By Ben Baeder

Is it just me, or have we been in a water crisis my entire life? No joke, some of my earliest memories are sitting with my dad watching super-spooky “WATER CRISIS!” stories on the local news.

People in California’s water business are constantly screaming that the sky is falling – or that water or snow are not falling from it fast enough.

“Wolf! Wolf!,” they scream.

But every time I turn on the faucet, water comes out.

It’s cheap. It’s sort of clean. And it seems like there’s plenty of it.

I’m tired of hearing about water. It’s so boring.

Uh oh. My inner Andy Rooney is growing out of control and is taking over my body. My eyebrows are growing white and huge. “Stop, Rooney! Stop!”

He’s taken over. The rest of this column is by Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes.

If water agencies are so hard-up, they should stop giving their workers big pay raises.

And if they are still broke, they should raise rates.

Otherwise, I don’t care anymore.

Seriously, Azusa Light and Water employees just got a one-time payment of 3.75 percent of their pay from the city. LA’s utility workers recently got a similar deal.

Maybe they were due for a raise, but they got it when everyone else in the private sector is getting hammered.

And, before its board buckled under political pressure, the Metropolitan Water District in October was on the verge of giving employees a 23-percent raise over the next five years.

So, do water companies have ample water and lots of money, or don’t they? I can’t tell.

If water is so scarce, why is the Inland Empire full of homes and mega malls?

Why are Southern California lawns lush and green?

Why, when my kids get bored, do I make their plastic slide a little more interesting by running the hose at the top?

All the while, farms in the Central Valley are going fallow and pumps in the Sacramento River Delta – at least until last year – were grinding up fish that are the bedrock of the area’s ecosystem.

Logic and economics aren’t applied to water issues. And I think I know why.

Quick, name the directors of your water district.

See. You don’t know. In the desk that is the human mind, water districts are just clutter that gets tossed away.

It’s so boring that our elected water board officials flit away public money on booze and conferences, and we don’t even pay attention.

Someone needs to do away with the whole system.

I wish I could say right now the best way to fix everything. My first instinct is: keep water rates low for businesses, farms and most residential customers, then jack the rates up super high for big consumers.

Hit extravagant people in the pocketbook.

If you want a Ferrari of a front lawn, you’re going to have to pay for it.

Maybe the wasters can pay for all the new water infrastructure we supposedly need.

Secondly, we need to get rid of water districts. Nobody watches them, and they’re inefficient.

I would offer more solutions, but my mind got too bored.

It’s on to something more exciting: prime numbers! Three, five, seven, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23. . .

Walnut recently got a bill from the state ‘s Department of Finance is asking for $4.6 million from the city’s redevelopment agency.

But there’s a problem: the city’s agency earned only $4 million all year.

For some reason, the state thinks Walnut’s redevelopment agency raked in $21 million this year, according to city documents.

A spokesman for the California controller’s office said he is checking to find out what happened.

Walnut’s Finance Director Chris Londo said the city has a $4 million yearly cap on what goes into its redevelopment agency. She said, under the guidelines spelled out by the state, the city should only owe $1.6 million.

Cities use redevelopment agencies to capture property taxes and reinvest them in the community.

The state is currently asking all cities to send over some of the money for education funds.

Cities are suing the state to stop it from taking money for education, and have won similar battles in the past.

I covered Montebello about five years back. I was 27 years old, and it was baptism by fire.

Montebello, hands down, had the most cut-throat politics of any city covered by the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News and Pasadena Star-News.

People there truly hated each other.

I went from holding friendly interviews with city officials in Santa Fe Springs and Whittier – the other cities I covered – to getting off-the-record 11 p.m. cell phone calls from people in Montebello about drugs and conflicts of interest.

I eventually moved to other beats, but I never forgot about Montebello.

After taking a couple years off from the paper, I came back last year.

Montebello politics were still off-the-charts crazy.

In November, the city once again toppled its majority and elected a new council with a new agenda. This time the issue driving the election was the exclusive trash hauling contract the City Council granted to Athens Services in July 2008. Montebello is a city full of trash haulers, and the council’s fateful decision stirred up a big, outlandish hornets’ nest of a campaign.

It culminated with the election of incumbent Bill Molinari and newcomers Frank Gomez and Art Barajas.

Now there’s another recall campaign against Molinari’s last two opponents, Robert Urteaga and Kathy Salazar, scheduled for February.

And, like always, the city’s staff is turning over faster than than a rotisserie chicken at the Montebello Armenian Festival.

The new council this week fired City Administrator Nick Pacheco, who was appointed just last month. They also put Police Chief Dan Weast on leave.

Pacheco was replaced by former Interim City Administrator Randy Narramore, who a few years back replaced former City Administrator Richard Torres. Torres was reappointed, but he retired and was eventually replaced by Pacheco. You still with me?

And I haven’t even mentioned the lawsuits.

Weast is being sued by 13 of his officers. Salazar recently sued the Police Department and former Chief Garry-Couso Vasquez. I think some other people are suing other people, but I lost count.

I’ve never heard of a city where so many people sue each other. I’m thinking of quitting, testing for the bar and opening a law office in Montebello.

Anyway, Montebello’s voters deserve better. There is no way that much turmoil is good for a city. Montebello has a lot going for it, such as its proximity to LA, the tax-generating Montebello Mall, some nice parks and opportunity for homes or a wilderness park, or both, in city’s north hills.

Normally, a column like this should end with a speech urging Montebelloans to rise up. But, in Montebello, such urging is not necessary.

So Montebelloans, chill out. Your city is starting to become a punch line.

ben.baeder@sgvn.com

626-962-8811, ext. 2230

I am officially giving the Leftovers blog “Longest name in the San Gabriel Valley” award to…
drum rollllllllllllllllllllll:

“Citizens for Free and Fair Elections, A Committee to Increase Voter Turnout by Consolidating Walnut City Elections with November General Elections.”

It’s a group in Walnut whose members want the county to take over Wallnut’s elections.

Here’s a story about them:

Group files paperwork to campaign to have Walnut’s city-run elections handled by county
By James Wagner
Staff Writer
WALNUT — Citizens have kicked off an effort to change the way the city handles elections.
A handful of residents filed paperwork with the city last week to form a political action committee, which would campaign for Walnut’s elections to be run by the county.

King’s seat is one of two up in April’s elections, along with Councilwoman Mary Su’s.
james.wagner@sgvn.com
(626) 962-8811, Ext. 2236

Interesting piece of Covina history:

In Monday’s column, I wrote about Rudy Uribe, who was fixing up a big house on San Bernardino Road and North Larkin Avenue near Hollenbeck Avenue. The circa 1905 house is about 3,300 square feet with barreled ceilings, pocket doors and other cool features.

Turns out the home probably belonged to Daniel Houser or his family. Uribe said the planks used to build the home had a stamp on the back marking them for the Houser home.

Daniel Houser helped invent a combine harvester sometime around 1880 or a little earlier, according to several books about farm history. It was hard to find exactly when.
“Beasts of the field: a narrative history of California farmworkers” by Richard Steven Street said Houser’s harvester needed 14 horses and harvested 16-foot-wide swath.

The book had lots of other details about farming during the era.

Houser eventually ended up in Covina, where he helped town founder Joseph Swift Phillips dig a ditch to bring water to Covina from San Gabriel Canyon, according to the Covina Valley Historical Society.

I spotted this on the blog site LA Observed (laobserved.com):

Check out this story about Gil Cedillo in the Capitol Weekly.

Cedillo, who is known for supporting drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, tried for the San Gabriel Valley House of Representatives seat won by Judy Chu. But he was trounced by Chu, who had much stronger local connections.

Here are the results for May’s Democratic primary:
JUDY CHU DEM 17,668 32.63
GIL CEDILLO DEM 12,577 23.23

He looks like he is going to take a run at an assembly seat in Los Angeles.