Things got kind of snippy at a recent council meeting when Councilman James Casey called for a clarification of the city treasurer’s duties and Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez snapped.
Martinez’s fangs came out because his wife Kayla Martinez is the city treasurer.
Casey called for a 2026 ballot measure to ask voters if Ceres should even have an elected treasurer since it appears the well-paid position of city finance director does all the heavy lifting.
Casey understood that the treasurer’s duties were to reconcile bank statements and oversee investments. Apparently not; that’s all done by the finance director. But the city’s website says: “The City Treasurer’s duties are mandated by state law and city policies, and include the review of bank reconciliations and approval of Treasurer’s Reports. Questions for the City Treasurer should be forwarded to the Finance Director.”
Martinez tried to embarrass Casey, saying he often is confused about his role on the council “because you don’t know if that aligns with your responsibilities. I don’t know how you can sit here and judge someone else’s scope of work or their responsibilities.”
Casey merely asked what the job duties are. But when Cerina Otero framed a question, what are the city treasurer’s responsibilities, the mayor and city attorney said it was a good question. In other words, it’s clear as mud as to what her job really entails.
The exchange begs the question: Why even have an elected city treasurer? There is no power and not much in the way of responsibility. It appears it’s an outmoded and unnecessary layer of government. The Finance Director, who is an appointed department head, is responsible for financial affairs and the city undergoes an audit to make sure there are checks and balances.
I recently had an opportunity to question former longtime city treasurer Harry Herbert who said the job wasn’t worth his time, saying: “The way they’ve gotten organized I had to request to see the financial reports and I was excluded from all of the meetings and I’d have to force myself in there to do stuff.”
While it’s not illegal for a husband and wife to serve in elected positions in the same city, this illustrates the conflicts that can arise. When a councilmember comes after a fellow councilman for asking questions, the better idea is to recuse himself because, after all, he has a conflict. That’s his wife and she is also paid a stipend.
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Mayor Lopez is on his way to getting the Monday, Nov. 24 Ceres City Council meeting cancelled. He asked for the time off for staff to spend with their families, noting they work hard.
Hold on. Thanksgiving is on the following Thursday and as you know finding city staff on Black Friday is always like finding a gnat in a wind storm. Are you telling me that city staff needs to be excused from city business the three days prior to Thanksgiving, too, to “spend time with family”? Does that mean they take the whole week off? If so, talk about non-essential employees!
Most nobody in the private sector gets away with that kind of scheduling unless it’s personal vacation and not a mass vacation for all City Hall staffers.
James Casey protested cancelling the meeting, citing the deep financial doo-doo the city finds itself in and the council’s need to bear down and be diligent into conducting business that night. Rosalinda Vierra agreed but said she could go either way. Martinez agreed with Lopez (as usual) and Otero said she’d be gone doing mom stuff anyway.
Since the council only meets twice a month for regular meetings, a cost saving measure would be to cut the council’s stipend in half for any month where the council decided to cancel a meeting.
Keep in mind the council ALSO cancelled the Monday, Dec.22 meeting as well. It must be nice.
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We had an election last week and I’m convinced most California voters fell under the spell of Governor Brylcreem, who decided California was going to pay back the state of Texas for gerrymandering and attempting to add more Republican seats to Congress.
If you don’t remember Brylcreem it was famous for the slicked back look that keeps hair perfectly in place.
Governor Brylcreem thought he was being smart by whittling down the number of Republican members in Congress from California. He spoke of fairness. Let’s look at fairness. California has 52 congressional seats but only nine are Republicans! Newsom wants to see five less Republicans by messing with district boundaries. (He’d actually like to see zero Republicans in Congress but won’t admit that).
Ask yourself if it’s fair that California currently has 14% of California’s delegation as Republican despite the fact that 40% of California voters are Republican. Do you call that fair?
He successfully rigged the next election because of his attempt to make this all about stopping Donald Trump, who by the way was elected by a majority of Americans.
What the governor likely didn’t consider was unintended consequences. Now that California has rigged its elections against Republicans, look for other states like Utah, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland to follow suit and gerrymander to benefit Republicans and he can’t do anything about it. Prop 50 could completely backfire on der Slick Meister with a net loss of Democrat seats.
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I’m proud to note that Stanislaus County did not fall for the swill of Prop 50. We were one of the counties who didn’t fall for the trap.
As of Friday, No on 50 had 69,097 votes (50.97 percent) while Yes had 66,477 votes (49.03 percent). So as you can see, even Stanislaus County is highly polarized with a slight Republican edge.
Voter turnout, as usual, sucked with 45.25 percent voting, meaning approximately 164,214 of you registered voters in the county are slackers. Sad to see so many apathetic folks.
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Passage of 50 – if it passes the muster of the court because it is in litigation – will impact our own 13th Congressional District. For the politically naive, Democrat Adam Gray barely won the seat – by 187 votes – from Republican John Duarte a year ago. The seat is up every two years so Gray has to run again in 2026.
Under Prop 50, District 13 will see boundary changes with a finger sticking up into Stockton to collect blue voters. That has opened the door for former Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln to run against Gray. Republican Lincoln was intending to run against Josh Harder in the 9thCD.
Lincoln likely will draw all the oxygen from the Lopez effort or even from other candidates Bay Area businessman Vin Kruttiventi and independent candidate Alberto Escobedo.
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Ah ha! Word comes that Newsom intends to use Prop. 50 campaign funds for his forthcoming presidential campaign – and he is sure to run just as the sun comes up tomorrow morning.
Project Veritas caught Ross Pike, a regional director of the California Democratic Party, admitting that Newsom intentionally gerrymandered to redirect Prop 50 campaign funds into his presidential campaign committee. That’s not allowed. Now watch the denials and cover-ups.
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Apparently, Democrat voters are unconcerned about electing bad characters. We saw what happened in Virginia with the election of an attorney General, Jay Jones, who wished that his opponent’s children to be murdered as a way of waking him up to what he perceives as the way things ought to be. They elected the clown anyway.
Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas said this of the Jones: “A deranged lib murders Charlie Kirk, and Democrats respond by electing a sociopath who – in his own words – wants his political opponents and their children dead. Truly demonic.”
Meanwhile in California, Katie Porter still appears to be a front runner in the governor’s race despite the fact that she’s one of the nastiest people running for public office in California today. We have two worthy Republican candidates who are concerned about bringing down crime and restoring affordability to California, but yet the numbskulls keep voting for these Democrats who change nothing and feather their own nests of power.
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I’ve heard enough political conversation in this country to know that we are deeply polarized, but the lack of common sense displayed on the left is mind-boggling. Here is a conversation I had recently.
Leftie: Why do you support Donald Trump? He’s a Nazi.
Me: How he a Nazi? Is he rounding up Jews and exterminating them in gas chambers?
Lefty: No, he’s rounding up innocent families and deporting them.
Me: Well, they’re not innocent. They violated federal law being here. Trump is just enforcing federal laws passed by Congress which were not enforced by prior administrations. We had somewhere between nine and 11 million people flooding the border during Joe Biden’s look-the-other-way presidency. Besides, Obama was deporting folks by the millions and you were quiet as church mice.
Lefty: Those people have a right to see a better life in America.
Me: No, actually there is no God given right to live in the United States. But if you want to come to the United States, there are legal options to do so. You may have to wait your turn and be patient, but there is a price to pay for being the greatest country on earth. So why else is Donald Trump a Nazi?
Lefty: He’s also a Nazi for sending in the National Guard into cities which he doesn’t have authority to do.
Me: How wrong you are. The president is in charge of homeland security and protecting federal buildings from destruction. Why was it acceptable for the governor at the time to call in 14,000 national guard to be called into Watts during the Watts riots? Was that justified? And why is it okay that Chicago allows hundreds of black-on-black murders go unchecked? You know that crime in D.C. has plummeted because the National Guard was called in, right?
Lefty: He hasn’t brought down the price of groceries yet and he added tariffs that are illegal.
Me: Well it takes time for prices to come down which spike dramatically under Joe Biden, so you expected a complete turnaround within less than a year? Besides, the price of eggs and gas has come down but fast-food will remain high because of California’s high minimum wage.
The courts will decide if the tariffs are illegal, but he is merely trying to correct a major trade imbalance. If the tariffs remain, the U.S. treasury will benefit greatly, which could reduce our heavy tax burden.
Lefty: He’s also hurting a lot of people with this government shut down. People are going to starve.
Me: Why would people starve? Are they not working for their food? Are there no church pantries handing out food? Are there no family members to help out? Why is it alwaus the government’s responsibility to feed people? Ask yourself why welfare has become a career choice. Such government programs should be for dire cases where people absolutely cannot work and it should be a temporary measure. Why do people get in their heads that the government will take care of them with a little to no effort?
Lefty: Trump is gonna start canceling flights because of this government shut down
Me: Glad you brought that up because it’s the Democrats who are standing the way of Congress passing a budget. Democrats want to defend Medicare costs covered for people who aren’t even supposed to be here.
Lefty: Well, at least Prop 50 past.
Me: Why is that when the voters of California just less than a half generation ago voted to not have politicians draw district boundaries for their own benefit? You just put yourself back in their chains.
Lefty: Well at least we put Trump in check.
Me: By that I suppose you mean, you don’t want him cutting the size of the federal government? I suppose you want to have the government continue spending trillions of dollars it doesn’t have so that your grandchildren will be shackled by tax burden they can’t afford? They can’t afford things as they are let alone what we’re having to shoulder right now. Oh never mind, you’ve got your mind made up that he’s Hitler. I know, I know – it’s something you keep hearing on the mainstream networks and on the View. You’re just parroting what you hear without questioning.
Let me ask you something. Why did you believe the media when they were telling us Joe Biden was a great president and didn’t lack any cognitive decline? I rest my case.
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The unchecked media, I am convinced, is the reason Americans are being duped. Case in point: Senator Richard Blumenthal was barking about Trump spending private money on the White House ballroom, saying it was $350 billion. None of the reporters called him out for his gross factual error and let it pass. It’s $350 million, not $350 billion. But how many now believe his incorrect information?
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The holidays loom into view, as evidenced by all the Christmas shopping commercials that are being aired far too early. They started before Halloween.
More folks will be drinking.
According to valuepenguin.com, overall, 56% of Americans report drinking alcohol, with 49% of drinkers saying they drink weekly.
Millennials ages 29 to 44 (62%) are the most likely age group as far as drinking goes.
Also of note, 64% of men say they drink and 23% of male drinkers admit they do so daily.
According to the website, 61% of drinkers who have been injured while drinking say it’s happened at least once during the holidays. However, 78% of drinkers who’ve been injured say they generally increase their alcohol consumption over the holidays.
All it takes is an accident – whether getting in a car crash or falling or whatever – for many drinkers to change their habits. Of those who’ve experienced an alcohol-related injury, a significant 88% say they changed their habits after.
About 43% say they’re cutting back — the most common response. Eating before a night out (31%) or avoiding certain activities while drinking (23%) are the next most common responses.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
