Please also note that Prop 218 is a real problem for Oceanside.

It is beneath a good blogger to make fun of comments, right?  Not your comments; your comments have all been fantastic.  But comments to newspaper stories.  There’s no point in selecting one and mocking it.  I mean, they’re likely to be laypeople or be ideologically biased.  I normally read newspaper comments for the gestalt (then huddle in the corner, sobbing for our future).  But this one is SO GREAT.  I can’t resist.  From an article in the Capitol Weekly on increased enforcement in the proposed new water legislation:

The only way that a government that has brought the state to its economic and political knees can think of to fix a problem is by giving that same government more power. This has gone beyond inept insanity to maniacal delusion. We want and we should have more water for less money. We don’t want to continue to pay a collection of incompetents to tell us or try to make us use less. Any 1st grade class could come up with that one.

I am deeply chagrined that the proposed water legislation does not manufacture new cheap sources of water out of thin air.  Why didn’t they think of that?  Where is their problem-solving inventiveness?!  Why are they binding themselves with the iron chains of reality?!!*  That will only hold us back!

The city of Oceanside also thought that water should be cheap, apparently.  Refused to raise rates to cover the increased costs of water from their wholesaler.  I can’t entirely tell what is going on, but it looks like they’re eating their reserves, which may trigger a debt call of $105M.  But I’m only guessing.  I would like to point out, though, that even though a legislative body made a decision that water should stay cheap, that DIDN’T MAKE WATER STAY CHEAP.  Rather, it meant that they had to reach into a different pocket to pay for the more expensive water.   If it doesn’t bankrupt the town first, they seem to have a new plan to look into legislation forbidding rate increases by their wholesaler (over whom they have no jurisdiction).  Yes, well.  How could that go wrong?

*One day when we were bored, my friend and I worked out the lifecycle of the unicorns that bring new water.  I should write that up for you guys.  They are called to concrete, you know.  Pouring concrete, either for dams or subdivisions, summons the unicorns that gush potable water from their horns.