If you’re a Rowan Atkinson fan, you might remember his
”
Best Bits of Mr. Bean
”
video. In it, Atkinson (Mr. Bean), while searching his attic for
an umbrella, ends-up instead reminiscing and re-living some of his
hilarious escapades of the past.
If you’re a Rowan Atkinson fan, you might remember his “Best Bits of Mr. Bean” video. In it, Atkinson (Mr. Bean), while searching his attic for an umbrella, ends-up instead reminiscing and re-living some of his hilarious escapades of the past. Using this attic analogy, I’ll figuratively speaking climb up in my Gilroy “attic” of past 2004 columns, and pick-up as it were, three Crusader topics to reminisce over, hoping to see a movement towards some real results in 2005.
Back in January, I wrote about Gilroy’s post office being out of sync with Gilroy’s growing population. Specifically, the PO is now in an inconvenient location for most local folks and has poor parking to boot. One concerned citizen contacted me and offered to do something. Mr. Ted Viola, former postmaster of San Martin (with over 38 years of experience in the post office department) took the initiative to meet with our mayor to offer his help to get the ball rolling for a new Gilroy post office. Mr. Viola told me the longer the city council waits to take action, the higher the costs will be and the longer the time to get results. Unfortunately, it seems this issue has been relegated to the dustbin of bureaucratic red tape somewhere between Gilroy and Washington, which is too bad for us locals. When the time finally arrives when Gilroy is forced to get a new post office facility because of facility gridlock, it’ll probably cost as much as the new police station, and unlike the police station, it probably won’t even have adequate parking. Maybe this issue will be of greater concern to the city in 2005.
In August, I began to write about the issue of blight in Gilroy, and devoted five columns since then about local blight, even initiating a local TRASH “award” in November for local trashy properties that readers can nominate for inclusion in this column. The results? While I received a number of e-mails agreeing with the need for the city to take more pro-active action to clean-up local property messes, the general consensus was that aggressive enforcement appears to not have any kind of priority in the city bureaucracy.
While some folks wrote me to voice their frustrations with neighboring property and dealing with the city over blight, a few others seemed to feel that the city was making a big deal out of nothing, while one person felt that they should be able to do whatever they want with their property, including letting junk pile up. It’s unfortunate but true that even with blight, one bad “apple” can affect the whole barrel or in this case whole neighborhood. The issue with blight for 2005 will be to see the city taking aggressive action to clean up some of the worst properties, and let people know they mean business.
In September, I began to write about the problems of allowing a casino into our local scene down on the Santa Clara, San Benito county border by highway 25, and devoted six full columns since then on my reasons against this proposed casino. As I initially indicated, where powerful people and powerful money interests are involved in such an endeavor to push a casino through, woe to anybody who attempts to stand in their way. And you better believe that 2005 will produce even more of a frontal attack by the casino forces to get into the area, using every trick in their bag. Just like the Trojan Horse, the casino advocates bring to the local area leaders an “offering” that is called in this case, a “collaborative process” where even though they say they seek “input from the community, environmental, economic and labor organizations as well as government leaders”, the contents of the Horse reveal that they will trick their way into the area no matter what the majority of the people really want. So for 2005, more power to groups like CRAPS (Casinos Represent A Poor Solution) and other socially responsible organizations that like the ancient prophetess in Troy, cry out to “beware of Greeks bringing gifts.” May these cries of warning be heeded before it’s too late.
So welcome 2005. Gilroy can remain a good place to live only if more of its citizens become more concerned and more active in community affairs. Be one in 2005, and happy new year to you all!
