This post has been around for some time. I wrote some of it a long time back and then sat on it. Then I read this post by Phil Plate and was inspired to complete it. Then I let it sit again, just because. Today I am tired of seeing it in my list of unpublished posts, so it gets kicked out of the nest. It's still accurate and timely, particularly given the rhetoric of the presidential campaign.
Modern politics really bothers me. It's full of people who only see things one way.
Is the only fix for our current economic situation to get the government out of the way of business? Or is it that there isn't enough regulation in place to keep things under control?
More importantly, why do so many people I know - and so many pundits and candidates for office - fall into the trap of thinking like that?
Let's start with something obvious. Governments and businesses share something: they are composed of people, and people inevitably do stupid things. Whether it's the federal government writing regulations no small business can possibly follow, or wall street bankers creating derivatives no one can possibly understand, the results can be disastrous for all of us, and there are always unintended consequences.
Does anyone honestly think that any given government here in the US is actively trying to stifle business and thus harm the economy? By the same token, does anyone actually believe that businesses are inherently more honest than any other group of people?
It seems to me that governments and business are both tools. Sometimes one tool is better than another for a given task. Arguing over which tool to use may be fine, but suggesting that we should throw one or another tool out of the toolbox entirely is short sighted in the extreme.
There are things that only a government can reasonably be expected to handle, and there are things that business is better off doing. At any given point in history we, as a nation, are attempting to strike a balance between these two things, and that balance is constantly changing thanks to external influences.
If you're going to argue that the government cannot possibly pay for everything it has to do, fine. You and/or your elected representatives, though, must make rational suggestions about what to cut and where. You must be honest in detailing what those cuts mean, and you need to be fair about how the pain of those cuts is apportioned.
Similarly, if you think that businesses of some sort must be reigned in, you need to be honest about your expectations, and forthright in your statements about what needs to be changed or regulated and why. The results of those regulations must be anticipated as best as possible, and the consequences understood and accepted by all of those affected. Regulations should not be needlessly burdensome, and limited as best as possible to affect only those things desired.
Note, though, that any change - on the side of business or government - will give rise to unintended consequences, and unexpected behaviours on the part of people somewhere. None of us can see all the repercussions of our actions in that depth. The systems we're talking about are far too complicated and variable to allow for accurate predictions. (If any of this was easy we'd already have agreed on and implemented a fix, don't you think?)
And humans definitely do not always act in their own best interest, even when they know what that interest is, which, frankly, isn't all that often.
For me, the upshot of all this is simple: an opinion about some complicated political issue is just that: an opinion. You are welcome to it, but none of us can be declared right or wrong until all the data is in, and probably not until well after we're dead. Until then, polite discussion and compromise are required. Of all of us. All of us.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
When A Well Pump Dies - Part 2
Sorry... just realized I never told people what happened with the pump.
About $1200 and several days later we had a working well again. (Those of you who think that owning your own well is an inexpensive proposition should consider that number carefully before committing to it. Well maintenance is not cheap.)
The best guess at the problem is that the slime (seen in the pictures from the earlier post) built up on the pump to the point that it loaded down the motor. That might make more sense if you understand something about how at least some well pump controllers work:
In our case it appears that the slime on the pump made it look as if it was under load - and moving water - even when it had pumped the well dry. That meant the controller didn't turn the pump off, and since the water is the coolant for the pump, it wound up getting really hot and melting the pipe as previously documented.
The fix mostly involved cleaning the pump. They bench tested it and found it was still OK, which is good and saved us a lot of money. We also installed 40' of stainless steel pipe just above the pump to add more heat sink should this ever happen again.
I also get to put chlorine (in the form of bleach) down the well a couple of times a year now to kill off the bacterial slime that builds up and (hopefully) avoid this in the future that way too.
Such fun. But we have a working well again, and the power bills are back to normal. (Well, they were back to normal, but then a technician misread our old analog meter while installing a new smart meter, and I'm having PG&E look into that mess, but life moves on.)
May your water always flow.
About $1200 and several days later we had a working well again. (Those of you who think that owning your own well is an inexpensive proposition should consider that number carefully before committing to it. Well maintenance is not cheap.)
The best guess at the problem is that the slime (seen in the pictures from the earlier post) built up on the pump to the point that it loaded down the motor. That might make more sense if you understand something about how at least some well pump controllers work:
- A float switch in the tank indicates that the tank needs water. (Our tanks are big - 5000 gallons each - and in theory it takes a bit of a drop before the float switch says the level is low. In parts of the country with colder weather they don't use storage tanks, but they'd better have good wells that can keep up with demand in that case.)
- The pump controller turns the pump on via a relay.
- The pump controller monitors the current drawn by the pump, which starts at one value and changes substantially when the pump runs the well dry. When that happens, the pump is no longer under load, the controller detects it, and turns it off.
- Alternately, if you have a good well, the float switch hits the high water mark in the tank and the controller turns the pump off for that reason.
In our case it appears that the slime on the pump made it look as if it was under load - and moving water - even when it had pumped the well dry. That meant the controller didn't turn the pump off, and since the water is the coolant for the pump, it wound up getting really hot and melting the pipe as previously documented.
The fix mostly involved cleaning the pump. They bench tested it and found it was still OK, which is good and saved us a lot of money. We also installed 40' of stainless steel pipe just above the pump to add more heat sink should this ever happen again.
I also get to put chlorine (in the form of bleach) down the well a couple of times a year now to kill off the bacterial slime that builds up and (hopefully) avoid this in the future that way too.
Such fun. But we have a working well again, and the power bills are back to normal. (Well, they were back to normal, but then a technician misread our old analog meter while installing a new smart meter, and I'm having PG&E look into that mess, but life moves on.)
May your water always flow.
I Hate Call-In Radio, But I Am Obviously Un-American
I absolutely despise call-in radio shows that try to tackle issues or inform about topics. Without exception they are awful.
When I am trying to gather information about some topic I do not solicit the opinion of the man in the street. Never. The average American is invariably both uninformed and opinionated - the worst possible combination. And those that call in to radio shows are the most extreme specimens of the breed. I have no patience for their ranting. And yes, I am ranting here. Feel free to to read something else if you so desire. I won't mind. I hear the Internet is full of pictures of cute kittens, so go knock yourself out.
The alternative, of course, would be for news media to talk to people with actual expertise, those who have studied the topic at hand, or worked in the field. Such people are sometimes present on call in shows, but they have to deal with the biases of the host(s) of the show and respond to the uninformed gibberish the callers spit out. It's a waste of time for them and for the listeners who might be trying to learn something instead of just having their opinions validated.
Americans, of course, place very little value on knowledge and intelligence as a rule, so none of this should be a surprise. We grow up on a diet of TV, video games, and associated crap. We want our politicians and our corporate overlords to tell us that there is a simple answer to every problem, and we know that anyone who disagrees with our preferred answer is not only wrong, but actually evil and Un-American. Frankly it's a wonder any of us can string together an understandable sentence, let alone spout an opinion on some complicated topic over which even experts may disagree. (And we're expected to vote about those issues too... go figure.)
In any case, I avoid all commercially supported talk radio regardless of its point of view. The combination of ads and blow-hards pontificating in response to grossly exaggerated controversy and the guttural grunts of those calling in would probably cause me to die of an aneurysm in short order.
Even NPR has succumbed, though, and there are many awful call-in shows on that network as well. We have locally and nationally produced examples on our local NPR affiliates that cause me to run for the hills, but the worst has to be a show called On Point out of Boston.
Like the worst of the commercially funded call in shows, they drum up controversy in every topic I hear them cover. They ask idiotic questions of their guests trying to manufacture argument and discord if needed. And everything is VERY IMPORTANT! You can hear the capital letters as they "discuss" whatever they are covering, and they do their level best to keep the pacing and tone right up there with the work of Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk. Into that mess come the callers, and though NPR supposedly has a more intelligent audience than that attracted to commercial radio, I am inevitably appalled.
Commercial TV is just as bad - if not worse - of course, but I am thankfully without a signal source for that in my life, so I am not exposed with any regularity. When we wind up somewhere with a functional TV, though, I am always happy to leave. Any time spent watching TV leaves me feeling like I desperately need a shower.
How did it come to this? Why does all media seem to devolve to the lowest, slimiest form?
When I am trying to gather information about some topic I do not solicit the opinion of the man in the street. Never. The average American is invariably both uninformed and opinionated - the worst possible combination. And those that call in to radio shows are the most extreme specimens of the breed. I have no patience for their ranting. And yes, I am ranting here. Feel free to to read something else if you so desire. I won't mind. I hear the Internet is full of pictures of cute kittens, so go knock yourself out.
The alternative, of course, would be for news media to talk to people with actual expertise, those who have studied the topic at hand, or worked in the field. Such people are sometimes present on call in shows, but they have to deal with the biases of the host(s) of the show and respond to the uninformed gibberish the callers spit out. It's a waste of time for them and for the listeners who might be trying to learn something instead of just having their opinions validated.
Americans, of course, place very little value on knowledge and intelligence as a rule, so none of this should be a surprise. We grow up on a diet of TV, video games, and associated crap. We want our politicians and our corporate overlords to tell us that there is a simple answer to every problem, and we know that anyone who disagrees with our preferred answer is not only wrong, but actually evil and Un-American. Frankly it's a wonder any of us can string together an understandable sentence, let alone spout an opinion on some complicated topic over which even experts may disagree. (And we're expected to vote about those issues too... go figure.)
In any case, I avoid all commercially supported talk radio regardless of its point of view. The combination of ads and blow-hards pontificating in response to grossly exaggerated controversy and the guttural grunts of those calling in would probably cause me to die of an aneurysm in short order.
Even NPR has succumbed, though, and there are many awful call-in shows on that network as well. We have locally and nationally produced examples on our local NPR affiliates that cause me to run for the hills, but the worst has to be a show called On Point out of Boston.
Like the worst of the commercially funded call in shows, they drum up controversy in every topic I hear them cover. They ask idiotic questions of their guests trying to manufacture argument and discord if needed. And everything is VERY IMPORTANT! You can hear the capital letters as they "discuss" whatever they are covering, and they do their level best to keep the pacing and tone right up there with the work of Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk. Into that mess come the callers, and though NPR supposedly has a more intelligent audience than that attracted to commercial radio, I am inevitably appalled.
Commercial TV is just as bad - if not worse - of course, but I am thankfully without a signal source for that in my life, so I am not exposed with any regularity. When we wind up somewhere with a functional TV, though, I am always happy to leave. Any time spent watching TV leaves me feeling like I desperately need a shower.
How did it come to this? Why does all media seem to devolve to the lowest, slimiest form?
Saturday, January 7, 2012
I Was Going To Write About...
Yesterday, for the umpteenth time, I thought about writing up a blog post thanks to what I'd been doing.
It was to be titled "90 MPH Dog Poo" and discuss what happens when you take a string trimmer into a not quite completely cleaned up (despite your best efforts) dog run.
But I changed my mind.
You can all thank me now.
Have a nice day!
It was to be titled "90 MPH Dog Poo" and discuss what happens when you take a string trimmer into a not quite completely cleaned up (despite your best efforts) dog run.
But I changed my mind.
You can all thank me now.
Have a nice day!
Thursday, January 5, 2012
When A Well Pump Dies - Part I
Apparently our well pump stopped working a few weeks back. It takes a while to notice this, though, at least for us. I have to note the water level in the storage tank dropping. Also, in this case, and elevated PG&E bill was a giveaway too, though I didn't know that at the time it arrived.
I called our preferred well guy and had him do some diagnosis. I had already verified that we had power getting to the top of the well and that the pump should have been running, but no water was coming out. He was able to duplicate my results and noted that the current flowing in the wires meant the pump was probably running. He bypassed the pump controller and the problem continued, so whatever the issue was it was in the well pump, 380 feet below ground. Oh joy.
Today he came back with his truck to pull the pump and find out what was going on. These pictures document that little voyage of discovery.
First, here's what the well head looked like before things got started:
The line on the right (with the gray box) is the electrical supply that drives the pump. The line in the middle going into the ground is the water discharge. That goes off to our storage tanks. The strange looking plastic pipe on the left is a home made sulfur discharge vent, since the old metal one corroded and goobered up the threads it was screwed into. The first 50 feet of the well is surrounded by concrete to keep ground water from contaminating the well. Most of that 50 feet has only a couple of inches around it, but the cap has a much wider pad to protect the well head from lawn mowers and the like.
And here we see what it looks like with the well seal opened up and the first couple of feet of pipe extracted:
The electrical was disconnected, the sulfur vent removed, and the union in the water line opened up. At this point all 380 feet of pipe are hanging from a cable on a truck designed for this purpose. It looks like this:
That picture was taken a bit later. You can see a 20' length of schedule 80 PVC pipe hanging from the rig. The pipes are threaded and attached with brass couplings. An odd looking device is used to clamp the pipe in place while the section above is disconnected and set aside. Here's a closer view of that:
The metal thing sitting crosswise at the bottom is the above mentioned clamp. The technician is using the lift to pull the pipe up. His assistant is pulling the electrical wires and a safety rope off to the side to keep them out of the way. (Note that those wires and rope are taped to the pipe at regular intervals, so the tape has to be cut and removed as each pipe is pulled up too.) Also as the pipe comes up the technician wipes the accumulated slime off of it. And in our case there is a lot of that slime. Some combination of iron and sulfur bacteria make for a nasty thick layer of gunk all over everything. (And there will be a better picture of that later.)
As the end of the 19th section of pipe comes out of the ground, we see the well pump emerge, and just before that, a surprise:
OK... this may not look like much to the uninitiated but that's bad. Most of the PVC pipe above the pump is 1" diameter. The last two sections are 1.25" for some technical reason, but they do NOT bow out like that. That's bad. That's very bad.
What it means is that sometime a month or more ago the pump ran, pumped all the water out of the well, but then did not turn off. As it kept running it got hot, since water is the usual coolant for the motor. As the pump got hot it heated the pipe above the pump got too, and the plastic softened. Eventually it got so hot - despite there being water inside the pipe - that a hole opened up in the pipe and the water drained out.
So that bowed out area just above the pump is a bad thing. It means that something is wrong with the pump, the pump controller, or both. Now, as it happens, we had a long brownout or two just over a month ago during a big wind storm. For one of them I was home and awake and ran around turning off breakers, though I honestly don't remember if I got the breaker for the well pump or not. I should have, but who knows. The other brownout, if it affected us, hit while I was asleep, or so I gather from a neighbor. The first was something like 20 minutes long and I have no idea about the other, but either might have caused a fault that could result in this sort of behavior.
Or there might be other causes. Time will tell.
Here's a picture of the entire well pump sitting on the pad around the well:
The top half is the impeller, the bottom half is the motor. Water enters through the grid in the middle and we can see that isn't too blocked up.
Here's a closer view of the slime from the well and the bottom of the pump. I hope you haven't eaten recently:
Yeah. Sorry about that.
And finally, here's the pipe from the well laid out ready to go back in once the problem is fully diagnosed:
The bulge in the last pipe is pretty obvious there. The large, black, football shaped thing two pipes over from the left is a torque arrestor, to keep the pipes from twisting and banging around when the motor kicks in. It fits just inside the six inch plastic pipe that lines the well.
My well guy took the pump and controller off with him today. He will clean up the pump, bench test it all, and find the problem. If the controller is bad he will replace it. In addition - since this is the second time we've seen that pipe bulge up due to a hot pump - he may replace the last 20' section of PVC with stainless steel, to reduce the chances of that happening again. (Of course, if it does happen the stainless will conduct heat better, and it might just move the problem, or it might cause the pump to burn out once it has run too long.)
Hopefully tomorrow he will be able to tell me exactly what failed, and we can start looking to avoid the root cause of the problem. That may mean trying to find some way to protect our entire home from brownouts. We already have a whole house surge protector installed, but nothing keeps a brownout from crippling us.
More when we know it. Whee.
I called our preferred well guy and had him do some diagnosis. I had already verified that we had power getting to the top of the well and that the pump should have been running, but no water was coming out. He was able to duplicate my results and noted that the current flowing in the wires meant the pump was probably running. He bypassed the pump controller and the problem continued, so whatever the issue was it was in the well pump, 380 feet below ground. Oh joy.
Today he came back with his truck to pull the pump and find out what was going on. These pictures document that little voyage of discovery.
First, here's what the well head looked like before things got started:
The line on the right (with the gray box) is the electrical supply that drives the pump. The line in the middle going into the ground is the water discharge. That goes off to our storage tanks. The strange looking plastic pipe on the left is a home made sulfur discharge vent, since the old metal one corroded and goobered up the threads it was screwed into. The first 50 feet of the well is surrounded by concrete to keep ground water from contaminating the well. Most of that 50 feet has only a couple of inches around it, but the cap has a much wider pad to protect the well head from lawn mowers and the like.
And here we see what it looks like with the well seal opened up and the first couple of feet of pipe extracted:
The electrical was disconnected, the sulfur vent removed, and the union in the water line opened up. At this point all 380 feet of pipe are hanging from a cable on a truck designed for this purpose. It looks like this:
That picture was taken a bit later. You can see a 20' length of schedule 80 PVC pipe hanging from the rig. The pipes are threaded and attached with brass couplings. An odd looking device is used to clamp the pipe in place while the section above is disconnected and set aside. Here's a closer view of that:
The metal thing sitting crosswise at the bottom is the above mentioned clamp. The technician is using the lift to pull the pipe up. His assistant is pulling the electrical wires and a safety rope off to the side to keep them out of the way. (Note that those wires and rope are taped to the pipe at regular intervals, so the tape has to be cut and removed as each pipe is pulled up too.) Also as the pipe comes up the technician wipes the accumulated slime off of it. And in our case there is a lot of that slime. Some combination of iron and sulfur bacteria make for a nasty thick layer of gunk all over everything. (And there will be a better picture of that later.)
As the end of the 19th section of pipe comes out of the ground, we see the well pump emerge, and just before that, a surprise:
OK... this may not look like much to the uninitiated but that's bad. Most of the PVC pipe above the pump is 1" diameter. The last two sections are 1.25" for some technical reason, but they do NOT bow out like that. That's bad. That's very bad.
What it means is that sometime a month or more ago the pump ran, pumped all the water out of the well, but then did not turn off. As it kept running it got hot, since water is the usual coolant for the motor. As the pump got hot it heated the pipe above the pump got too, and the plastic softened. Eventually it got so hot - despite there being water inside the pipe - that a hole opened up in the pipe and the water drained out.
So that bowed out area just above the pump is a bad thing. It means that something is wrong with the pump, the pump controller, or both. Now, as it happens, we had a long brownout or two just over a month ago during a big wind storm. For one of them I was home and awake and ran around turning off breakers, though I honestly don't remember if I got the breaker for the well pump or not. I should have, but who knows. The other brownout, if it affected us, hit while I was asleep, or so I gather from a neighbor. The first was something like 20 minutes long and I have no idea about the other, but either might have caused a fault that could result in this sort of behavior.
Or there might be other causes. Time will tell.
Here's a picture of the entire well pump sitting on the pad around the well:
The top half is the impeller, the bottom half is the motor. Water enters through the grid in the middle and we can see that isn't too blocked up.
Here's a closer view of the slime from the well and the bottom of the pump. I hope you haven't eaten recently:
Yeah. Sorry about that.
And finally, here's the pipe from the well laid out ready to go back in once the problem is fully diagnosed:
The bulge in the last pipe is pretty obvious there. The large, black, football shaped thing two pipes over from the left is a torque arrestor, to keep the pipes from twisting and banging around when the motor kicks in. It fits just inside the six inch plastic pipe that lines the well.
My well guy took the pump and controller off with him today. He will clean up the pump, bench test it all, and find the problem. If the controller is bad he will replace it. In addition - since this is the second time we've seen that pipe bulge up due to a hot pump - he may replace the last 20' section of PVC with stainless steel, to reduce the chances of that happening again. (Of course, if it does happen the stainless will conduct heat better, and it might just move the problem, or it might cause the pump to burn out once it has run too long.)
Hopefully tomorrow he will be able to tell me exactly what failed, and we can start looking to avoid the root cause of the problem. That may mean trying to find some way to protect our entire home from brownouts. We already have a whole house surge protector installed, but nothing keeps a brownout from crippling us.
More when we know it. Whee.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
CSA 48 - County Fire Funding Around My Home
Today I attended a Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Meeting. What fun. Not.
I did so to keep tabs on an issue near and dear to my heart... maintaining fire and EMS response service in my area during the non-fire season. I've mentioned that on Facebook and in a couple of other places, and people were curious, so I wrote up my thoughts on the meeting this evening and am posting them here.
I don't claim this is complete, correct, or consistent. It's the best I could do given the situation, the contents of the meeting, and my temperament. I hope it isn't entirely wrong, and I will try to correct it somehow if I find I am wrong about things.
With that disclaimer...
Board Of Supervisors Meeting - Partial Writeup - Dec 13, 2011
A somewhat inflammatory and editorialized document by Jeff Powell.
These are my impressions and opinions. Your mileage may vary.
Remember, though, that government is like making sausage, in a very big and slow factory.
8:15 am: park car in 3 hour free parking lot across the river from the county building.
In the meeting room I pick up a copy of the official agenda, which lists our item as #56. Seems like it will be forever before we discuss funding for County Fire, but that doesn't do justice to what really happened. In any case, for reference, here is what we were at the meeting to discuss, word-for-word from the agenda:
56. Consider report on the state budge and associated impacts on the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and further discussion of County Fire Service Area 48 (CSA 48) service delivery options for changing the contracted level of service with CAL FIRE commencing in the fiscal year 2013-2014, and taking related actions.
All clear now? Hope so. But I have NO idea what that really means.
8:30 am: meeting begins.
A sea of red shirted citizens (numbering 50 or so) concerned about CSA 48 is present, but that doesn't matter yet. First we get some technical preliminaries followed by open comments from the public about things not on the agenda. During the preliminaries at least one agenda item related to PG&E smart meters was removed from the "consent agenda" (things that are just "accepted" but not commented upon by the board or the public as far as I can tell) and moved to the "regular agenda", which allows for comment by anyone that can fog a mirror when they exhale. Despite that, quite a few members of the public wanted to discuss smart meter related issues during the comment period allotted to things not on the agenda, and wasted a lot of time as a result. In addition concerns were raised about Occupy Santa Cruz and the county's recent moves towards it, and there were many requests for a moratorium on foreclosures in the county. Oh, and some comments about a program that helped people working for the county make better choices about food and lifestyle.
Then we had 15 minutes or so of thanking a retiring county employee.
Then the Board of Supervisors recessed to run a second meeting - one related Zone 5 of the Santa Cruz Flood and Water Conservation district to happen. No, really... they stopped one meeting and changed it to another one, just like that. The BOS members are also members of this new group along with a few others, but there wasn't much happening here. Done in 15 minutes.
10:30 am, give or take: morning break. During this time I go move my car since it is clear that 11:15 is going to come and go before we're done. I put it in the 2 hour lot in front of the county building. After all, we should be done by 12:30, right? (Hint: not.)
10:45 am-ish: They start up again and immediately recess for a different flood control meeting: this one about zone 7 instead of zone 5. This one was much more contentious and went on for nearly an hour. However, in the end, I think nothing of great import happened - everything they voted on passed unanimously - and the project they want to do (to improve flood control down near Watsonville) wasn't impeded or slowed down as far as I can tell.
Editorial comment: by this point there are quite a few people I think should never be allowed to speak in public, and I am pondering how to make choking some of those people to death legal. But I digress.
It is important to note, however, that for over 3 hours the group of people that had come to speak and hear about the County Fire issue is dwindling. People have - gasp! - lives and jobs and commitments. Three hours after the meeting started we hadn't gotten to our issue despite being told we'd be "first" by someone. Go figure.
Approximately 11:45 am now, and we finally get to the County Fire related issue. Surprisingly I have not gnawed off any of my own limbs in a desperate attempt to keep myself awake.
Chief Ferriera and someone else (didn't catch her name) made some initial comments about the situation. As far as I can remember these were the high points (for me) of the discussion that ensued:
- County fire will run out of money sometime around the summer of 2013 - 18 months or so from now.
- Funding for County Fire comes from two primary sources, both tied to home values: 1.x million per year from property taxes directly; 2.x million per year from CSA 48 tax that is also paid via the property tax bill. I don't have exact numbers, sadly.
- The county has done polling and (surprise, surprise!) when they ask people something like "Are you willing to pay more for the fire service you already get?" the answer has only 60% of people saying yes, and we'd need 66% to pass a tax increase. Argh! I'm honestly surprised support is that high. Clearly a lot of education is needed, and not just of the voters. How about a poll question like: "The dedicated fund that pays for your County Fire service is running out of money and it will shut down completely during the off season in the fall of 2013 as a result. Would you support an increase in a dedicated tax or fee to keep it running instead of shutting down? And note that if you don't have fire service you probably can't sell your home and its value will be less than that of dog spit." Oddly I suspect that support would be a bit higher than just 60% if the question is phrased properly. I apologize if I have misrepresented the polling work, but in reality polling is just about as close to a black art as you are going to find, and the answers you get are inescapably related to the exact wording of the question you ask.
- Governor Jerry Brown is looking to impose an additional fee on home owners in SRA (state responsibility area) land of $180 per year to make up other lost funding sources. There may be a $30 reduction in that fee for those who are covered by another fire protection district like CSA 48. That fee, however, would probably not come back to County Fire in any way to support their activities as far as I can tell. Many of those living in CSA 48 will wind up paying that fee to the state, making many wonder about the public's willingness to stomach a tax increase in addition to that fee.
- There are a few ways to save some money other than shutting down county fire entirely. As with everything (except the agenda itself) I have nothing in writing, so I am doing my best from memory to remember these. They might move some people around from administrative jobs to fire fighting roles. They might offload the program to name driveways and renumber houses to some other department. They might shut down a single station. They might shut down all of County Fire. Remember, this is off-season only... during the summer the state picks up the tab for the entire thing. (Editorial comment: the program to name driveways and renumber houses is the least liked - and possibly most stupid - program in existence. Why it still gets any funding is beyond me entirely. It should have been killed years ago. Technically it should never have been started.)
- During discussion Chief Ferriera says something about costs vs. income. This was off the cuff, and so I wouldn't hold his feet to the fire, but what he indicated was that costs (for personnel and so on) have gone up about 3% over the last 3 years, but home values have gone down substantially during that same period thanks to the economy and housing crisis, dropping revenues. (I can confirm that last from deep, personal, and costly experience.) That may explain some or all of the reason that CSA 48 funds haven't kept up with the expenses of County Fire, though I would like a real accounting of that, and I may ask John Leopold for that information separately. We'll need it to justify any tax or fee increase to homeowners eventually in any case.
- There was no discussion of how (or if) the volunteer fire department would continue to operate with Cal Fire shut down.
With the public comments ended the supervisors made more comments themselves. John Leopold thanked us for showing up en-mass and indicated he would help champion the cause. Supervisor Pirie took pains to point out where the public comments were wrong or misleading in various ways, but she did also ask someone else (name unknown to me) to discuss where county funds come from and go to. That was interesting, at least to me. Summarizing that and a few other things that were said leads to this:
- Proposition 13 froze property tax revenues where they were when it was passed. So Santa Cruz County gets $0.13 per dollar of property taxes collected put into its general fund. Santa Clara county, by contrast, gets over $0.60 per dollar collected put into its general fund. This sort of inequity has never been addressed, and years later is causing all kinds of pain.
- Of the $400 million or so dollars that Santa Cruz County spends per year, something like 90% comes with strings, requiring it to be spent in certain ways. Thus the supervisors are left with 10% or less that they supposedly control.
- Of that 10%, though, there are all kinds of mandated spending that has to happen, which means there is substantially less flexibility in how they can spend money in general.
- In short, there isn't enough money in the general fund - or anywhere else the county supervisors can get at - to "fix" this funding problem for County Fire. We have to pay for this ourselves, somehow, and to do that we're going to have to pass a tax measure of some sort in the next 18 months.
With one change - asking Chief Ferriera and/or others to tell the state folks that the County of Santa Cruz needs some of that $150/$180 annual fee back somehow, or at least mention the possibility - the supervisors voted "aye" on the agenda item.
I honestly don't know what that means. As I say, the agenda item almost isn't actually written in English, and I am not at all sure what was accomplished today in any formal sense.
Less formally, though, I think the supervisors saw a lot of people from the Loma Prieta area show up on their door step and say "this sucks". How (or if) that will translate into fixes and plans over the longer term I don't know. We will, however, have to do this again and again and again. We'll have to continue to show up at these meetings and telling them that shutting County Fire down during the off season is not an option.
We will also have to campaign for whatever tax or fee finally comes out of this. We'll have to lobby our friends and neighbors over this issue, trying to get 66% of those that live in the CSA 48 area to vote yes and pay a small tax instead of paying huge fire insurance premiums and finding our houses worth next to nothing.
I hope you're all ready for more work. It's coming, whether you want it to or not.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Dumber than a box of rocks...
Yes, I am. Really.
In this post I discussed some surprising rainfall numbers. Turns out, though, I totally misread the official rain gauge. It seems that 0.20" and 0.02" are very different numbers. Go figure.
sigh
So... overall, this means that things are more-or-less normal with the gauges. The evaporation issue is still real, and the butterfly gauge still reads a lot more than the others.
I will go hide now. Well, once I get a disclaimer on that original post. The spreadsheet has been updated to reflect reality.
In this post I discussed some surprising rainfall numbers. Turns out, though, I totally misread the official rain gauge. It seems that 0.20" and 0.02" are very different numbers. Go figure.
sigh
So... overall, this means that things are more-or-less normal with the gauges. The evaporation issue is still real, and the butterfly gauge still reads a lot more than the others.
I will go hide now. Well, once I get a disclaimer on that original post. The spreadsheet has been updated to reflect reality.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Unexpected Rainfall Numbers
UPDATE ON 11/20/11: this post contains an error of vast and troubling proportion: 0.20" is not the same as 0.02". Yours truly apologizes and retracts it here.
We had something that might have been called rain yesterday. It was very tiny drops, off and on, for hours. My wife might have called it "measurable fog." It was still going after dark so I left reading the gauges for this morning. The results, though, are a surprise:
Well, my best guess is that we had plenty of evaporation overnight. Things were dryish this morning, which means the water went somewhere. And the three gauges that had only a trace also have the largest openings, making it easy for evaporating water to escape.
The butterfly gauge had more in it earlier in the day, yesterday, than 0.10". I noted it in the afternoon when I picked up the mail, but I wasn't taking readings as it was still raining at the time. So it must have evaporated out of there. No one emptied it, I know that.
The official gauge is interesting. Because it is a small cylinder enclosed in (and protected by) a larger cylinder, and since there is a funnel covering most of the interior cylinder and all of the outer cylinder, I suspect evaporation is slower. It's a pretty small hole for the water to evaporate out of in any case, so while it can happen, it takes more time.
In short, though it seems counter intuitive, I think the official gauge wins again, and that it is design flaws in all the others that made them read too low this time around.
Not what I anticipated - particularly with the butterfly gauge - but it makes sense.
The spreadsheet has been updated with the new numbers.
We had something that might have been called rain yesterday. It was very tiny drops, off and on, for hours. My wife might have called it "measurable fog." It was still going after dark so I left reading the gauges for this morning. The results, though, are a surprise:
- The "official" gauge - the one I trust the most so far - read 0.20". That seemed to make sense to me on the level of gut feel. Everything was wet for some time yesterday.
- The old yellow, weather.com, and wedge gauges, though, were all either empty or showed just a trace. Nothing measurable in any of them.
- The butterfly gauge - which usually reads at least twice what the others claim - contained just 0.10".
Well, my best guess is that we had plenty of evaporation overnight. Things were dryish this morning, which means the water went somewhere. And the three gauges that had only a trace also have the largest openings, making it easy for evaporating water to escape.
The butterfly gauge had more in it earlier in the day, yesterday, than 0.10". I noted it in the afternoon when I picked up the mail, but I wasn't taking readings as it was still raining at the time. So it must have evaporated out of there. No one emptied it, I know that.
The official gauge is interesting. Because it is a small cylinder enclosed in (and protected by) a larger cylinder, and since there is a funnel covering most of the interior cylinder and all of the outer cylinder, I suspect evaporation is slower. It's a pretty small hole for the water to evaporate out of in any case, so while it can happen, it takes more time.
In short, though it seems counter intuitive, I think the official gauge wins again, and that it is design flaws in all the others that made them read too low this time around.
Not what I anticipated - particularly with the butterfly gauge - but it makes sense.
The spreadsheet has been updated with the new numbers.
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