Our Soapbox For Dissemination of
Opinion Pieces and What This Town Needs Articles
From the OurLosBanos.com Staff
Welcome to the Our Los Banos Blog and Soapbox.
NOTE: Most of my blogging is now done here. Please check out the forums to read my blogging and more of my editorial opinions.
If you are new to OurLosBanos.com you might be wondering what this page is all about. In short, this section is simply our soapbox. It is a place where we can and regularly do post all sorts of opinion pieces, editorials, praises, flames, and all manner of mumblings, grumblings, ramblings, blogging, and chit chat.
In short this part of the Our Los Banos Website is simply an area for us to voice our opinions about things that we find interesting or worthy of editorializing about or including in our blogs. We do this in three subsections; the What This Town Needs subsection, the Our Opinion subsection, and Our Los Banos Blog.
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Los Banos Blog - 8-24-2007 OurLosBanos.com is One Year Old This Weekend! A thank you note from the couple that runs this site: Dear Los Banos, Thank you all for such wonderful support, acceptance, and friendship this last year. As OurLosBanos.com turns one year old we find ourselves reflecting on what a wild and rewarding ride it has been. It has been an incredible year for us and we hope that OurLosBanos.com has made a positive difference in your lives is some small way. It has certainly changed OUR lives for the better. We have made so many new friends, learned so much about our town, and enjoyed an unprecedented connection with Los Banos and its people because of this "little" website. In our wildest dreams we would have never EVER expected to find ourselves so involved with the community as a whole or with the city of Los Banos in general. In the last year we have found ourselves changing and becoming more a PART of Los Banos than we ever would have expected. And why not?!? This is a wonderful town, and we keep running into more and more wonderful people! We also would never have expected the OurLosBanos.com site to grow as it has nor for the forums to be as popular as they are. Just a month ago we had to make changes to our hosting plan to make sure we could properly service the needs here. We want to thank all of you for making this site what it is. Many ideas and suggestions for improvement and expansion of OurLosBanos.com have come in from readers like you and we truly appreciate it. We also really appreciate all of you who participate on the Los Banos forums. This area of the site which allows readers to participate and contribute is the heart and soul of OurLosBanos.com. Your participation and contribution, whether it be to log on and tell a few jokes, or whether it is to contribute some deep political insight is appreciated more than you could imagine by the lurkers and other readers on the forums. We hope the forums continue to grow and be utilized in the polite and friendly manner they have become famous for. We know they have made a beneficial difference in people's lives and we are so thankful to have been able to contribute to that. That in itself is a big enough reward for us and makes this all worth it. Once again, we want to say Thank You Los Banos for making our little undertaking into one that has had some real meaning which has allowed us to meet and enjoy such wonderful people and to touch other people's lives in a positive way. Thank you also for your helping others and participating on the forums. Community involvement is KEY to making Los Banos an even more attractive place to live, work, and play. If you are new to Los Banos or to this site, please do not be shy. Jump right in and enjoy. Until next time, 6-1-2007 Greetings Everyone, Please allow me a few moments to share an opinion with you... my personal opinion on a mistake that can be stopped before it is funded and set in stone. It appears that the city council is going to be voting at the next council meeting on pushing forward with what is being called Phase One of the Community Center. Did you see those words? COMMUNITY Center? IF I understand things correctly Phase One (which is the ONLY phase being voted on) is going to include... drum roll please... 2 practice basketball courts, 1 Full basketball court, bleacher seating for 200, 3 meeting rooms, a kitchen, and some admin offices and storage. Oh Joy. It is my opinion that the COMMUNITY Center should serve ALL of the COMMUNITY... NOT just a select group of athletic young people. Why don't we call this what it is? The Los Banos Community BASKETBALL center. While I am in no way against athletics or basketball I AM against duplication and waste. As things stand right now in this town we have at LEAST 6 indoor basketball facilities and countless outdoor ones. We have joint use or can get joint use agreements with the school district so that community BASKETBALL events could be held at those facilities. What we DO NOT have is a COMMUNITY CENTER and when phase one is built in my opinion we still will NOT have a COMMUNITY center. Unfunded, and un-voted phases two and three look a lot more to me like what we have all hoped that the COMMUNITY center would be. An expanded library, a better home for the museum, better facilities of different kinds for MORE diverse groups of people - not just a sports center. We are putting this community center in the heart of downtown. This is supposed to be a showpiece for our town and what has been proposed is no more than a glorified high school gym. What should be built before anything else is something that EVERYONE in this town can be proud of. A facility that brings the community as a whole together and is not 'owned' by one group or constituency. It should be a place that the top brass of companies thinking of deploying here can be given a tour of that makes them walk away saying "WOW, Los Banos is really proud of its heritage and caring of its people." To say I am disappointed is an understatement. IF I have understood the information correctly the COMMUNITY center at least in phase one is NOTHING like what I would want to see my tax dollars used for. I would be all for a very large community center that has basketball facilities included... BUT the basketball / sports facilities that nearly duplicate infrastructure already extant in Los Banos should be phased in last.. not first. The first priority must be to meet the needs of unserved or greatly underserved groups and facility needs. The first phase to be approved should include a diverse set of facilities. It should include a place for the elderly to have their get togethers, a place where the community can gather for stage productions, a much expanded library, and a home for the Miliken that will look top notch and professional and other facilities that are not already served in this town.... in short phase one should be the cornerstone a truly diverse city center... A city center for everyone. I am not usually one to ring the fire-bell and ask for people to take action but in this case I would like to ask you to take 10 minutes and make it known to the council ASAP before the vote early next week that this is NOT the order to build in. Phase 1 should be pushed back to phase 3. Please also post your opinions here about this (yes it does get read by the city brass). Take a moment to call the following people and let them know that it might be better to consider building the facilities spoken of in phases 2 and 3 before we build yet another duplicative basketball court, dub it a community center, and then lose interest and funding when all we get is a darned gymnasium. E-Mail:
Phone / Voice: 209.827.7000 I hope this did not come across as vitriolic, indeed I am not mad.. but I AM quite disappointed that the committee has recommended a course of action that is so narrowly focused as to be exclusionary to MOST of the community. I hope our council votes this one down hard. Until
next time, Archives |
Selecting a Los Banos School Superintendent What
This Our ongoing series of opinion pieces on what we think would be good additions to the City of Los Banos What this town needs is:
Also see the WTTN Archive. (Old What This Town Needs articles.) You want MORE opinions? Okay! We also are published in a
local newspaper "THE PAPER".
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Whether you agree or disagree your polite thoughts are always welcome!
Philosophy & Deeper Explanation
Of The Above Sections
THE
WHAT THIS TOWN NEEDS SECTION:
Of particular note is the "What This Town Needs" section which
you can see above.
When we moved into Los Banos years ago the city was a complete unknown to us. However Los Banos provided good real estate prices and was bordered by open space and beautiful farmland. It was the sort of town that had a great deal of what we wanted. No place is perfect however and there were then, as there are now things that provide potential opportunities for improvement.
In the What This Town Needs section we put forth opinions about what we see as correctable deficiencies in the town of Los Banos. The idea for the What This Town Needs section started with the idea of writing an article bemoaning the fact that Los Banos really needs a large home improvement store. Well, just before we got serious about doing this website THAT particular wish was granted with the beginning of construction of BOTH a Home Depot and a Lowe's in early 2006. By 2007 these should both be open for business.
But man does not live by hardware stores alone, there is still plenty more that this town could use and we will use the "What This Town Needs" section to point it out!. These pieces are usually pretty direct in tone, but they are not intended to be offensive or divisive. In fact the idea of the What This Town Needs Section is to offer suggestions to the movers, shakers, leaders, citizens, voters, and business owners involved with Los Banos about what could be added to our community to make it that much better.
OUR
OPINIONS ON SECTION:
Below the What This Town Needs Section is
the "Our Opinions On..." section. The Our Opinions On
section, naturally enough is a place where we post random and eclectic thoughts
and ideas about this town, things we might have read in the local newspaper, or
just general ramblings about topics that we find of interest. Usually these pieces
are opinions on some event or existing item, they do not usually include suggestions
for things we need in Los Banos, but rather editorial commentary about what is
already here or what has already happened.
THE
OUR LOS BANOS BLOG - QUICK THOUGHTS OF THE MOMENT:
When something does not require a full blown page of its own or if we have something
really quick to say, we will simply post it below in the Our Los Banos Blog box.
From time to time we will archive these Our Los Banos Blogs on this page. Many
times the blog will contain website update news but almost anything can appear
there.
YOUR OPINION SOLICITED!
As with any other part
of this website we do enjoy hearing feedback on anything we post and we encourage
you to feel free to make that feedback public if you can do so in a polite and
respectful manner on our Los Banos Community Forums.
In fact as we have said on other parts of this website, the major reason for having
created Our Los Banos .com was to give people interested
in the City Of Los Banos a place to post opinions and interact in a positive and
respectful way. The real heart of the site is intended to be what YOU have to
say and that is what the Los Banos Community Bulletin
Board is all about. Please DO feel free to participate and post your ideas
and opinions about what you read here.
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