e’re loony for Luna
It would be easy to move into a comfortable government job and
to disappear into the system, just another cog in a large
machine.
But that’s not Mickie Luna. Luna, a bookkeeper for the city of
Hollister for many, many years, never took the easy path.
And now it’s about to end. Or not.
We’re loony for Luna
It would be easy to move into a comfortable government job and to disappear into the system, just another cog in a large machine.
But that’s not Mickie Luna. Luna, a bookkeeper for the city of Hollister for many, many years, never took the easy path.
And now it’s about to end. Or not.
Luna retires from the city of Hollister’s finance department at the end of next month. It’s not the most glamorous of jobs, but Luna and a few co-workers have been a constant in City Hall for more than a generation.
City Councils have come and gone, and so have city managers. But Luna was there, doing her job.
But it’s not the job that defines her. Luna will be remembered not for balancing the books, but for her activism outside the job. And that’s something that will probably not disappear with retirement.
Luna was one of the founding members of the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens. She pushed for creation of local scholarships.
Luna championed the city’s move toward district elections. Initially, the shift from a five-member panel elected at large to a council composed of people elected from their home neighborhoods did not have the hoped-for consequence.
The council had been more ethnically mixed in the past than it was immediately after the move to district elections. But slowly, that began to change, and today’s council looks very much like the composition of the city’s population as a whole – a mix of men and women, Hispanics and non-Hispanics.
Luna has gotten things done, and not once has she ever had to raise her voice or lose her considerable poise.
The worst fate anyone can suffer at the hands of Luna is a phone call, and the quiet words, “we were a little bit disappointed in you.”
But those quiet words have always been delivered with such sincerity that anyone would wish for a shouted diatribe in their stead.
Soon, Luna will not be collecting a check from the city of Hollister, but we are certain she will not be a stranger to City Hall.
And that’s a good thing.
All the news that’s fit to blog
Everybody’s got to have a hobby. One of ours is checking in to several local web logs, or blogs.
Pick a team, any team, and there’s a blog for you. There’s a conservative blog. There’s a liberal blog. Gilroy’s leading blog, like all of them, wears its owner’s opinions on its sleeve. In that case, the owner has a profound dislike for anything connected to the Gilroy Unified School District or local newspapers. But the site’s man-on-the-street series of interviews about Gilroy’s claim to fame, the Garlic Festival, was just about the funniest take on the enormous non-event ever hatched.
San Benito County lost its left-of-center e-screed in September, for reasons that were never given. But one of the two people behind that blog is back with a polished up version. It’s worth the occasional glance, but it’s important to take it for what it is – a few scattered facts glued together with a large portion of opinion.
Rather than presenting you with the urls for the sites, we’ll leave you to your own devices. Happy hunting.
Sewer project, anyone?
Are we the only ones who are starting to worry about the city’s published timeline for a new sewer? While we stagnate under a state-imposed building moratorium, a bunch of Hollister’s finest dusted off the golden shovels and broke ground on the wastewater treatment plant late last year.
But a drive past the malodorous ponds on the western edge of town does not reveal bulldozers running or squadrons of workers toiling.
It kind of makes us wonder if everyone in city hall is feeling the same sense of urgency that we are.
While we’re discussing all things sewer, it was reassuring to learn from the director of development services that a plan is already in place to handle the building rush that’s sure to accompany the end of the moratorium.
Bill Avera said recently that once the go-ahead is given the city will begin processing new and backlogged applications on parallel tracks.
It means people still may need to sit on their hands for a spell, but the assurance is that the process will be expedited to the best of the city’s ability.
Fair enough.
Notebook is compiled by Pinnacle publisher Mark Paxton, with staff contributions as noted. His e-mail address is [email protected].
