The more things change, the
more they stay the same.
The Marin County Board of
Supervisors seems intent on living out that cliché.
Though its members have changed
since the 2008-09 Marin County Civil Grand Jury, on which I sat, called for a
homeless director and a permanent shelter, the board is still sitting on its
collective hands.
Now it has rejected some major,
not unsimilar findings of the current grand jury.
And supervisors continue to
publicize an invented figure of $15 million that the county purportedly spends
on the homeless, an amount that is earmarked mostly for tangential, indirect
(albeit important) programs.
The supervisors also continue
to cite the county’s Continuum of Care, an amorphous 10-year plan as an answer.
It isn’t — and never has been.
At best that antique document
is a subterfuge, a distraction, in truth only a way to justify grants.
And, according to the July 2 IJ
front-page story, the supervisors claim they’re still leading the search for
solutions to the problems.
False.
How long will that search take
— as long as the 15 years and counting it’s taken other bureaucrats to “fix”
the Bay Bridge after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake?
As long as it will take for
several more homeless men, women and children to die on the streets and hills
of Marin County from exposure?
As long as it will take for
several more grand jury reports on the homeless crisis to be ignored?
Let’s hope our officials will
replace platitudes with action.
Soon.
July 4, 2015
Marin
Independent Journal
Letter
from Woody Weingarten, San Anselmo
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