| | Published February 26th, 2014
| Letters to the Editor
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Editor:
I read with sadness that the venerable old valley oak tree next to the historic Casa Verana in Orinda fell down in the recent storms. However, I was not surprised that this happened. The property owners caused this to happen by burying the roots around the tree with soil and planing an irrigated lawn around the tree. This is a death sentence for native oaks. Native oaks have evolved in an ecosystem of summer drought and need to have their roots in dry soil during California's dry season. If they are subjected to year around moisture, the roots will develop dry rot and will not be able to support the weight of the tree and the tree will eventually fall to a premature death.
Any Lamorinda readers that have a majestic native oak in their yard should reconsider watering any surrounding landscaping if they want their oaks to survive. I know it looks beautiful to have a green lawn or lush shrubs surrounding beautiful old oaks but know that, at some point in the future, the trees will not survive.
Fred Smith
Orinda
Editor:
In a survey of Orinda voters commissioned by the Orinda City Council, "Seven in 10 voters would initially support a $20 million bond measure" to fix Orinda's roads (Lamorinda Weekly, Feb. 12).
The results of the survey were presented to the city council on Feb. 4. The survey was conducted by the FM3 company, located in Oakland.
A key question is this: Does Orinda need to pass any kind of bond measure to fix the city's deteriorating roads?
According to an Orinda environmental group, Orinda Watch, sufficient money is already being collected from gasoline taxes to fund Orinda's bad roads. Orinda Watch argues that Orinda does not need a bond measure for road repair.
Orinda Watch, in a statement released on Feb. 12, says that Plan Bay Area, a project calling for the construction of high-density, high-rise housing in Orinda and elsewhere, "takes massive amounts of public funds from gas tax revenues that should go to road maintenance and diverts them to mass transit subsidies ..." The statement adds: "These diversions of gas tax revenue have been practiced by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for many years ..."
MTC is a regional governmental transportation agency whose directors and officers have not been elected directly by voters. MTC's chairperson is Amy Worth, who also sits on the Orinda City Council.
MTC has not been shy about disclosing its intentions. In a report issued on May 10, 2010, MTC said that automobile pollutants (often called greenhouse-gas or GHG emissions) can be lowered. In the report, MTC stated: "Most of the GHG reductions that can be realized will result from how successful the region can be in moving toward more dense/mixed use transit oriented development and implementing creative ways to price the transportation system to adequately reflect the true costs of a limited resource."
It appears that MTC, rather than voters, is deciding how gasoline-tax money is to be spent.
Until MTC's policies on spending gasoline-tax money are clarified, Orindans should not support any bond measure to fix the city's roads.
Richard S. Colman
Orinda
Editor
Regarding Gordon Nathan's letter of February 12.
For those unfamiliar with Mr. Nathan's history with MOFD, he was a Director of the District from its inception in 1997 through 2008. During that time period, the Board saw property tax revenue increase from $9 million to $16 million, growing at twice the rate of inflation, and yet managed to spend it all and put in place the current labor agreements that have caused the District to now be $90 million in debt. Any criticism from him of the current board, attempting to clean up the financial mess caused by their predecessors, must be taken with a grain of salt.
As for his complaint that a claim by Orindan Keith Jacobsen that Orinda taxpayers are paying an inordinate portion of MOFD's expenses is "nonsense", is a baseless criticism. Mr. Nathan states Orinda taxpayers should pay more for service than Moraga taxpayers because they receive more service; and they do. This year Orinda taxpayers will pay about $11.8 million in property taxes to MOFD while Moraga taxpayers pay about $6.7. Mr. Nathan suggests that the total should be divided by the number of stations in Orinda (3) and Moraga (2). However, as a former director, he well knows that 90% of all expenses go to pay for the personnel who perform the services and not to maintain real estate. And with nine firefighters stationed in and serving Orinda (at a cost to taxpayers of $1.3 million per firefighter), and eight firefighters stationed in and serving Moraga (at a cost to taxpayers of $850,000 per firefighter), the inequity in funding is obvious.
There is a solution to this problem which Orinda residents were promised would never happen when they voted to form MOFD. That is for Moraga taxpayers to pay their fair share, an average of $1.1 million per firefighter or about $2 million more than they are currently paying. That could happen, as Mr. Jacobsen suggested, by increasing the rate on the Parcel Tax Moragans agreed to before MOFD was formed but which has never been fully assessed.
This extra money would not go back into the Orinda taxpayers' pockets but would provide services they are paying for. These services could include a paramedic station in Sleepy Hollow to alleviate the fact that 40% of all Orinda emergencies are not responded to within MOFD's response time guidelines; or vegetation control in large areas of Orinda that are considered very severe fire hazard zones due to excess vegetation as is now being done in Tilden Park; or repair some of the more than two dozen sub-standard fire hydrants which the fire flow parcel tax was supposed to address when it was voted for in 1997 but so far not a cent has been used for hydrants.
Orinda residents and their City Council should demand that their MOFD representatives act on their behalf and Moraga's MOFD representative should keep their half of the bargain.
Steve Cohn
Orinda
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA