How much do you think the Great Bailout is going to cost Morgan Hill? My math says it should work out at about $100 million on a pro rata basis of our population. On the one hand this is chump change for a town that can afford to build a $15 million road it doesn’t need. But on the other hand, for a town so strapped for cash that it has to charge you a new 2 percent tax on every utility to raise $1.6 million to pay for seven new cops, this would result in a 125 percent surcharge on every utility for a year just for us to pay our share. No need to go figure, I’ve just done that for you.
These are bad, bad times. The cartoonists who portrayed Dubya all along as an uncomprehending child were all too right. Hoodwinked into an unnecessary war, he presided—and presides—over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Bought and paid for by big oil and Saudi Arabia, he ignored global warming while oil spiked into the triple digits. And now, having handed out the Treasury job to big Republican donor Paulson, he remains as clueless as ever while the Wall Street foxes look after the savings of the Main Street chickens. But then I’m forgetting there was that great redeeming moment in the wake (sic) of Katrina… yes, I am forgetting.
This is an ugly mess, but there is one—perhaps small, perhaps not so small—upside to last week. Congress has been dithering over a renewable energy bill for many months, to the point that the 30 percent Federal tax credits would have expired at the end of the year, which would have killed the solar and wind energy markets in this country, affording Europe an even greater lead in the race to greenness. But in the end, that bill was earmarked to the bailout and so passed into law Friday and was signed this past weekend by Dubya, who once would have scoffed at it.
Morgan Hill has a fabulous climate for solar and even wind. And here my objectivity ends. It is my somewhat self-interested view, and I do run a renewable energy contracting business, that Morgan Hill should do more to stand out as a green community. It’s good for the environment, it’s good for property values and it’s good for the planet. I believe we should become more like Palo Alto and start our own utility, beginning with solar PV installations to power all of the city needs, and incentivizing the adoption of PV, thermal and wind with funds like San Francisco, Palo Alto and Berkeley have done.
Should we be just a “me too” follower community? Or should we come up with imaginative ways to sponsor green energy as those cities have done? There’s an election coming. Do you want a tax on your toilet, a road that isn’t needed, or a plan to push Morgan Hill to the forefront of California green communities? If we want the latter it’s time for all of us to speak up very soon and very loudly, ‘cause that ain’t what’s on your ballot card now folks.
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