On the face of it, Measure E – the half cent sales tax increase to fund weed, algae and mussel prevention programs in the lake – seems like a no-brainer, as everyone wants a clean, healthy lake.

But as is often times the case the devil is in the details that the promoters of the tax have failed to mention, like who pays it – and who doesn’t.

Proponents claim that a third of the tax will be paid by tourists, a figure based on wishful thinking with nothing to back it up; it’s a lot more likely that the bulk of the tax will be paid by low income Lake County residents.

Yolo County water users will pay none of $24 million even though much of their nearly half a billion dollars in annual ag production is dependent on the water. In an extreme case of irony Lake County farmers are actually expected to pay to protect the water their competitors use!

Also getting a free ride are large out-of-county based corporations like Cal Water, which provides water in Lucerne. Their investor’s millions of dollars in assets will be protected at no charge to them and neither the water companies or Yolo County have even been asked to help with this new plan.

Then there is the problem of how the money is spent, something the proponents claim is not a big concern since there will be a “citizens oversight committee.” But what they don’t tell you is the committee is to be comprised mostly of elected officials including some of the same people the committee is supposed to oversee!

It’s nothing short of an outright deception to call this an “oversight committee” let alone a “citizens” committee, when the plan from the get-go is to make citizens’ inputs meaningless. It should make every taxpayer nervous.

The truth is the Board of Supervisors will have full control of the budget – the city council members and citizens on the oversight committee are really just powerless window dressing put there to make it look legitimate.

How has the BOS done with our money so far? First they put a person in charge of the quagga program who thought the mussel was already in the lake and the prevention efforts would be futile, then they rushed to buy four expensive decontamination stations with no clear plan on how to use them, so they sat for years before two were sold at a loss.

Then the BOS spent $50,000 on a consultant whose main contribution was to come up with a quagga sticker test that featured trick questions and was quickly abandoned. Then there was the debacle with the changing rules concerning the stickers themselves which caused so much confusion the district attorney had to drop prosecutions until it finally got sorted out.

Another $21,000 went to a university to see how well the quagga would do in our lake, but since the range of possibilities was only from good-to-great the conclusion has little practical value.

Recently the public works director released an expenditure plan that described a plan to close most public boat ramps and to do the controls at the remaining ones. The very same day one of the supervisors was on the radio telling listeners the inspection stations and decontamination stations would be out on the highways (presumably we would buy the two decontamination stations back that we sold at a loss), with no mention of closing ramps and basing inspections at the lake, so it’s fair to say at this point that the county is speaking with more than one voice and the public has no idea of what to really expect will be done with their money.

It’s also worth noting that the one and only project that we know will reduce the algae and weed problem (the Middle Creek Restoration Project), has sat in limbo for the last five years due to what its project manager recently described as a “loss of focus,” which only returned once Measure E was on the ballot. Supervisor Rushing has been persistent in her efforts but the rest of the BOS had other priorities apparently.

The weed and algae money disappeared when the transient occupancy tax revenue Konocti Harbor Resort and Spa generated ended when they closed, thanks in part to the BOS killing the only offer to buy it by banning a casino there, a decision so flawed they were forced to reverse it.

Obviously we need a quagga program and obviously it will cost a lot of money, but just as obviously we already have an agency right here that not only is supposed to be doing this job but also is so bloated that it’s virtually leaking cash – Lake County Vector Control.

With Local Area Formation Commission approval Lake County Vector Control could be run by the health department and use private contractors to do the spraying, saving the taxpayers well over $1 million a year forever, not just the 10 years Measure E covers.

Since the razor sharp quagga shells can cause injury and some algae can cause illness this is well within the guidelines for the use of the money and it’s available now, there is no waiting for it to be collected.

The last two board members to leave Vector Control have publicly urged the BOS to adopt a plan to have the spraying done by contractors the same way the weed program does, as most of the money spent at Vector Control goes to abstract studies and funding research and development programs for big pesticide makers (even foreign ones!), important work perhaps but not the sort that should be funded by small, impoverished communities like ours.

Vector Control has around $2 million sitting in the bank and nearly another $1 million in disposable assets.

With the state offering new grant funding there is plenty of money to get a quagga program going and with cost-cutting measures like using people doing court ordered community service work manning some of the stations further large savings could be realized.

We have the means to fund these programs using existing resources without further burdening the taxpayers. It’s time that the taxpayers demanded that the BOS cut out the fat in government before they come back to us asking for more money – again.

Philip Murphy lives in Finley, Calif.

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Written by: Philip Murphy

Published: 23 October 2012