Letter: Other side of the tracks

Editor: In reading the HT, it sometimes feels that if there is a
logical way to make a slum of the south end of Healdsburg, someone
is going to find it. Just thanks, Renee, for giving us taxpayers
short shrift by your short answer: Build the parking garage in the
south end of town. We need a parking garage about as badly as we
need an RV storage facility or the farmworker housing rejected by
Geyserville. And the letter from Mr. Shere even suggested an
electric shuttle, no less, to spirit the tourists across the
pedestrian tarantula at Mill Street that the taxpayers have had to
negotiate for 20 years.
Do you people with sidewalks realize that we don’t have
sidewalks? What we have is unpaved mudholes from McDonald’s to Mill
St. which hold standing water about six months of the year. Last
March I narrowly missed a stroller which was suddenly pushed out
into the traffic lane by a woman who apparently couldn’t push it
through the water. When I moved here 18 years ago I was told that
Healdsburg was a walking town. And so it was until the rains came.
I have witnessed the building of sumptuous brick sidewalks and tree
plantings downtown, a new police and fire station, a city hall
worthy of the city of San Jose, a Foss Creek trail to nowhere, and
now the renovation of the plaza. In the works is a new 40 million
dollar community at Saggio Hills. Still, the bog remains on the
weedy path to downtown. If no one cares about the residents, how do
you think this entrance looks to our tourists?
We accepted the low-income housing project which has been just
fine with us. If you drive down Exchange Avenue and turn right, you
will see that these people have very good newer cars in their
parking lot. This means they no longer have to drive old clunkers
because they had to pay high rent. So we have given them a leg up,
which makes it a success story. But how many NIMBY projects can we
absorb without losing the attractiveness of our neighborhood and
the value of our houses? Don’t you people on the north side of town
feel any responsibility for those less fortunate than
yourselves?
Has it occurred to anyone that the Purity building could be
spiffed up and converted to seasonal housing for families and/or
single farmworkers? The rest of the year it could be used as
temporary housing such as NCCS provides with six-month leases now?
This would give many disenfranchised workers the opportunity to
save up enough cash for a deposit and to rent better housing for
their families. It sounds like a no-brainer to me. We could show to
the world that wine doesn’t just come from the fancy mansion
wineries, but from the back-breaking work of harvesting grapes
under a broiling sun, that we appreciate the work ethic of these
people by giving them a decent and even attractive place to lay
their heads when their long day is over. By comparison, a permanent
building for the farmer’s market seems like a low priority when
there are hard-working men and women living under the bridges.
Marion Piccioni, Healdsburg