A new entry for the Town Crier's greatest hits album

This week, we find the leaders of the fifth-most educated small town in America trying to one up each other with dumber and dumber reasons for opposing a tax on plastic bags. The Los Altos City Council began the shenanigans by voting 4-1 against Santa Clara County's proposed 25¢ per bag fee. The reasoning (apparently provided for them by the sinisterly-named American Chemistry Council) seemed to be that people ought to get paid for things that they should be doing already. A few days later, the award-winning editorial pages of the Town Crier joined the fray, and you can imagine where it went from there.

County should ‘bag’ the bag tax

Ha!

A recent proposal by the Santa Clara County Recycling and Waste Reduction Commission for paper and plastic grocery and retail bag reduction and a 25 cent per-bag tax received a cool reception from the Los Altos City Council. The issue wasn’t so much bag reduction – in these “green” times, reductions are appropriate. It was the "tax" part of it that council members rejected.

I'm sending both this headline and opening paragraph to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

We’re glad they did. Councilwoman Val Carpenter hit the nail on the head when she said the city would be better off implementing incentives for residents using fewer bags than agreeing to impose a tax. And the prospect of another tax in this weak economy is equivalent to hitting the taxpayers when they’re down. Frankly, there are far bigger environmental issues to tackle, such as toxic waste disposal and water conservation.

The Town Crier editorial writer may be happy about this, and Val Carpenter did in fact say that, but everything else in this paragraph is wrong.

the city would be better off implementing incentives for residents using fewer bags than agreeing to impose a tax.

My idea to give people an incentive to use fewer bags: charge a fee that they can avoid by using fewer bags.

And the prospect of another tax in this weak economy is equivalent to hitting the taxpayers when they’re down.

Three issues here: 1) Technically, it would be the tax itself doing the hitting, not the prospect of it, 2) this fee would be especially easy to avoid, and 3) I'm pretty sure Los Altans can afford an extra quarter in the extreme circumstances where it becomes necessary.

Frankly, there are far bigger environmental issues to tackle, such as toxic waste disposal and water conservation.

This sentence is particularly egregious. Its premise is a false dilemma that imagines society can either address the problem of plastic bags or deal with other environmental concerns, but not both. It also lacks any evidence for its claims. And given that the Town Crier still pretends that we are not changing the climate, I find it a little hard to trust assertions like this one. In fact, I even question the writer's frankness.

The editorial goes on to argue that the market should magically provide reusable bags, missing entirely the idea that plastic bags are artificially cheap because of the external costs that the market is not capturing. And in a coup-de-grace against both logic and the English language, we get this:

For anyone who’s been in Whole Foods Market, an occasional price break would be quite welcome.

Let's leave aside for now the irony of complaining about high food prices and then letting it slip that you shop at whole foods. Also, let's ignore that one of Whole Foods' main selling points is that the food it sells has fewer associated externalities than does the food from Safeway, Trader Joe's or Ralph's, thereby justifying the higher costs. The main problem with this is that Whole Foods presumably sets its prices in a way that takes into account the discounts it gives shoppers for using renewable bags, essentially taxing shoppers in the same way that the County's proposal would.

Hopefully Mountain View will have a more intelligent debate when it takes up the issue this week.

It finally makes sense

The Los Altos City Council spent September caricaturing itself, first by ensuring that First Street remains inconvenient for bicyclists and then by putting the brakes on a proposed link to the Stevens Creek Trail.

Here is a sampling of quotes from the meetings, helpfully provided by the Town Crier.

Councilman Ron Packard:

"We want to encourage bicycling on the whole Peninsula. On the other hand, do we want to become part of a bigger community?"

Resident David Lambourne:

"It’s hard to support any plan in which a path runs in and out of our city."

Mayor Val Carpenter, paraphrased:

Mayor Val Carpenter said the project had already eliminated multiple street parking spaces, and that she was loath to remove more for a bike lane, noting that she observed many cyclists using downtown as a launching point for regional travel rather than a family-oriented destination.

Packard again, paraphrased:

City Councilman Ron Packard referenced the city’s Fremont Bridge remodel as a project that sacrificed charm for bicycle friendliness, and suggested that he didn’t want to make the same choice for First Street.

The takeaway from all of this: the City Council finds parking spaces charming, but not bicycle facilities, especially if they somehow connect to places outside of Los Altos.

Yes, Los Altos has a proud history of treating bicyclists like they were Gypsies. Perhaps that is what the Town Crier was getting at.

Let them eat tacos

Note to self: speaking at city council meetings may be more effective than wearing a paper bag over your head.

The taco truck survived, for now, as Megan Satterlee and David Casas joined Ron Packard in opposing an ordinance to force mobile food vendors away from school property. Mayor Val Carpenter and Council member Lou Becker were silent on the issue.

MVLA Superintendent Barry Groves presented the problem to the combined city council and school board, and seemed perplexed that people would see this as an issue of social justice. I followed by reminding the council of the last time it got in the business of telling people where they could stand and pointing out that cities with laws against gypsies need to be extra careful when passing discriminatory ordinances.

"The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination."

Tensions are rising (with an assist to the Daily News) over a rejected proposal to discuss term limits for board members at next week's joint meeting between the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District board and the Los Altos City Council. Just imagine what they will say when they actually do discuss something.

Next Monday's meeting will feature a long-awaited decision on the high school district's request for the city to do something about all those damn taco trucks.

Council member Ron Packard, whose position on this issue won him the blog's endorsement in the fall, e-mailed his reasons for opposing a potential ban to colleague David Casas. He is so thoroughly correct that I am going to reprint them here sans commentary. (Also, I can't think of anything funny to say.)

The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination. Students with vehicles can drive and eat wherever they want. Those without vehicles cannot. If the major concern is quality of food consumption, then the District should consider alternatives (whether closed campus or whatever) that apply to all groups, not just one.

The city has already had to allocate police time and efforts to enforce the parking restrictions around the high schools due to the District's approach to student parking. I suspect the high school would be a vigilant complainer each time the vending vehicle exceeded its limited stay. As such, the city's police resources would often be removed for other important functions to enforce the vending vehicle restrictions during school day. I do not feel that is a wise allocation of our police resources.

While nutritional eating habits are important, here the market-place has met a need for the less-mobile, which is already met by other means for the mobile. Let the District go back to the drawing board to come up with another solution that doesn't tax our police department and smack of discrimination.

Los Altos cancels election

Seriously.

It seems that my hometown can save $100,000 every election cycle by moving city council contests to even-numbered years.

You know what else would save money? Not having elections.

In vintage Town Crier fashion, much of its coverage focused on the unruliness of a member of the public, but reassured readers that this sort of rambunctiousness is uncommon.

The Town Crier editorial gets it half-right, criticizing the plan for its potential impact on the school district. Ignoring for a minute whether the district would be smart enough to make the same change rather than shoulder the costs of an off-year election itself, the bigger and more obvious problem is that the change would allow the council to unilaterally extend their own terms. I'm no fan of voters, but not even the Los Altos Water Polo Alumni Security Council is that undemocratic.

Los Altos election special (with special guest star, my mother)

Though this Tuesday's election will not inspire the attention that last year's did, we here at NOE still take seriously our duty to inform the public about local politics.

Four candidates are running for three open seats on the Los Altos city council.

Ron Packard: Readers no doubt expect us to jump at the opportunity to get rid of Packard, who is largely responsible for the most embarassing thing to happen in Los Altos this millenium and sometimes seems to think he's mayor of Pleasantville. Not so. Packard has a lot of experience, having also spent two terms on the Mountain View council. He has a reputation as a thoughtful and generous man, and serves on the board of the Day Worker Center. Of course, the real reason I'm voting for Packard is that I need material for this blog, and he provides it.

David Casas: Casas was somewhat of a shit-disurber on the VTA Board at a time when it sorely needed its shit disturbed. He also always returned my phone calls when I was looking for a comment or an interview. On the other hand, his kid was kind of a brat the one time I met him. That would likely be enough for my mom not to vote for him, but that was few years ago.

Randall Hull: Hull seems like a friend of bicycle commuting and renewable energy usage. However, he used to do some contract work for the Town Crier, so he's already got one foot in the grave.

Megan Satterlee: I know almost nothing about Satterlee other than that her ballot statement refers too frequently to "preserving" Los Altos. However, she's an alum of UCLA School of Law. The added prestige that my degree would carry with an alum on the Los Altos City Council is too great to pass up. Sorry Randall.

The only other thing on the ballot is Measure O, which would revise the city's phone tax to include cell phone and broadband users while lowering the rate from 3.5% to 3.2%.

Nobody has written a argument against this idea, though there is this:

Mom: "I don't know what this one is about. I'll probably vote yes. I usually vote yes on everything."

Me: "That one is a tax cut." [Yes, I know this is only partially true.]

Mom: "Okay, I'll vote no then. Why would they cut taxes?"

My mom's voting system for candidates: vote for women.
My mom's voting system for other measures: yes on everything (except tax cuts.)