Independent Thinkers, Thinking About the Merits of Independence

I suppose that if the residents of the San Fernando Valley had donated half a million dollars to City Hall (in addition to their property taxes, business taxes, inflated sewer fees, brush clearance fees, sales taxes and gasoline taxes) then the Sunshine Canyon Landfill would be getting the kind of study by city-appointed experts that it should.

But it’s too late now. City Hall has voted to approve the dump’s reopening. And Browning-Ferris Industries, which owns the once-closed landfill, managed to get that approval for a mere $450,000 spent lobbying City Hall. Under the advice of BFI-employed experts, the City Council and mayor even decided to avoid a messy cost analysis. But I have to wonder if the BFI figures would have looked quite so trustworthy if the people of the Valley had coughed up half a million in cool green cash.

The problem was, nobody told us we were in a bidding contest for the opinions of our elected representatives. We rubes, out here in the sticks, we figured that we elected the council members and the mayor, we pay their salaries, they must work for us, not the highest bidder. How could we have been so naive?

If nervous politicians feared a public backlash over the vote, BFI even provided a poll that, amazingly, showed that even many Valley residents didn’t really care if their streets were crisscrossed by dump trucks. No worry here, said BFI, many of the hicks over the hill don’t mind having their property values plummet. They don’t care that the dump is above a reservoir holding their drinking water. And after being swept up by the $450,000 lobbying campaign, the City Hall gang chose to believe BFI. Who says you can’t buy common sense?

Now, if I were an independent thinker, I might be asking questions. If reopening the dump were such a good idea, why did BFI feel the need to spend so much money to sell it to City Hall? And if the Sunshine Canyon site is that much cheaper than sites used in San Bernardino county, how does BFI figure to make a profit? Especially considering that it is already almost half a million bucks in the hole and hasn’t even opened the hole yet.

Doesn’t this remind you of how we got into the Belmont Learning Center mess? Didn’t the Los Angeles Unified School District board choose to believe the rosy reports from its contractors rather than do its own studies? People never learn from the past, they just keep making the same mistake over and over again.

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City Hall’s repeated mistake is treating the Valley like a rich dumb uncle who always hands over a few extra bucks, no matter how badly you treat him. BFI may have been able to convince the council and mayor that having a dump rammed down the Valley’s throat wouldn’t force-feed the secession movement, but I don’t know very many people in the Valley who would agree.

We in the Valley are independent thinkers. And the manner in which the Sunshine dump was approved has us thinking independence.