Tourists visiting Lake County and driving through the different communities, sometimes ask our citizens “What happened to Clearlake?” They want to know why the rest of Lake County”s towns and cities seem to be steadily moving ahead while Clearlake is regressing.
All of the negative remarks don”t just come from strangers to Lake County. Many school teachers, police officers and City Hall employees will not buy or rent a home in Clearlake. They will travel many miles to work here, but they will not live here. Reasons given are usually run down neighborhoods, trash and garbage, filthy roads and terrible streets. A good example of trash and garbage are 15 parked junk automobiles within 300 feet of my home in Burns Valley.
Why is it that Clearlake”s trash and junk problems are almost totally ignored by City Hall? Most likely the same reason the City Council refuses to deal with Clearlake”s infrastructure problems, they can”t cope with it. When we incorporated Clearlake Highlands in 1980, there were two definite reasons the citizens voted to make the Highlands a City. Those two reasons were roads and police protection.
In those days sometimes there was only one deputy sheriff between the Oaks and the Highlands. Well, we got more police protection to the point that the whole police department went overboard in cost and enforcement. Lawsuits against the City for police problems were stacking up, and the department has still not recovered.
As I have said many times, the roads were important and were made a priority in the first years of incorporation. When our engineer, Alan Jelton, and myself were gone from City Hall after 1983, the public works department turned into the parks department and Clearlake”s roads were basically forgotten.
An incorporated city is usually graded by the services it provides its citizens. Clearlake doesn”t provide anything to the public except some police services. City Hall does a lot of boasting, and the Council members hand out awards and plaques, but providing services such as problem solving and long range planning seems to elude their agenda.
Also services such as street lighting, sanitary sewers and sewage disposal system, storm drain system, fire department, paramedic services and animal control are either provided by Lake County or are nonexistent. This was not the type of city that was envisioned by the Highlands” citizens 27 years ago. If we had known this would be our fate, we would have stayed with the County.
The cost of this city government in Clearlake is prohibitive. According to recent information from the City Clerk, the 2007 payroll and benefit budget for Clearlake is right at $5 million. To put this payroll amount into perspective, you need to review the salaries of City Administrator, Chief of Police, City Engineer and others when the city first incorporated. The salaries in City Hall have risen by 300 to 500 percent.
The number of employees working at City Hall at this time is 63, and will increase to 74 when the full staff including city council is on board. History tells us there was 34 total city employees in 1983, not counting city council members. That was three years after incorporation and most employees handled several job descriptions.
For instance, I covered the Director of Public Works, Superintendent of Streets, Code Enforcement and part time Building Department Management. The payroll of the City of Clearlake may be the largest or close to the largest payroll within the boundaries of the city. That”s not what governments are supposed to signify. City employees are supposed to be the public servants.
When operating costs of city government reach the level of Clearlake that doesn”t have a full service agenda and the necessary departments including water, sewer, sewer disposal, street lighting and power, fire and rescue, animal control, etc., then the way of this government is backwards. If Clearlake had all the necessary departments and some additional employees, then how much would the city payroll amount to?
When an incorporated community can not afford the city hall they built or their own police department, and continually tell the public they can”t afford to repair any streets, then there is a fiduciary problem within the city government. When elected representatives talk about bringing “fiscal responsibility” to an already stressed budget, they should be concerned about the very first dollar in the treasury and not just the last dollar they spend.
The City of Clearlake has had 27 years to show the rest of Lake County that Clearlake Highlands could grow into a city of responsibility and wisdom. The last 24 years has been a dismal failure. I believe the present city government should open up public discussion, asking for citizens input about Clearlake returning again to a town in Lake County under county government.
Keep in mind that the Highlands had the same county services that the rest of Lake County had in 1980 and our road system was better maintained at that time than it has been for the last 24 years by the City of Clearlake. If that isn”t going backwards, then someone please explain to me what one should call it.
Editor”s Note: Frank Brumfield is a resident of Clearlake. This guest commentary is the sole opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Record-Bee or its staff.
