Giant dirt berm is temporary
Earthmovers will refill hole once it's ready for housing construction
During my decades of writing opinion pieces, I have developed a series of checks on my thoughts, a staple is seeing the positions of individuals and organizations.
One of my former checks was the grandmotherly Zone 7 director, the late Margaret Tracy. If Margaret was backing it, check my mind. I take the same approach with the current governor and many of his Democrat colleagues. So, it was helpful that the governor’s communications people released his plans for the propositions. I rose above my inclination to “just say No” and took a look. My position is opposite on most of them, but we land together on the so-called Billionaires tax, Proposition 39.
Newsom has been steadily against it along with the wealthy folks who have contributed millions to defeat it as well as qualify and support Props. 40, 41 and 42. Add it that the chief proponents are unions with plenty of public employees and it’s an easy call.
Newsom also surprised me when he vetoed a bill to expand retirement benefits for state public safety officers, a bill that would have essentially overturned a reform that Gov. Brown passed in 2012. That established a retirement age of 57 instead of 50 and set the maximum rate per year of service at 2.7% instead of 3%. When the recalled Gov. Gray Davis passed the 3% at 50 bill for California Highway Patrol officers in 1999, it set off a rush to match it. After the stock market crashed and public retirement funds were way short of meeting actuarial goals, Brown and the Legislature changed it. It remains a problem to that day—state and local governments have raised contribution levels and the funds are still way short.
Newsom, who was the Lt. Gov. at the time in 2012, clearly remembered and went against overwhelming majorities in the Legislature that has passed the bill. Bravo for him.
You can see massive piles of dirt both at the former Amador Theater site on Santa Rita and at the housing construction site at Valley Ave. and Busch Road. That engineered pile is at least 15 feet tall if not 20. It dwarfs the temporary six-foot fence surrounding the construction site.
A knowledgeable home builder explained to me that the dirt pile at Valley/Busch is necessary because the site was originally a low-lying wetland that the quarry operator used as a holding pond for the slurry generated by the quarry and concrete processing. The result was layer of what was similar to soft mud that could not support construction. So removing the dirt temporarily to get the water out of the soil and compress it became a necessary step in the process.
Expect the berm to go away as the hole eventually is filled back in for construction of the housing. The land is in the county so went through county planning and an agreement has been reached with the city to annex it and provide services.
