship zone.) It’s difficult to work with state and federal officials because they are just one voice among others all crying in the dark for help. I’ve always been concerned that the county would deteriorate to a par with Third World with people standing on the street with their hand out and babies sleeping on sidewalks. It’s really quite disturbing. I just hope with the non-profits and the churches and the people of good will we can get through this tough time.” 
We think the cuts to HSA passed unanimously but Kelsey could have voted against it. It is often difficult to tell how any supervisor votes at Merced County Board of Supervisor meetings and it is often impossible to tell who seconds a motion. What approval of staff recommendations meant was that four vacant positions were eliminated and 19 employees were fired, the two programs with the educational institutions Waskiewicz criticized were saved, terminated programs included Merced College, Merced County Food Bank, Catholic Charities and Alz Care, and three “contract amendments” that are not explained in the agenda.
Next came the cuts to the Department of Public Health.
Director John Volanti explained that the governor’s line-item vetoes largely accounted for the latest round of cuts, the department having already gone through an earlier round. The damage: in 2006-2007 the department had 185 positions. Staff recommendations for this year’s budget would reduce the number to “around one hundred.” The specific resulting from $1, 048,000 the governor cut from the state budget would be in
AIDS/HIV care, foster care, AFLP (young parent program), maternal and child healthcare programs, and immunization.   
Eliminating the teen pregnancy program will cause teen birthrate to rise and cost the county more. “Balancing our county budget on the backs of our teens is a bad idea. We presently serve 175 teens by connecting them to county services,” Volanti said.
Two public health employees tearfully commented to the supervisors: 
“I am a product of this program and have worked with the county for over 15 years. Worked with teens for over 11 years and give them my personal experiences every day.
Twenty-three years ago I lived at the Felix Torres Labor Camp (in Planada). Monica Blaisdale came to Le Grand High School talked to me, encouraged me to stay in school, establish goals, so here I am before you, a county employee in jeopardy of losing her job.”
“I am a 25-year-plus year employee all with health department: Young parent program has existed in county since 1986.” This employee broke down completely reading the mission and services provided pregnant teens and young mothers to, among other things, help them stay in school and help them with their own parents. She said the program also helps establish paternity, custody and restraining orders. “We do a whole realm of things for our clients. Between the six of us, there is 60 years of experience that you just can’t get by going to school.”
Gloria Sandoval, a high school counselor told the supervisors that the WalMart Distribution Center could bring lots of jobs, but could also cause lots of health issues. “The Terminator is not courageous enough to tax corporations …You as our leaders have to stand up for the people of our community and not just allow yourselves to be whipped at the state level,” she said.
Waskiewicz said, “The concerns here—the documents don’t always make sense. You’re cutting the healthy family program without knowing what the impacts of other cuts are going to be. Not everybody was given permission to get off work to come to try to save their jobs today. Listening to testimony today, these programs are saving lives. It is not enough to sit up there and say you feel bad. You don’t know what bad is. You be the person going home and telling the kids you have to move but have nowhere to move to because you’ve lost your job. Just from a sense of right and wrong you shouldn’t be doing any of this. There are other, unexplored options. We know that. You know it and we know you know it. This is wrong.”
The supervisors deliberated, starting with Walsh asking Volanti if there were “any billable hours here.” 
Volanti answered that there are billable hours in AFLP, “but don’t know from state yet. If we get notification, we will come back to board and ask to replace the program.”
Walsh asked him about the healthy families program and a program called CCS for disabled children. 
Volanti replied that there were 143 clients of healthy families with disabled kids. The healthy families program is now disenrolling and freezing new enrollments. We anticipate that the 143 will be disenrolled and will end up costing the county between $500-600,000. “The state has capped other programs that help those children so we anticipate by the third quarter we will be responsible for them 100 percent.” 
Supervisor Pedrozo, wishing to appear awake, asked where vehicle-license fee increases were going? 
Assistant CEO Brown told him to public safety (police and fire).
Volanti concluded, saying, that if there are any additional allocations from state, he will return to the board with new options.
O’Banion: I move to approve the recommended actions.
The motion carried, 4-1, Kelsey opposed.

Merced Sun-Star
Squatters moving in; foreclosure crisis creates surplus of empty homes in Merced County...CORINNE REILLY
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1048378.html
The first time Carey Mitchell saw her, Tammy was standing at an intersection near the 16th Street offramp from Highway 99. Her clothes looked dirty, her face tired. She held a cardboard sign asking for spare change.
Without thinking, Mitchell pulled her car to the side of the road. In an instant, Tammy was at her window. Mitchell rolled it down. "Do you need a place to sleep tonight?" she remembers asking. On a scrap of paper, Mitchell quickly sketched a map to a house a few miles away. It was Mitchell's house, but she didn't want it anymore.
She had decided to stop paying the home's mortgage. As she walked away, she handed the keys to Tammy, who stayed for three months before she was formally evicted this May. The nights Tammy spent there were the first she'd slept inside in more than three years.
When homes fall into foreclosure, former owners who won't leave on their own are kicked out. The houses stand empty until banks sell to new owners -- at least that's the way it usually worked before the foreclosure crisis.
But in its wake, a lot has changed. These days, it's not uncommon to find foreclosed homes occupied by squatters, including homeless people, evicted former owners who move back illegally, and opportunists looking to live rent-free for as long as they're able. Some are invited by people leaving the homes behind. Others aren't.
Along with loan modification firms and a host of new industries that have sprung up around the mess, such as foreclosure cleanup services, foreclosure squatters are among the few beneficiaries of the bust. Emboldened by the sheer number of vacant homes and the months that many of them go unsold, the squatters have become a nationwide phenomenon.
And in Merced, where the foreclosure rate remains higher than anywhere else in California, they seem to be a growing population.
In Tammy's case, the foreclosure was an older one-story on Sonora Avenue. Mitchell, a real estate agent from Redwood City, had happily scooped it up as an investment property at the height of the housing boom in 2005. But by the time she met Tammy this spring, she was angry. She owed way more on the house than it was worth, and she claims the former owner, who financed the deal himself, had concealed evidence of roof damage.
Mitchell was in town to try one last time to get him to take the house back and undo it all. He refused. So she stocked the fridge, dropped off a few towels and some dishes, then transferred the utilities to Tammy and gave her the keys.
"I said, 'I'm done,'" Mitchell recently explained. "I wrote Tammy a note saying she had a right to be there, and then I walked out the door."
Of course, no one tracks how many foreclosure squatters have been discovered here. But local code enforcement officers, real estate agents and police said they encounter them regularly.
Kelly Roseman, a code enforcement officer with the city of Merced, estimated that she comes across inhabited foreclosures at least twice a month. She said most instances involve squatters who would otherwise be homeless, though she's also met families who've moved into foreclosed properties simply to avoid paying rent.
She recalled one case in which a family abandoned a home on Eighth Street in South Merced, then gave their keys to friends who'd been renting elsewhere. "They basically said, 'Ride it out as long as you can,'" Roseman explained. "(The friends) put the PG&E (utilities) in their name, they moved their stuff in, and when they got a notice saying the water bill hadn't been paid, they came in and paid it."
They stayed four months before the bank that repossessed the home offered them $2,000 to leave without a fight, Roseman said.
Such deals, called "cash for keys" agreements, were rarely used before the foreclosure crisis. Now squatters are moving into foreclosed homes and posing as legitimate tenants with the sole aim of collecting cash-for-keys payments, real estate agents said.
"A lot of times it's just easier for the banks to hand over money instead of going through the whole eviction process," said Susie Erb, a Merced-based real estate agent. "People know the banks are doing it, and they've learned to play the game."
Another local real estate agent, Andy Krotik, said he finds squatters living in bank-owned properties so often that he now carries a crowbar for protection when he visits new foreclosure listings. "I'm sure most of the people doing this aren't going to harm you, but you never know what you're walking into," Krotik said. "Before all the foreclosures, this absolutely wasn't happening. It's a whole new job now -- a whole new world."
Krotik said most of the squatters he's encountered appeared to be homeless. He usually asks them to leave -- but not always. "Sometimes they'll trash the house and steal all the appliances," he said. "Other times they'll actually keep the places up."
Foreclosure squatters are especially prevalent in poorer areas where neighbors are less likely to object, real estate agents and property managers observed. "It's really bad in Winton right now," said Dan Brunger, a manager with Kings View Work Experience Center, which dispatches crews to clean up foreclosed properties. "We had one foreclosure there where we found people squatting four different times."
In parts of the U.S., organized movements have sprung up to move squatters into foreclosed homes. A Florida-based group called Take Back the Land began placing homeless people in vacant houses in 2007. An organization in Minnesota called the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign also has helped put families into foreclosures.
Officials at several homeless advocacy groups said there are several similar efforts taking place quietly across the country, though they knew of none operating in California.
Max Rameau, Take Back the Land's director, said his organization has kept squatting families in foreclosed properties as long as nine months. He said the group has run into almost no opposition.
"I don't think we could have done this a few years ago," Rameau said. "Outside the context of the crisis, the authorities would have acted very swiftly against us, and the public would have supported that. But things are different now. So many people have been affected."
A local homeless man squatting behind a small blue foreclosure on West 21st Street said he's lasted longer than six months at some properties before being asked to leave. "I guess it's been easier for people like me since all these people started abandoning their houses," said the 55-year-old, who would only provide his first name, Victor.
A wiry man with a neat, graying beard, Victor said he and his Chihuahua, Princess, sleep inside foreclosed homes only occasionally. They usually stay in backyards behind foreclosures or in garages. "I never mess the places up. There's no good in that," he said. "Sometimes I'll clean 'em up if there's vandalism and whatnot. I've boarded up the windows on places, and I've fixed the toilets."
He added that he always moves on as soon as he's asked. "I'm not looking for trouble."
Real estate agents said that's the case with most squatters. For those who refuse to leave, though, getting them out can be complicated. Police typically will help when a foreclosure's inhabitants are obviously squatters, such as people living without furniture or electricity.
But when occupants claim to be legitimate tenants and have moved in belongings or signed contracts for utilities, property owners usually must go through a formal eviction process and obtain court orders before police will act. That can take as long as several months.
"It's not always as clear-cut as you might think," said Roberta Medina, a city code enforcement officer. "Every situation is a little different."
In Tammy's case, police knocked on the door at least a half-dozen times during the first week she spent in Mitchell's house. "I'm figuring the neighbors noticed me and called," said Tammy, who is 43 and asked to be identified only by her first name because she thinks potential employers might reject her if they find out she used to be homeless.
Tammy said Mitchell's note of permission was enough to satisfy police, but it infuriated the home's former owner, who has since repossessed the property. "If he had been polite, I would have agreed to a date to move out. But he wasn't, so he had to do an eviction," she said. "I got a notice saying I had 90 days. I thought that was pretty good."
Tammy, who had spent the previous three years living along the banks of Bear Creek, said she used her time in Mitchell's house to regain control of her life. She's no longer homeless.
For now she's making a living helping her boyfriend remodel houses, but she has bigger plans for the future.
She recently bought a pickup truck which she hopes to use to launch a business cleaning out foreclosed homes.
Tip List: Park watering raises question from resident
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1048381.html
There's a drought on -- the third drought year in a row, if you haven't been paying attention.
Because of the water shortage many cities, including Merced, have imposed water conservation rules.
For instance, if homeowners or anyone else waters their lawn in the middle of the day -- from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. -- they can be fined. According to the city, "Water conservationists from the city of Merced are patrolling the city and will enforce the rules. Violations could result in fines ranging from $50 to $150."
Oh my!
But a tipster, Patti Patton, was driving by Burbank Park on East Olive Avenue recently and the sprinklers were blasting water in the midday heat. It was just after 11 in the morning and Burbank Park was being watered like storm clouds were on their way to replenish the water table.
"I thought we were in a drought situation," she wrote in an e-mail to the Sun-Star. "Evidently, the city does not have the same rules as the citizens of Merced regarding water."
When the Sun-Star sent a photographer to the park to see if this midday lawn watering still going on, we found that it was. At 11:15 a.m. the park's sprinklers were pumping out enough water for a Slip 'n Slide party.
So, do the city's water conservation rules apply to the city as well as its residents?
Mike Conway, the city's spokesman, said there isn't a double standard. If you are seeding a new lawn, as the city is doing at Burbank Park, you get an exemption from the watering rules.
"We try to be good role models because if we are going to hold our water users to one standard, we try to maintain that standard," he said.
Conway said he's reported city properties when they are watering during the day. Most of the time when daytime watering occurs, it's because someone forgot to set a timer or equipment has broken, he said.
Overall, said Conway, the city uses far less water than do residents. In August, for example, the city paid more than $22,000 for its water needs, while residents of Merced paid more than $800,000 collectively.
If you see a city property being watered at the wrong time of day, call Merced's Department of Public Works at (209) 385-6800.
What is wrong: A tipster says the city is watering its property during the hottest part of the day, while citizens can be penalized for doing the same thing.
Who is at fault: the city, but it says since it's seeding a new lawn, Merced, like everyone else, gets an exemption.