The Editor's Desk

We’ll be running the Orange County Register’s state proposition recommendation editorials over the next couple of weeks. Their views match mine, of course, so running their editorials gives me the time to talk about local issues like Measure D.

I do try to do my own editorials on propositions when there’s only a couple on the ballot or if they have a particular tie to Barstow, but given there’s so many of them this year, there’s no way I can spend the time going over each one to give individual recommendations.

Carol Randall’s response to my editorial regarding the city’s role (and lack thereof) in economic development contained a couple of sentences I found a little concerning:

“Economic development does not happen in a vacuum. It is a partnership with everyone living here, including the city, schools, and media. It is the job of all entities to promote their cities in a positive light.”

I’d just like to make it very clear to Ms. Randall and to anybody out there who might think that this is case, that it is absolutely not the job of the Desert Dispatch to promote Barstow in a positive light.

Our job is to provide information to Barstow residents to help them make decisions about their own lives. Our job is to help Barstow residents understand what is going on in their community. We absolutely cannot do our job if we take on the role of city cheerleaders.

We’re a business, too, and what makes our information valuable is the trust readers have that we are fundamentally honest. If readers perceive that our newspaper serves the interest of city leaders and not the readers, they will not trust us, our newspaper will not be seen as valuable to this community, it will not provide certain information that readers need to know, and they will probably stop reading.

I always find it a little saddening when anybody in the business community suggests that we should turn a blind eye to our problems. First of all, they’re asking for us to hurt ourselves as a business in order to make the “community look good” in the belief that this will benefit them (it won’t — people aren’t blind). Second, bringing problems to light is a pretty darn good way to start fixing them. The public discussion surrounding Measure D and our safety needs has no doubt been fostered in part by our willingness to put all the information out there that we’ve got, pro and con.

Today’s editorial is about how people expect too much from city government when it comes to bringing home the commercial/industrial development bacon.

An additional comment I didn’t have room for in the editorial: When we put city leaders on the hook for economic development, that encourages them to stretch and abuse their authority in order to bring in projects. It’s not just more revenue for the city, it’s also votes to stay in office.

This means that when municipal governments misuse eminent domain in order to provide land to private developers or take money away from fire and school districts with redevelopment agencies, part of the reason is that these leaders are on the spot to bring economic projects to town or else face problems at the polls.

Today’s the day the new Desert Dispatch launches. It went fairly smoothly, all things considered. We’ll still be tweaking bits and pieces and responding to reader concerns.

If you want to comment here on the redesign, feel free to do so below.

Apologies if you have tried to call the redesign hotline we promoted, only to have it ring busy for you. Our phone lines are intimately connected with our power. We didn’t realize the phone lines were still scrambled until late in the day Friday and we were left in a lurch over the weekend. We’re working to get it taken care of.

You may have noticed an unusual advertisement on A7 in today’s Desert Dispatch (Monday, Sept. 8), written by me.

All week long we’ll be running special ads detailing some of the changes ahead when the new Desert Dispatch launches on Monday, Sept. 15. This first advertisement is a bit of an overview explaining what we’re doing and why.

Keep an eye for the ads throughout the week so that next Monday doesn’t come as quite a shock.

Lest people think it’s outrageous of me to suggest that our police and fire staffing issues are a direct result of the significant pay and benefit increases we’ve given over the past few years, police officers in Clovis have voted to give back part of their pay in order help the city make its budget.

The fire department plans to follow suit. Why are they doing this? Because the departments feel they are understaffed and it’s a way to get the money to keep their numbers up to what they need them to be. The alternative would be layoffs.

Interesting. Read the full story at the Fresno Bee here.

I raised the issue of the financial commitments caused by our public pension system and made reference to the serious financial impacts its causing throughout Southern California. Given that Chief Darrell Jauss, in his response, suggested the idea that our local pension program is less generous than some others, you might be interested in reading about its impact elsewhere.

Pension Watch is a project of FACT, the Fullerton Association of Conerned Taxpayers, in order to keep an eye on the serious issues developing as California’s public employee pension crisis gets worse and worse.