The article we published two weeks ago about the makeover of Smyrna Park has elicited public criticism about city priorities.

Some folks accused the city of investing funds into making improvements to Smyrna Park while not finishing Guillermo Ochoa Park.

First, let’s get some things straight about Smyrna Park, which is old and did have some issues. As we first reported in August 2022, the city snagged a $2,872,661 grant in March 2022 through the competitive Clean California Local Grant Program (CCLGP) administered by Caltrans. The grant was to fix a neglected park, not build a new one. The state acknowledged that Smyrna Park could use the help due to the greatest community use, age of facilities, the high volume of vandalism and graffiti, security concerns and increase maintenance costs. Local matching funds of $410,380 were required. 

Later when the city received buckets of ARPA money, the council decided to allocate $892,624 as a city match to the Smyrna Park grant.

Now about Guillermo Ochoa Park (originally Eastgate Park). On Facebook, former Chamber president Herman Bhatti posted this: “Oh my, it’s quite amuzing (sic) to see how over 800k in funds were expended on Gillermo Ochoa Park, yet the actual work appears to be valued at less than 150k, and we’re still without a green lawn. This park stands as a testament to poor planning, arguably one of the least aesthetically pleasing in any city. Our resources could have been invested more wisely. I certainly hope the team responsible for Gillermo (sic) Ochoa Park isn’t handling our funds in this project.”

The “team” happens to include City Engineer Kevin Waugh who came onboard fairly recently. He often expresses how park projects are his passion. He has predicted that Ochoa Park will be the pride of the city once finished by the summer of 2024.

Bhatti should know better in saying Ochoa Park is a “testament to poor planning.” The city delayed finishing Ochoa Park for years for a lack of money just as it has not finished Lions Park in north Ceres. But if you ask me, it was silly for then newly seated Mayor Javier Lopez to push for a big shindig dedication ceremony in July 2021 for an unfinished park where no grass was yet planted. The event created expectations from the public that things would be happening soon – and it didn’t happen.

At that dedication ceremony, then City Manager Tom Westbrook told me that the city sought bids on the park but didn’t have “anywhere near” the $1.9 million to get the park looking more like a park. Instead the council opted for a phased-in approach with Phase 1A of $780,000 which included the playground equipment, rough grading and concrete work. The work included hydro-seeding of the park but winter rains were scare and thus the grass didn’t sprout. Landscaping and irrigation had to be removed because of the price-tag of $360,000.

The city didn’t have (past tense) the money to finish the park until COVID and ARPA money came along.

Earlier this year the Ceres City Council agreed to spend $1.05 million from the first installment of ARPA funds, (of which $400,000 was previously allocated to Ochoa Park, and $650,000 initially allocated to Lions Park). The council also OK’d the use of $1,088,100 from the second ARPA allocation of $5.8 million. Another funding source was $172,000 in neighborhood park development fees. Grand total being spent to finish Ochoa= $2.3 million.

The park is going out to bid soon.

Drawing on community input, the city will be installing picnic tables, shade structures, benches, a couple of basketball half courts, Pickle ball courts, a 16-foot by 16-foot shade structure with barbecue grills, drinking fountain and a doggie waste station and trash receptacles. Grass, shrubs and trees will also be added with a full irrigation system installed.

What is concerning is how folks make bold statements on social media when they don’t get the facts first. Take for example Elidia Garcia who starts out admitting that she doesn’t attend the council meeting but suggests the city misappropriated funds and “maybe if we blast them with dollar figures on social media they’ll do something.” She continued: “Truly disgusting how careless they are spending our hard earned dollars. My kids will probably be in college before they make it look like an actual park.”

Take a chill pill. Ochoa Park is going out to bid and a finished park will be in place in 2024.

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Does a person uttering highly offensive speech warrant shutting down the speech of others?

That’s a question some are asking in light of what happened at the Sept. 25 council meeting. 

In case you missed it – and you probably did if you don’t attend council meetings and most don’t, and if you don’t read the Courier – two clowns pulled what you call a Zoom bomb. They were tuned into the council remotely and asked to speak and proceeded to peal the ears of those listening with their offensive language, uttering the n-word and other disparaging remarks. What perverse pleasure they get from this immature behavior is beyond the thinking of a rational individual.

It’s doubtful that such pranks are locally based. Apparently other cities are experiencing the same kind of shocking abuse of Zoom. Posting a public link makes an agency vulnerable to such attacks.

Some cities like Fremont are cancelling the ability of remote users to speak directly through Zoom, instead requiring a person to submit comments in an email, which, of course, can be filtered out if they contain offensive remarks. A remote citizen would still have the right to speak, they say, only they will be words in an email that would be read at a meeting.

Unfortunately on Monday  the Ceres City Council decided not to allow citizens to provide input via Zoom access by silencing their voice. Unfortunately City Attorney Nubia Goldstein did not discourage them from taking that course of action.

It’s a kneejerk reaction based on emotion and not reason. Freedom of speech is one of the hallmarks of American values. Shutting down the pipeline of citizens’ voices to their elected officials all because of distasteful utterances is not the path to take.

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Ceres has managed to remain relatively safe while what we are seeing in other communities is alarming with violent crime.

This headline in our sister newspaper, The Manteca Bulletin: “Manteca thefts plunge as violent crime skyrockets.”

Manteca Police enacted the first-in-the-state organized retail crime theft unit but alarming is that overall violent crime — homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — has gone from 67 cases to 117 during the January to July comparison of 2022 and 2023.

We were all horrified last week to see surveillance video of an 18-year-old Brian Dowling knife to death an innocent 31-year-old Ryan Carson without any provocation on a street in New York City.

So many angry and hate-filled people in our country and, like I said before, it’s a spiritual issue. Many have drifted from God and his rules for living.

I often have wondered why God even created man given his proclivity for wrong-doing. Yet I also see that had he not created man, there wouldn’t have been mankind to do good, to love, to create, to think and to serve. Because any life can go sideways, God was pretty clear in setting rules for living. We know the basic set as the Ten Commandments. It would do us good to remember:

1. Worship no God but the God of the Bible.

2. Don’t worship idols.

3. Don’t dishonor God by taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy. Jesus changed this and said we should keep the Sabbath day to worship, remember creation, and rest so we could serve God and others.

5. Love and respect your parents.

6. Don’t kill. God wants us to protect human life, even unborn children.

7. Husbands and wives should be faithful to one another. 

8. Don’t steal. No one is permitted to take something that belongs to another. Not only is it God’s law but it is the basic law of the society we live in.

9. Do not tell stories that are untrue about people. When you tell a lie, you hurt yourself as well as others.

10. Don’t go around wanting everything your neighbor (that could be anyone) has for a person who covets may be led to break all most all the other commandments.

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The singular campaign issue that catapulted Donald Trump to the White House was illegal immigration. And it’s likely the issue that will get him re-elected again next year.

The Biden Administration has been a disaster for the immigration problem.  A lot of Americans weren’t paying attention until the governor of Texas started bussing them into New York City and dumping them on the door step of the so-called sanctuary city. Now the Democrats are singing a different tune altogether.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is beside himself. He should be but it’s too bad that it took the in-his-face approach to get attention to the fact that this country cannot take on the burden of so many unskilled impoverished individuals who are fleeing failed countries like Venezuela and Mexico. For being a sanctuary city, it’s rather hypocritical to then spend $50,000 to resettle 114 migrants to other cities, most to Texas and Florida. That’s a fraction of the nearly 118,000 migrants who entered the city this year, and is thousands fewer than Gov. Greg Abbott has sent out of Texas. So if NYC doesn’t want them, why do Democrats think anybody else does?

But lo and behold, after preaching for years that walls were evil and racist and don’t work, Biden is apparently whistling a different tune as we head into the election. His advisors must be telling him to jettison his failed policy. The White House announced that it will get back into the business of wall building by waiving 26 laws to build additional border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley amid heightened pressure over migration. This is after they spent gobs of money storing materials that Trump ordered but Biden stopped using and then selling for pennies on the dime. If this isn’t irresponsible leadership I don’t know what else is.

The U.S. Border Patrol reported nearly 300,000 encounters with illegal aliens in the Rio Grande Valley sector between October 2022 and this past August. In September alone, Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 200,000 migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, the highest total this year.

But hey, Gavin Newsom said Biden has been one of the most successful presidents in history. Does this guy smoke something funny?

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This has been the strangest year for a number of reasons.

The springtime brought a deluge of rain that wreaked havoc on California communities and ended the dry spell. Snow was still dusted on the tops of Sierra mountain range in mid-July.

On January 10 many of us were awakened by a tornado warning sound coming from our cell phones that jolted us out of bed.

Hurricanes are mostly an east coast phenomenon yet Hilary hit Southern California in August.

A black bear was captured in rural Hickman in eastern Stanislaus County, which is a rare event. Now my daughter in Hughson reports seeing numerous raccoons rummaging around in her subdivision as captured by her Ring camera.

Now we have folks in Stanislaus County reporting white spider webs drifting high in the sky and falling to earth. Unbeknownst to many of us, spiders can transport themselves by creating and latching on and floating to the next place. It’s called ballooning.

The number of UFO sightings is off the charts, especially in Maryland where 1,923 reports were submitted to authorities. The idea of flying saucers have been dismissed as stories from crazy people but now we have people like U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, who is the top-ranking Republican on the intelligence committee. He has more access to classified information than the vast majority of lawmakers on Capitol Hill yet he suspects there are records related to unidentified aerial phenomena that are being kept secret from congressional oversight.

Never before in American history have we seen the relentless prosecution of a former president for so many farfetched charges – all by Democrat activist officials. It is infuriating Americans honest to see what is really happening here.

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Hillary Clinton, what can you say about her?

We all know what she thinks about the half of America I reside in, calling us “baskets of deplorables.”  Last week she said dissed conservatives who think America should not be spending money like drunken sailors, condemning “MAGA” Republicans who think are part of the “cult” wing of the party devoted to Trump.

Clinton is jealous she couldn’t have a following like Trump. She was never a likable First Lady or candidate. Chillingly she said “…maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members, but something needs to happen.”

Trump is the first Republican to come by in my lifetime who actually delivered on promises. He has fire in his belly, he exuded patriotism, he cut taxes and brought back American industries, built the border wall, opened gas production and gas prices were low, the economy was roaring, Russia stayed away from Ukraine and we weren’t at war and no terrorists struck the homeland and she says doesn’t understand why he has a following, suggesting they are emotionally crippled hero worshipers who love his “nasty form of politics”?

Trump is likeable to a growing half of the country. The other half has been programmed to believe he is Satan or Hitler. Hillary Clinton never was likeable. Neither is Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom is a purebred political plastic man. Maybe the Democrats should start grooming populists of their own instead of attacking ones like RFK Jr.

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