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You’re on
Your Own:
Fire/Rescue
Services are Non-existent in This Area
It is said
that 2 more Firefighters have quit this week because of poor management.
Now that leaves only a handful of Volunteer “Firefighters” to cover all of the
District plus the surrounding areas that the District is under contract with the
County to service. That’s over 80 square miles!
Of the
remaining Firefighters only 2 have three or more years of actual Firefighting
experience, 3 have less than two years as SCSD Volunteer Firefighters and the
other 4 have less than 6 months under their belt. Of these, 3 of them have never even
been to a real fire, while 2 don't even live in the Community, they live between
35 -60 miles away.
Only one
Firefighter has the know how or the license to legally drive the fire trucks.
Most of
these Firefighters have no more working knowledge then you or I would get by
taking Red Cross First Aid/CPR classes. Management doesn’t even seem to be
concerned enough to provide hepatitis vaccinations to the Firefighters.
So please
what ever you do, heed this warning: don't get sick, have a heart attack, get
lost in the desert, have a car accident, have a house fire, or hurt yourself in
anyway that would require 911 services.
Because You’re Going to Die if
You Do!
This
announcement in no way is meant to besmirch any of the Volunteers of the SCSD
Fire Department; we thank you all for your dedicated service. It is the
Management, as well as the Board of Directors that have hung you out to dry.
Their incompetence in making the best out of the manpower they have is so
apparent.
Citizens, Guests, and
Passerby’s …
You’ve Been Warned!
TAX
EVASION:
Board of Directors
Stoop to a New Low
By J.F. McGuire
For years and years the
SCSD has been providing Fax/Photocopy services to the Public for a fee.
Brought to light recently
by Director James G. Barrett is the fact that these fees are subject to
California State Sales Tax laws.
This is attested to in an
email from the State Board of Equalization (BOE) which is
responsible for collecting State Sales Tax.
On June 13th, 2008
Director Barrett, during budget talks, mentioned that the tax code required the
district to collect and pay sales tax on Fax/Photocopy services.
Then on July 12th,
2008 he notified the SCSD Board of Directors of the tax requirements in an email
dated July 12, 2008.
Once again Director
Barrett brought up the issue on October 21st, 2008 when the SCSD
Board was setting the annual rates for the Golf Park, Pool, and Fax/Photocopy
services. Director Barrett made a motion to include the sales tax on
Fax/Photocopy services as required by law. At this motion the other Directors
sat quietly as though nothing important was being mentioned. The motion died
for the lack of a second.
On October 31st,
2008 the
District sent a letter to Mr. Barrett in response to a
Public Request for Information that he had submitted on October 27th,
2008.
The request was for any
documents that showed that the District was paying State Sales Tax for the
Fax/Photocopy services that they were providing to the public. The reply stated
that the District was not paying the sales tax because they were not required
to.
This is in direct conflict
with the
email from the BOE that declared that “Photocopies and incoming
faxes are taxable since a tangible personal property is provided. You are
correct that local governments are not exempt from taxes...only the federal
government is. Sales tax should be collected and remitted to the Board (BOE)”.
State Sales Tax Evasion is
described by the BOE as Fraud and can be prosecuted as a felony.
Anyone can report sales
tax evasion to the BOE at
http://www.boe.ca.gov/invest/salestax.htm
Bird Watch / Nature Trail
Receives Funding from SCSD
by James G. Barrett
At the December 19th, 2006 Board meeting the Directors
unanimously approved over $3,000 worth of funding for repairing and
upgrading the Salton City Nature Trail & Bird Watch, which is located
between the West Shores Golf Park and the Salton City Dry Camp.
The Nature Trail & Bird Watch is maintained strictly by
dedicated volunteers, usually with donated cash and materials. This
month however the Board stepped up to the plate and took a swing at helping
the volunteers' efforts with some much needed funding.
We here at Salton Sea West applaud all the volunteers
that have struggled to maintain this sometime Board ignored part of the
Districts Park and Recreation System.
Thanks go out to Joe & Rachel, and Dean & Carlene (hope
we got the names right) and everyone else that has donated their time and
resources over the past years. Thanks!
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SCSD to
Capture ill-Gotten Gains
But
There’s Still Time to Get Your $1,000 Refund
by J. F. McGuire
The SCSD will start taking
legal possession of almost $258,000 in unclaimed Developer Fee Refunds covering
fees that we’re paid between July 1st, 2005 and January 1st,
2007. These fees ($1,000) we’re charged, without any legal authority to do so,
to new home developers to mitigate the impact on the Fire Department and Street
Lighting.
On January 15th, 2007,
after determining that they had no legal right to charge the fees in the first
place, the SCSD Board of Directors released the
official refund form to be used in requesting the return on these
unauthorized fees.
Despite the refund forms
“must submit by date” of December 31st, 2007, the SCSD Board of
Directors, at the October 21st, 2008 monthly Board Meeting determined
that the original payers of these fees had 3 years from the date they paid the
fee to request a refund. See
Resolution 2008-10-2.
Per
Government Code Section 50500, after the three years
passes and a newspaper ad is placed then the SCSD has the right to capture these
monies and spend the proceeds as they wish. At the October 2008 meeting the
Board voted to place the necessary ads to start the process of taking possession
of the unclaimed refunds. As of that meeting there was $258,000 of unclaimed
funds.
The first $64,000 that is
set to be captured by the SCSD was paid between July 1st, 2005 and
October 1st, 2005. If you paid these fees between these dates you
must submit a
Refund Request Form to the SCSD before December 8th, 2008 or the
funds will become the property of the SCSD.
Salton Sea West, with the
help of Director James G. Barrett has obtained official SCSD Documents showing
who has yet to claim there refunds.
Click
here for a complete list of the names and addresses of
persons/companies entitled to the refunds as well as the approximate date when
the SCSD will permanently capture the funds.
Again, the December 31st,
2007 deadline on the refund form does not apply, as acknowledged by the Board of
Directors at the October 2008 meeting,
the original payers of these fees have 3 years from the date they paid the fee
to request a refund.
Editor’s
Note:
As well as being the
driving force in exposing these illegal fees and lobbying for their return,
Salton Sea West, is the ONLY local news media to notify the public about these
refunds. To this date the SCSD has made no attempts to contact the overcharged
persons/companies. No letters, no phone calls, no posted notices or lists.
Salton Sea West challenges
the Salton Seafarer and the West Shores News to do the write thing and help
spread the word about these refunds. There are no doubt families out there
that could really use their refunds, especially this time of year.
Salton Sea West hereby
gives permission for anyone to reproduce this article. Thanks!
Every Drop Counts Protest Held
by Torri Barrett
January 1st,
2008 was the first day of many more to come for the Every Drop Counts Protest
founded by Mr. Rick Davis of Salton City. Mr. Davis wants to let Sacramento
know that the people of Southern California don’t approve of the State’s plan to
dry up almost 60% of the Salton Sea.
The State’s “preferred
plan” is to make a small saline lake at the north end of the current sea and a
salt marsh at the south end, drying up everything in the middle. This would
leave the residents of all of the communities surrounding the Sea victims to
what ever has been dumped into the Sea over the last 100 years as the winds
would kick up the dry lake bottom thus polluting the air with all manners of
substances including selenium a highly toxic substance.
At 11am sharp over 100
concerned residents poured 100 gallons of clean water into the dying sea to
protest the States inaction and empty promises. Petition gatherers also passed
out petitions demanding that the Lawmakers restore the Sea ASAP.
Mr. Davis a long time
resident of the area started the idea that Every Drop Counts when it became
obvious to him and many others that the politicians in the rest of the State
don’t care about this dying ecosystem that is so vital to so many species of
migrating birds as well as its’ human inhabitants.
Every Sunday Mr. Davis will
be pouring 7 gallons of fresh water into the sea.
1st Amendment Rights
and Website Hijacking
by Torri Barrett
Anyone who has
read our little web-based newspaper knows we are trying to slay dragons,
right wrongs and blow the whistle on all illegal activities at the
district. But lately we have had to fight on another front as well. The
district management and a Director or two have taken it upon themselves to
contact the district’s lawyer stating that Salton Sea West had stolen
their website address and all the content from their site. This is far
from the truth as they can get and quite par for the course of the
district.
On March 23,
2005 my husband and I signed a contract with the management of the SCSD to
create and maintain a website for the Salton Community Services District
at www.saltoncommunityservicesdistrict.org. All content and design rights
were reserved to the design team of James & Torri Barrett by way of
contract, copyright laws and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This
was on an all volunteer basis with no monetary compensation of any kind
with yearly renewals. All work was being done in our home, on our
computers, using our high-speed satellite uplink. This was running very
smoothly with same day service and no complaints.
On October 3,
2006 during a study session 3 out of the 4 Directors at that session made
it perfectly clear that they felt that it was a conflict of interest to
have a Director’s wife, Director or any family member of a Director to
have a hand in the website. The 3 Directors then demanded that the
website be frozen and all passwords were to be turned over to the
Assistant Manager. This was to be done before the next District’s business
meeting, when the 3 Directors would decide what to do with the website at
that time. Director Butler stated that he would write the website policy
to be followed. Prior to this study session the District’s lawyer was
contacted and the lawyer stated that he could see NO conflict of interest
with a Director or a Director’s wife being the webmaster.
Now keep in
mind that the district was getting all website design and services for
free! If they were to a contract those services with a Website
Development Company it would cost them around $200.00 per page and
the district’s website was well over 100 pages as of that date.
After the
study session my husband played the recording of the session he made so
that I could hear what was said. Director’s Palmer, Butler and Rouhe
called me everything but a lady, they even insinuated I had no scruples
and that I was a brainless dolt. I was smart enough to see through the
Vaseline lens, to know that they were attacking me to get back at my
husband who had just blown the whistle on the District for collecting an
$18,000,000 Illegal Developer Impact fee. It was more then obvious what
was going on here, Director Palmer and Butler voted for the illegal fee in
the Boards previous term and didn’t appear to appreciate being outed by
the new guy on the block.
The Design
team talked well into the night about the dilemma that was placed into our
laps. We could only come to one conclusion; remove all of our
Intellectual copyrighted work from the district’s website, mutually
terminate our 2nd year’s contract set to expire on December 31,
2006, and redirect our personal web address of
www.saltoncsd.org to point to
www.saltonseawest.com a web based newspaper we co-authored. We
expanded the newspaper some to accommodate the new government pages and on
October 4, 2006 we took our ball and went home. As the Assistant Manager
had all the passwords from day one there was no need to give them to her.
Here is where
things get real malicious, on Saturday October 7, 2006 we returned home
from a much needed night out on the town only to find that someone from
the district had high jacked Salton Sea West and didn’t even bother
renaming it before placing it up onto the District’s website, clear and
plain theft. On Sunday October 8, 2006 we filed a grievance of copyright
theft with the District’s ISP (Internet Services Provider). The ISP looked
our grievance over and in turn locked the District’s website up with an
“oops” splash screen and a phone number to call their ISP for details.
E-mail was also sent to the Assistant Manager explaining what was
happening and how to fix the problem. The problem was that everything on
the districts website was stolen property except for the district’s Logo
that was pasted on top of the Salton Sea West Logo. It took the District
10 days to find out that we were not backing down on this issue and they
finally e-mailed the ISP and told them to remove the copyrighted material.
So ask
yourself, why is the District’s website still blank? Well I can tell you
why, because they are trying to extort our copyrighted materials out of
us. They are also claiming that our web addresses are trademark
infringement and we are to sign them over as well.
We were given
a Cease and Desist letter in November stating we had until December 4 to
turn everything over to the district. To date we have not turned it over
and are not going to without a fight. This is pure and simple extortion!
Salton
Community Services District is something they call a geographic indicator
just like San Diego and Washington D.C. is. Go to
www.sandiego.org you will find a travel bureau, if you go to
www.washingtondc.org you will find advertisements and mock yellow
pages. You can only trademark a geographic Indicator if the location is
famous for a specific product i.e., Roquefort Cheese or Napa Valley Wine.
I hope they’re not planning on selling sewage! I can see it now, SaltonCSD
Poop and we won’t even mention our famous flies.
We are in no
way trying to mislead or confuse people into thinking that we are
representing the District, I for one wouldn’t want to. We are just
running a local information newspaper website and some Directors are very
angry that they have no control over what we are putting on the website
and they don’t like that we’re giving the people of the district the info
at all. They would rather keep the citizens in the dark. I feel a little
baaaad saying this but some Directors are trying to make sheep out of
you. I’m sure you are well versed in that saying about watching out for
wolves in sheep’s clothing. I’m just a little person and they are an
overzealous government agency using intimidation to push the little guys
around.
Now if I were
you I would be asking, just who is paying for all these lawyer fees to
extort copyrighted material from its rightful owner?…….it’s you and I the
tax payers of course.
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