Editorial

Proud of the brown lawns

— Rollie Atkinson

Holiday Crafters Nook at the Senior Center

Spring is a time of renewal, new hope and new ideas. It’s also a time to shake up our existing notions of how our communities operate.

Welcome to summer, the season of growing light, relaxed purpose and new opportunities. Summer dreams. Summer breaks and summer vacations. Summer of our youths, summer play. Let’s do it.

July 1 is the start of a new fiscal year for local governments. This is when the county, cities and schools start spending new tax money based on recently approved 2016-2017 budgets. All these budgets tend to launch with the same conclusions: there is never enough tax revenue; there are too many unmet needs; employee and pension costs keep going up; and everything could be solved if we only agreed to raise new taxes and vote for more long term debt bonds.

For the last 15 years, I have been a volunteer in prisons, teaching convicted felons in the field of sociology and running self-help groups. Most of my students are “lifers,” men who have been convicted of serious crimes like murder, rape, or burglary for which they have received sentences of 15 years to life and much more. None of them are on death row, and most are now eligible for parole, having served their minimum sentences. Often, they have served far longer.