Councilman James Casey was in a feisty mood at last week’s City Council meeting.
He expressed frustrations about bringing up the weed problem in the lot across the street from Ceres High School and nothing being done about it. His complaints made in April had produced no results even though he was told it would be checked on.
“I’m not sure what’s going on but it is an embarrassment to the city and it looks hell,” Casey asked. “Is there anything that can be done or should I just tell the citizens and tell my wife who’s in the car every time we drive over just accept the fact that’s the way it’s going to be.”
He said he brought it up to City Manager Doug Dunford twice and to Fire Chief Kevin Wise in April.
When he was told that citizens can report things through the AskCeres app and it goes to the inspector, the inspector gives notice if needed and the owner is given so many times to clean. If it’s not cleaned up, then there will be a “forced cleaning.”
But Casey asked a good question: “Don’t fire people drive by that? Don’t code enforcement? I mean it’s so obvious it’s pathetic and it’s not just that property but it’s throughout the city. It’s pathetic.”
Casey balked at the app process.
“So my 80-year-old neighbor that doesn’t have an app, she gets a hold of my grandson? Is that what happens? I mean, you have to have an app to report this?”
Wise replied that the app is the easiest way to report or just call the fire department.
Also mentioned at the meeting was how the Beautification Committee (something dreamed up by Channce Condit during his two years on the council) didn’t seem to go anywhere.
You know the old saying, “If you want nothing done, form a committee.”
Casey’s level of irritation continued when he noted that the report by Public Works Director Sam Royal made no mention of Lions Park. Casey has been miffed that the city has not developed Lions Park in his district while the big push was to finish Guillermo Ochoa Park.
“It’s just a weed patch … it really shouldn’t even be called a park. It should just be called a weed patch. It was named after the Lions Club. Maybe we can go before the Lions Club and say, ‘Would you mind if we changed the name from Lions Park to Weed Patch?”
Casey said one of the reasons he ran for office his main concern was the appearance of Ceres.
Royal said Lions Park is disked two or three times a year to cut the weeds down.
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It’s always disconcerting to see how many times folks in Ceres are victimized and post surveillance videos of porch pirates and other types of thieves at work.
On July 7 a woman in Ceres posted videos and stills on Facebook of two men stopping just short of the stop sign on Seventh Street at Whitmore Avenue, so they could get out and steal items from the back of a pickup parked in the driveway at the corner. The thieves (who appear to be Hispanic) could not steal the good tools from her husband’s work truck because they were locked up but did steal an old blower, a defective carburetor pump, an empty tool bag and a punctured hose truck.
Thieves are among the lowest form of human being. Guard yourself and your property. Don’t leave anything out for it will walk off.
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Can you think of anything more illustrative of election interference and thwarting democracy than the Democrats forcing Joe Biden out of the presidential race after he went through all of the presidential primaries and having the voters picking him? And they do so under the guise that they didn’t know how slow he has been acting or how he has misspoken or showing signs of cognitive decline. They have known which is exactly why they put the presidential debate so far ahead out in front of the Democratic National Convention – so he could bungle and stammer and they could use that as a tool to remove him. Forcing an impending nominee out just because he is losing in the polls is such a dishonest move and is a threat to democracy – the term Democrats love to use on Republicans.
Kamala Harris was so unlikeable that when she ran for president in 2019 that she was the first one to drop out. Her entire time as vice president has been plagued by staffers quitting. She showed no interest in shutting down the southern border and in the meantime we’ve had an invasion of an estimated 8 million illegal aliens. She was one of the most far left senators in history which is why she will not be able to win over those very important independents. Her word salads have been the source of countless puns and memes.
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Someone needs to tell Mayor Javier Lopez that if he’s going to vote against something he shouldn’t be motioning for it.
Let me explain. Last week the council was poised on whether or not to sell a surplus parcel owned by the city which falls under new rules about posting on the state’s HCD website. A change in state law says the city doesn’t have to post the parcel on the state website and can proceed to sell it. Most of the council didn’t think it was fair anyway since the rule was different last year when the city first declared it as surplus. Confusing, I know.
Mayor Lopez called for a motion and received one from Vice Mayor Bret Silveira, who favored declaring the parcel surplus under the new rule. When he didn’t receive a second, the mayor seconded the motion but then was one of four to vote against his own motion.
If the mayor was opposed, he shouldn’t have seconded and it would have died for a lack of a second and an unnecessary vote would have not occurred.
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The liberal talking heads have received their instructions from the Democratic Party elites. You can tell by the way they are parroting the word “weird” when speaking about Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance. If J.D. Vance is weird, what do you call assigning a gay mayor of San Bend, Indiana (a city the size of Turlock) as Transportation Secretary, or picking the oddball trans Rachel Levine as the assistant secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Human Services or the strange LGBTQ activist Sam Brinton who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy in 2022 after he was fired being charged with luggage theft on three separate occasions? If that’s not odd enough for you, how about the cackling vice president who speaks to groups like they’re children as she tells about yellow school buses and Venn diagrams?
If you need proof of how ridiculous she sounded when speaking about astronauts to the Congressional Space Medal of Honor ceremony, search for it on YouTube. You’d think the woman was high on pot.
You know how far the Democrats have lost it when they think their side is normal and J.D. Vance is the weird one.
No, give me the guy who overcame the obstacles of growing up in a dysfunctional Appalachian family with a drug addicted mom, and how he went into the Marines and served in Iraq, how he made it into Yale law school, became a successful investment banker, wrote a best selling memoir (Hillbilly Elegy) that turned into a movie and then get elected to the U.S. Senate. I’ll take his kind of “weirdness” any day.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
