City budget meeting

I went to what was billed as a Special Meeting last night for the purpose of hearing what the city commissioners had to say about the budget and the proposed tax rate. At least, that was my purpose. It turns out, like so many times before, I had it wrong. The agenda, published and on display, was as follows:

1. Welcome
2. "Public Hearing" Discussion on the 2014 Tax Rate.
3. "Public Hearing" Budget for Fiscal Year 2014-2015
4. Adjournment

I suppose the quotation marks ought to have been a clue. You see, I thought a Public Hearing would be an opportunity for me (the Public) to hear them (the government) explain why they were proposing the tax rate and budget that they were, in fact, proposing. And maybe a Public Hearing is, indeed, just that. But in this case at least a "Public Hearing" (with the quotation marks) is an opportunity for the commission to hear from the public who, presumably has been following the process by which the budget was created. As it turns out, the Public was represented in this instance by me and one other San Benutian ( NB: I had hoped that the term San Beniteño would catch on but so far it has not). The other smattering of Public were there for the meeting that was to follow.
Fortunately, my fellow San Benist was prepared, otherwise, I might have felt compelled to say something and that would probably not have been pretty. He referred to an endeavor to find $30k to take out of the discretionary (un-allocated) budget to pay for raises for the city hourly employees. I'm afraid his endeavors, which I wholeheartedly endorse, might have come off a bit grinchy (if there were anyone but me and 2 commissioners and the mayor to hear what he had to say) as his focus was on what is unquestionably a very generous public relations department budget for Christmas decorations.
I think I would prefer to hear why a city that is struggling with infrastructure problems, and crime, and unemployment, and poverty needs a Public Relations Department at all. Maybe we do, but maybe we don't. I think a budget item, something that the city will spend (public) money to provide, support, and otherwise procure, needs to serve one or both of two purposes:

1. Either it is something that the public wants, or
2. It is something that will (probably) cause revenues to increase,

or both. I can't imagine that the good citizens of San Benito have clamored for a Public Relations Department. Perhaps we do indeed want some things that are provided in the current organization by that department. I don't know. On the other hand, there is definitely no evidence to support the notion that the activities of the San Benitio Public Relations Department have generated any revenue at all. 

Alas, such things were not heard at the Public Hearing.

Going old school

Like many people today, I imagine, I was introduced to lime, or quicklime, by Tom Sawyer. You know, the part where Tom has to whitewash the fence and get's the neighbor kids to do it while he "supervises". I really hadn't given it much thought since.

My house is old. It was built in 1920. The house, itself, is made from stucco and the property is lined with a wall made from old adobe bricks. I needed to seal a bunch of stucco cracks so I hired a painter to paint the house (not the wall) with some high-powered masonry paint. I wanted the sealing properties but the painter was very interested, as you might imagine, in making sure the house looked as good as it could. It looked pretty good. Then there was the wall. My painter, let's call him Maurilio, kept eyeing the wall. He knew I couldn't afford to get the wall painted by him and he knew me well enough to know I probably didn't want to paint it myself, at least not with paint. One day we were standing in the shade by the wall and Maurilio told me that back in Mexico, sometimes people would use lime to paint masonry white. And it was as he said. Actually the process dates back to at least the Roman Empire.

I bought a sack of lime (around $8 for 50 lbs). I experimented with the consistency. You can make it thick (that's called plaster) or thin (that's called whitewash). Thick does some structural repair but thin is way easier to apply. When I got the consistency to the compromise I wanted I slopped it on. It was somewhat disconcerting at first as it was mostly a grey slurry until it dried. Then, through the miracle of chemistry, Calcium Hydroxide (Ca(OH)₂) and water becomes, with the absorption of CO₂ from the air, bright white limestone (CaCO₃). I don't know how often this needs to be redone but it's kind of miraculous.