RON DAVIS -- Through My Eyes

I bumped into a friend the other night at a community meeting. My friend

happens to be a fan of one of my fans -- Bobo the irreverent canary. You

know Bobo, he’s the bird who enjoys “reading” my column while it

languishes at the bottom of his cage. He especially appreciates it when

my column photo is directly below his perch so he can zero in on my

views.

It was suggested that I solicit the “straight poop” from Bobo regarding

some of the outrageous opinions I’ve expressed in this column.

I caught up with Bobo just as he was putting the finishing touches on

last week’s column, where I’d expressed my outrage at the city of

Huntington Beach for spending almost 52 grand for “art,” in the face of

the pending $1.3-billion (that’s B as in billion) price tag to repair the

infrastructure.

Normally, canaries are yellow, but Bobo is anything but yellow -- he can

whistle a tune with the best of ‘em.

He proceeded to chirp at me because of my preference for spending $52,000

for streets, sewers and sidewalks, rather than tiles depicting sea gulls.

He was also critical of columns I had written assailing the city’s

expenditure of $750 for the Golden West College Gala, and a $10,000

giveaway to a local organization for band instruments. He called the

money, “chicken feed.”

Bobo suggested that if he had his way, he’d spend far less of our tax

dollars maintaining police and paramedic services and repairing the

infrastructure. He told me he preferred spending our tax dollars on an

art center and providing political propaganda on HBTV-3.

I explained to him we already did those things. I told him we actually do

spend a heck of a lot of money we could have been using to repair the

infrastructure by subsidizing the Art Center and almost $600,000 a year

running political propaganda shows on HBTV-3.

I told Bobo I thought we should be spending the tax dollars we use to

support the Art Center, HBTV-3, bird tiles, galas and band instruments on

something I thought was fairly essential -- our infrastructure. Boy, did

Bobo get a hoot out of that.

Bobo looked at me slowly and squawked, “Look! When you have sidewalks you

don’t trip on, toilets that flush and sewers that don’t pollute the land

and ocean, people expect those things and take them for granted.”

Bobo could see I was lost, so he asked me, “If people take those things

for granted, how is a politician going to get credit for doing

something?”

Bobo realized I was still confused, so he continued.

“In order for politicians to be recognized as contributing, they have to

fix something. In order to fix something, something has to be broken.

And, in order for something to break, it can’t be maintained. And the

only way not to maintain it is to spend the money on everything else, and

then claim you haven’t got the money to maintain things.”

Bobo leaned over, grabbed another seed and said, “Then after it’s broken,

the politicians can take the credit for fixing it.”

That Bobo is one smart bird.

I was impressed with Bobo’s political insight and questioned, “With a

mind like yours, have you ever thought of running for political office?”

After one last shot at my photo, the little bird said, “Naw. I think you

already have enough people in public office with brains like mine.”

* RON DAVIS is a private attorney who lives in Huntington Beach. He can

be reached by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .