Diamond vineyards
I read a letter published in the Record Bee that was sent to our Board of Supervisors regarding Hidden Valley Lake and Diamond Vineyards, complaining about our Planning Department, our Board of Supervisors and their decisions. I believe that was totally unfair.
Hidden Valley was agriculture land to start with, and then the zoning was changed for housing for tax purposes, with many more values than agriculture, pasture land. But I still feel that our Board of Supervisors and Planning Department did the right thing by going by the rules. Our Planning Department, at lease for the last 10 years, has been more than fair on 99 percent of the issues no matter what it involved. They always looked at both sides of the fence, because you have to remember our Planning Commissioners and our Supervisors come from within our local neighborhoods where they live and own businesses, and they have been fair for the last 10 years as I watch them very closely.
When Jim Steele became a board member at first he sounded like he was working for the State instead of our County; but he has proven to me that he has Lake County at heart and he is on board with the rest of our supervisors 100 percent and I give him credit for that. When there are complaints about our Supervisors and our County, go to other counties like Sacramento, Napa, Sonoma and try to get permits there and then you will know how lucky you are living in Lake County dealing with the things you think are a problem. Hidden Valley became cracker box heaven so it will be close to other communities, Bay Area, Napa and Sonoma counties for people to commute to work.
So let’s be fair about our county and the good things they do for the taxpayers of Lake County and the businesses.
Always open minded and we have a very good board here art this time, the two that were replaced with excellent board members just being fair.
Ron Rose, Lakeport
Unforeseen consequences
I think it is time we Americans “bite the bullet” and take some credit for our role in some of our country’s, and the world’s problems. I suspect we get ourselves in trouble because, compared to the world, we have been very successful. For some 400 years we have built a wilderness into (arguably) the greatest country ever. Good!, but we have also gotten ourselves into trouble because of it. Sometime it has affected our values, our egos, our approach to other countries and cultures. When you are very good at what you do, you tend to think you can tell others what they should do, and sometimes you get in trouble for doing so. Perhaps “politics” is a good example. I suspect that had we taken more effort to understand the history, the complex religious situations, and the (far different) cultures of the middle east, Iraq would not have been invaded.
Because we offer more “opportunity” than most, we have a “south of the border” problem. When people feel they have more to gain by illegally immigrating to the US than they have if they remain in their home country, Americans can be sure of two things: Americans have made the country great; and the “home” countries have failed badly by comparison. Not the first time immigration has caused has caused concern: The Chinese exclusion act; and in the 1920s when the isolationist government first placed immigration quotas on other countries.
Other areas of success are education (although we seem to be slipping a bit), manufacturing and agricultural progress and technology, our capitalistic, free market based economy, and our belief in competition as a good thing, which gets us into job/employment problems. When other countries can supply the same production at a lower cost, American firms are going to have them do it and make larger profits at the same prices charged. Those people who think those jobs are “coming back”, have their heads in their armpits! Too often “price” (high labor costs) eliminates our ability to compete. In our country demand “price” is a prime creator of “demand”, given product equality, we tend to like “cheap”, and the cost of goods will rise if we do not utilize foreign labor—and that includes our “illegal “ agricultural labor.
Another way we have influenced the world is by our leading the movement from labor intensive agriculture and manufacturing to capital intensive. Cesar Chavez, in his efforts to improve agricultural labor conditions and wages is a good example. Much manufacturing has gone from handwork, to machine work, to mechanical control of machines, to computer control, to robotics—all based on the presumption that reduction of (human) labor lowers costs.
For a lot of workers, maybe the Luddites (late 1700s) had some good points!
Guff Worth, Lakeport
