Town Hall Meeting on the Homeless

To be more accommodating, we will all be meeting around the communal fire under the Bear Gulch Bridge. No wait, somebody changed the plan, the following is official:

Another public meeting to discuss transient issues

Redwood Times, Posted: 09/28/2011 04:32:50 PM PDT
John Casali and Paul Encimer are organizing another meeting to talk about transient issues in our community and they'd like representatives from the business community and local residents to attend. A recent meeting was held at second district supervisor Clif Clendenen's office behind Garberville Library and was attended by an angry group of people.

This meeting will be held at the Vet's Hall in Garberville on Friday, Oct. 7 beginning at 6 p.m. Eric Kirk will be mediating the meeting.


The Garberville-Redway Area Chamber of Commerce is not hosting, nor affiliated with, the meeting but they encourage those with concerns and/or ideas they'd like to share to attend.

“Both sides will be there”

Oh really… we will shout and pound fists, point out everything that is wrong, when it all ends everyone will realize that nothing is going to happen. The homeless will still be squatting in their 1’’ of dust, by then, 2 inches of mud. Everybody will feel better or worse about themselves. It will be pointed out that there is really nothing for the homeless in Garberville, so why are they here? It will be pointed out that they are treated better here than most places. The growers will quite often drop a free baggy on them. Quite a few people that don’t have to live in, or run a business in Garberville, will give them money. It will be pointed out that most will use their money for drugs or alcohol. But, in the end nothing will change.

The law enforcement officers will still have their hands tied. They have less funding now than have ever had before. They never solved the problem when they had more money, so what makes you think that they can change things now? Nothing will change, but it should be a fun meeting. We can tell each other that we are acting like responsible citizens. But nothing will change. If the problem were changeable, wouldn’t we have done something by now? It can’t be from lack of interest. You can’t walk from one end of town to the other while thinking about anything but the downtrodden and hopeless that hang on our streets, hoping that their next treat might be a baggy, or maybe a twenty. For them,  It’s a like fishing in a great stream.

Hey, if I were a homeless person, I would hang out in Garberville also. No rules, no restrictions, no showers. Life is good in Garberville, and you can be a complete bum, and you have an excuse, nobody will do anything for you, you have to be they way you are. But, nothing will change.
There are homeless advocates, and emergency shelters in the more metropolitan areas. But, they make you take showers, you can’t use drugs or alcohol. They make you pray, and they continually thump on their Bibles. Crap, that’s no life. Pretty soon they start helping you find a job and give your life structure. Screw that! Garberville is better, no rules, and great benefits. But nothing will change.

The good thing about the homeless is, they provide our emergency services with great practice drills! Now that it is cold and rainy, they move under the local bridges. Some idiot “Good Citizen” will see the smoke from their communal campfire boiling out from under the bridge and dial 911. He will declare an emergency that a frikkin’ concrete bridge is on fire. Of course the dispatcher is a transplant from Los Angeles, and they don’t know that concrete bridges don’t burn, so they send two fire departments to check it out. Of course we firefighters have been to all these bridges umpteen-million times, so we are smart enough to know that spontaneous combustion doesn’t just happen under bridges. Knowing what we are heading into, we have to call for the Sheriff to clear the scene. There is the standard argument that the people under the bridge are entitled to a cooking or warming fire. Then we politely explain that you have to have the permission of the property owner, and the road departments don’t allow fires under their bridges. One reason that fires are not allowed under bridges is because some idiot will call 911... I would go through the whole thing again, but you get the idea. We do this at least once a week in the winter. But, NOTHING CHANGES.

I didn’t hear whether our not our Supervisor Clendenen will be there. He was at the last homeless meeting. You do remember what came out of that meeting don’t you? Nothing changed. If he is wise, he will stay away. Nothing good can come out of getting sucked into a SoHum fight. Remember the Mateel wars over Reggae? Anyone standing near the fight got sucked in and spit back out like a plucked chicken. You just don’t want to be to close to a SoHum fight, they can change your life!

If Clendenen is there, he will have to be in campaign mode. Estelle Fennell has announced her candidacy, and she is a well know Sohum local with a long record of hard work and accomplishment. It will be interesting to get her take on the Homeless.

One big thing about the meeting that is coming up. It will be moderated by a person that will enforcing order, I don’t want “ORDER”! I want to yell and scream, pound my fist and get things off my chest. “Order” is not going to do that for me. Nothing will change anyway!

If I go to this meeting it will only be because Suzy Blah Blah says that she will be there… Hmmm. She has fooled us before, is she fooling us again????

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Okay, I’m going to put all of my snide cheeky stuff aside for a bit. I always said that a person shouldn't complain unless they are willing to offer a solution.

The Homeless issue is something that I feel strongly about. The people who have punched their own cards, and taken themselves out of productive society, seriously anger me. They are along for the free ride because they know that people like me feel sorry for the downtrodden and unfortunate, who, through no fault of their own, found themselves dealt with a short hand from the deck of life. The fakers are the lowest form of humanity, because the soak up all the resources and help that would be available for the truly needy and deserving. I have, on a one-on-one basis, helped many homeless make their lives better. I could tell you many stories of pure frustration. Quite unlike Reagan, I fully believe that homelessnes, and the mentally ill, is a problem that can only be addressed on a federal level. If a person can’t care for themselves, they should be institutionalized, until such a time as they can take care of themselves. If not able to be rehabilitated, at least they will have a nice warm place to live and good food to eat. Forcing a human being to live in the mud is purely heartless. Now that I’ve said that… Do I expect anything to change? NO, I do not.