In response to the Discovery Center story:

Wonderful article, great picture, all this and nothing out of our pockets — wrong!

“The beauty of this project is that it’s not coming out of our pockets.” One grant mentioned is Caltrans, dig a bit deeper and discover the money came from Measure A road funds. Not exactly what I intended when I voted for a bond measure to rebuild our crumbling roads. Another grant was mentioned from California Parks and Recreation Department. State parks are being shut down for lack of funding, fees are being increased to make up the difference but, I read the money is not coming from our pockets.

The Madera Board of Supervisors just accepted a delayed repayment of the million-dollar loan the county made to the Discovery Center. Problem is, there was no agreement, no terms of or timetable for repayment.

Build it if you want, but don’t tell me fairy tales about not doing it with money out of my pocket. The idea that grant money is, free money, falling from heaven, is one of the main reasons we are in the dire condition we find ourselves in financially.

First we pass a bond measure, or fund a department (like Parks and Recreation) to operate state parks, then grants distribute the money for unrelated pet projects and private foundations, next we are told what was originally funded doesn’t have enough money as fees are increased, facilities and services are decreased.

Don’t tell us the money doesn’t come from our pockets. First we spend the kids college fund to pay the rent and buy food. Sounds justified to me until I dig a bit deeper to discover the money originally earned to pay the rent and buy food was “granted” — used to pay for an exotic vacation.

Dale Drozen,
Clovis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 12:54 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.