6 comments:

• Josh Morgan posted at 10:18 am on Mon, Dec 31, 2012.

  Posts: 518

  Doug, I have a New Years resolution for you.....I dare you to write response that doesn't use the terms, "wealthy, well connected, affluent, GOB and pandering".

  Happy New Year to you and your family.

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• Doug Chaney posted at 8:49 pm on Sun, Dec 30, 2012.

  Posts: 388

  I remember when councilman Johnson promised El Concilio a spot at Hale Park and he seems to have swept it under the rug like he has with many of his elect me again boasts. I think the Lodi city council should be required to undergo some serious training in the human ethics department, especially bigotry. Along with harrassing attitudes toward persons of the opposite sex.

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• Doug Chaney posted at 8:44 pm on Sun, Dec 30, 2012.

  Posts: 388

  Outside funding sources? What has the city of Lodi ever maintained until it was blighted or in ruin? Have you been on the eastside of Lodi? Especially the ghetto they call the "industrial" area, not to mention most of the neighborhoods there? Doesn't Lodi pay their own way rather than wait on more government welfare money called "grants" until they do routine maintenance on properties, buildings and equipment? Have you seen the pre-smog era vehicles still being driven by Lodi city crews and employees? Those knock em' out stinking, polluting gas carts they use for the street fairs and events? This city council should be ashamed of the way they conduct business and pander to the every whim of the good old boys, well connected and their large contributers to their campaigns and keeping nearly every penny on projects that concern them on the westside and affluential parts of town. When will this backwards, stuck in the 50's, little town ever acknowledge the eastside, the blighted, run down conditions they have caused there by completely ignoring the eastside, mostly because many Lodians consider the minoritiesnearly all of which live on the eastside, second class citizens? The wealthy investors, many of them local Lodi area good old boys and girls are the slumlords of that area with many rental units unfit to live in and those parties seem to be given special preference by the council and governing authorities because they are affluent, wealthy, well connected, possibly all three, and they know no one will call them out. It's time the city of Lodi becomes the city of Lodi and not the westside good old boys and girls club, as it is now.

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• Ted Lauchland posted at 6:13 pm on Sun, Dec 30, 2012.

  Posts: 129

  All great ideas I'm sure Mr. Chaney. But - like I was told down at the county when I applied for monies from one of their programs designed to better individual efforts to update older irrigation systems - get in line. A stack of applications a mile high a several dollars short convinced me to not try to be a burden on the public supported coffers waiting several years for funding but instead to finance in some other imaginative ways if possible. Time was of the essence.

  Meanwhile my existing assets continue to require maintennance as I am also sure as stated for the pool at Hutchins continues. - To maintain it's value and to prevent it from falling into a blighted condition. New assets would need new additional monies for maintennance . This also applies to the city streets.
  This article in a way is a solicitation for outside funding sources to speed up the processes. The eastside pool is maintained with the same financial sources and will sometime in the future require a major overhaul. Hale Park has had it's renovations in the past many times. It used to be a bath house.

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• Doug Chaney posted at 8:36 am on Sun, Dec 30, 2012.

  Posts: 388

  Maybe it's time for that much needed aquatic and swim center that was on the GOB roster a few years back? What did Lodi get instead? An unnecessary and unneeded water treatment plant to be paid for by developers who required additional infrastructure for their four large projects, superWalmart, the two Gateway residential projects and Reynolds Ranch. Now that city council has voted to let these developers walk away, except for Mr. Browman for Walmart, which is expected to break ground this spring, taking away a valuable source of income from these "preferred" developers and builders. It's time for the city of Lodi to build that new aquatic and swim center on an eastside location available to the many ethnic resiidents who are too poor and have no transportation to be able to walk to this facility and ensure the location is near Hale Park allowing ALL Lodians access to the facility. There are many sites along east Lockeford street that are ideal. Maybe the same properties that were once targeted for the senior retirement home?

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• Doug Chaney posted at 8:16 am on Sun, Dec 30, 2012.

  Posts: 388

  Mr. Hood, don't you just love the wonderful Lodi leadership that make decisions to suit themselves, their pocketbooks, wealthy, well connected, their pet contractors and their large campaign contributors, like spending a million bucks to keep their seemingly favored contractor, AM Stephens, busy just to widen that short stretch of street at Hutchins Street Square to accomodate more parking for those who use the facilities there while not even adding an additional lane nor a bike lane and making parking difficult for the residents on that three block stretch of Hutchins street? And the fact that the facilities at Hutchins Square are leased by the city to many organizations for events, wine tastings, reduced child care for the well connected at what I consider dirt cheap prices while the HSS loses close to a milion dollars a year? One of those is LMH, with the Camp Hutchins child care program and its list of clients that many are far from needing that help and the charge for the facilities to LMH is reported to be $1 per year? LMH is a non-profit and could well afford to pay a reasonable lease and offer this child care program to the real needy and low income families, of which there are many on the eastside. Just what other entities and non-prrofits are given this same next to nothing deal by the city of Lodi? It bothers me that certain councilmen can keep one of their favorite contractors rollin' in the dough widening a street for parking and esthetic purposes only and doesn't care enough about making HSS self suffiicent instead of being in the red as much as $1.5 million dollars a year by literally using HSS as a government welfare check for their pandering? They have been mickey mousing the repairs on the beautiful facility since its inception and the pool is no exception. How can a town like Lodi, whose council and management claim their town has weathered the financial storm pretty well so far, by crying broke when it comes to issues such as this when this decision was made to close the pool indefinitely have no compassion for those whose jobs will be effected by this closure and those seniors and residents who depend on the city of Lodi for this facility to deliver the promises they made when it was built, only for the GOB's, with most of the citizenry against it?

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