Fresno Unified’s Scam to Graduate, Not Educate

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Voters this November locally are going to be asked to
approve something in the area. Between all the different school
districts and the State Center Community College District, about two
billion combined dollars worth of bond measure money. This is

(00:21):
on top of Proposition two, which is a statewide ten
billion dollar bond measure. All of this to fund public
K through twelve school districts and community college is all
up down California. And kind of the way that this
works is if your local school district does a bond

(00:46):
measure and raises money, then they can get some form
of some degree of matching bond funding from the state.
So as a result, all of these different local school districts,
all of a sudden, all at the same time, are
all having a bond measure pop up. And again, let's
remember what a bond is. A bond is a loan
made to some municipal entity like a school district. The

(01:10):
school district gets all the money and then you, the taxpayers,
have to pay the loan back with interest, usually within
your property taxes. And the terms of these loans are
something like thirty years. My wife and I for our
house in Clovis we're still paying property taxes for bond

(01:34):
measures that were passed for Close Unified in two thousand,
two thousand and four, twenty twelve, twenty twenty, and now
we're staring down the barrel of twenty twenty four. So
with all of that being said, President Unified has got
a massive, like almost five hundred million dollars bond measure,

(01:55):
Clovis Unified as a four hundred million dollar bond measure,
State Center Community College District has almost set one hundred
million dollars bond measure. All these local school districts and
the community colleges are asking voters in the San Joaquin
Valley saying or Unified Central Unified to vote for bond
measures to give them money, to give them money that frankly,

(02:18):
I don't think are tied to need. And I think
we should ask ourselves some hard questions about how well
is this district really being run such that we should
be giving them more money for physical investment when they
don't have their normal educational house in order. And this

(02:40):
leads me to a fascinating story about something I did
not know about. An opinion piece in GV Wire written
by Stephen resh Mister Resh is an a retired President
Unified teacher. He taught English and German for thirty years
within Fresney, and he highlights this program called Ingenuity, which

(03:07):
I see Fresne Unified makes a lot of use of.
But also I'm doing a little digging Close Unified does too,
so I don't think this is just a pure Fresney
Unified thing. Presny Unified's bad. Close Unified is good. Seemingly
this is a widespread program. What is ingenuity? Let's get started,
mister Resh writes, when students get their high school diplomas,

(03:30):
you assume that they've all met key standards in all
requisite areas. You suppose that they've all met the grade.
They've all made the grade.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Excuse me.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Unfortunately that hasn't always been the case during the past
decade or so. In Fresne Unified. It all ties in
with a program called Credit Recovery and a set of courses.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Which he puts in scare quotes, courses produced.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
By a company called Imagine Ingenuity. Yes, it's ingenuity, but
it's on the edge. As previously reported in Gvwire and elsewhere,
credit Recovery is a way for high school students in
the district to dodge a failing grade in many of
their classes, they don't wind up with a passing mark
through traditional means, retaking tests, turning an extra credit, doing

(04:14):
well on a final exam. Instead, they attend ingenuity sessions
where they sit in front of computer screens and complete
watered down versions of the courses they're failing, and so
even though they might otherwise fail several important classes, they
subsequently get enough credits to attend commencement and receive diplomas.

(04:37):
Sometimes students are able to complete such putative courses in
record time, occasionally in a matter of days. Clearly, the
curriculum of an entire semester in biology, say where in
American history can hardly be covered, much less mastered under
such conditions. Now this is the astonishing thing. Okay, so

(04:58):
this is some remedial thing. Kids like failing the class.
So instead of the harder work of making him retake
all the tests and or just making him retake the
whole course, they do these ingenuity sessions where he kind
of blitzes through the material, takes sort of an easier
version of it, and then can get some credits enough

(05:20):
to graduate enough to advance a grade level, so we're
further watering down our standards of achievement. Now you might think, okay, well,
this is for the you know, five percent of kids
who are kind of flunking out or you know ten
percent of kids who are flunking out. Fifty three percent

(05:43):
of district seniors in Fresdent Unified earn ingenuity credits. A
few months ago, the Office of the Interim Superintendent issued
a memo that shed some light on Fresendent Unified's use
of credit recovery through this ingenuity program. According to the
June twenty first memo, President Unified paid five hundred and

(06:04):
fifty one, one hundred and fifty dollars for edgenuity materials
and support in the twenty twenty two to twenty twenty
three term. In the twenty three to twenty four term,
that price tag shot up to five hundred and ninety
one thousand, eight hundred and fifty dollars. The memo also
indicated how many students have recently participated in ingenuity sessions.

(06:25):
It turns out that fifty three percent of the district's
seniors earned at least one credit through the online ingenuity
curriculum doing the during the twenty twenty two to twenty
twenty three term. In the twenty twenty two to twenty
twenty three academic year, students received on average eighteen credits

(06:45):
this way. That average went down a bit last year
to an average of sixteen credits. At present, there's no
upper limit to the number of credits that students can
rack up using this method. So most of the seniors
at Front Unified, just over a majority fifty three percent,

(07:06):
are getting some of their credits through this ingenuity system,
not by clearly they're getting a failing grade, a non
passing grade, so they're not being made to retake tests,
not being made to retake a course. No, Instead they're
doing this water down sort of ingenuity thing where they

(07:30):
can kind of blitz through a whole course in a
couple of days and still get these credits enough to graduate.
The negative impact on learning culture. So mister Resh again,
this is uh. This is Stephen Resh, thirty years teacher
within Frostening Unified, writing about credit recovery.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
The credit recovery.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Scheme of basically, you take a little online course for
like three days to make up for the fact that
you fail to pass a semester lung. Using credit recovery
has certainly streamlined many students acquisition of course credits and
thus generated a significant rise in local high school graduate rates.
In addition, however, it's impacted school culture in significant and

(08:15):
disturbing ways. Doing edge doing the Ingenuity program has become
a learned behavior. As one district instructor put it to me,
a significant number of students, known in some teacher circles
as quote frequent flyers, often use credit recovery to obtain
passing grades with minimum effort. As a result, they tend

(08:35):
to regard traditional classroom instruction as being somewhat irrelevant. One
district teacher, Jeremy Wright, addressed the school board last year
and shared his concerns about this system. In his view,
the Ingenuity program has seriously impaired classroom instruction. Now that
credit recovery is available, a number of students no longer
see much point in paying attention in classes. So basically,

(09:00):
these kids all realize, well, these kids don't care about
the quality of the grades they get. They know that
they can do this much easier version of the course
at the end of the semester, so they're all just
tuning out during the year, so, and it'll only take

(09:21):
a couple of days as opposed to studying over the
course of a whole semester. They'll just come in at
the end and just do their enginuity. Oh yeah, as
right put it. Jeremy Wright and teacher in president unified
to testified about this to the school board. As Right
put it, quote, it's insulting to us as teachers. It's
also insulting to the kids that did hard work and

(09:42):
pulled their grade up and got the B or C.
He argued that this also weakens the quality of schools,
no kidding. Despite the appearance of student success, the product
we're putting out there is more important than a graduation rate.
Also questionable a or some additional costs linked to the
way that ingenuity has been implemented. Consider that some teachers

(10:04):
are paid to oversee credit recovery sessions during summer school.
Students in such sessions, however, only have to report to
class once they've finished their ingenuity assignments. After reaching that milestone,
they don't have to attend anymore. Why some have wondered
should the district pay teachers for so many weeks of
instruction and not require the students to attend the sessions.

(10:27):
The district has a different attitude toward credit recovery. One
district spokesperson told me, quote, the use of ingenuity software
has provided our students with valuable opportunities to attain credits
toward graduation. Her comments mirror the district's narrative that programs
like Credit Recovery serve students' interests and provide them with
a wide range of opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't have.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
This is unbelievable. I had no idea about any of this.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
I'm curious how many of you knew about this. So
the district is defending this, and here's this teacher in
the trenches knows other teachers in the trenches, who is
telling us the kids understand that they don't really have
to work hard all year. They take this remedial summer

(11:21):
school online class where they can complete the whole thing
in two or three days in some cases, get the
credits and then not have to show up for the
rest of the allotted summer school time when they're supposed
to be doing this. Meanwhile, I'm sure a union negotiated
contract some teachers are getting paid over summer school to

(11:46):
sit there when not all the students are even required
to be there. So what the heck are we even
talking about.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
And all of this.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Is clearly in the service of making Fresno Unified look
better than it is by artificially inflating graduation rates. But
these kids are graduating not on the strength of what
you would imagine to be.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
You know, why would someone.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Graduate high school because they've done the required coursework, because
they've attained the necessary credits, they've got enough passing grades,
they did what they were.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
No, they're not doing the normal coursework. They're blowing off.
Some of these kids are blowing off the normal coursework
for the whole semester and then just showing up in
summer to do a rigorous week of school and then
bon voyage. Ah well, yes, feel free to advance along

(12:45):
to eleventh grade. Feel free to walk at your graduation.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Now. Rash the author of this piece.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
In GV wire, and I'll retweet for my twins account
Twitter dot com slash president Johnny at Fresne Johnny He's
He then proceeds to give the standardized test scores within
Fresney Unified to demonstrate just how unbelievably poorly Fresenent Unified
students are doing. In twenty twenty three to thirty three
percent of the PRESNE Unified eleventh graders tested met or

(13:22):
exceeded standards. In English, only a third of them met
the standards, meaning sixty six percent of them did not
meet grade level standards in English, only twenty three percent
of them met or exceeded math standards, meaning seventy six

(13:44):
percent of them seventy six seventy seven percent of them
failed to meet math standards. Good enough at math, I
can I can now that up those twenty three point
three one percent metare exceeded, or go seventy six point
six percent of them did not meet. So you've got
three quarters of these kids are not at grade level

(14:06):
for math, two thirds of these kids are not at
grade level for reading. Such results resh writes just don't
square with fresnew Unified's high graduation rates, and they suggest
a gaping disconnect between credits earned and educational benchmarks that
were actually achieved. It's hard to square the ongoing use

(14:28):
of credit recovery with the district's purported goal of boosting
student achievement. The interim superintendent's memo reflects a solid commitment
to continuing credit recovery in this new school year. Fresne
Unified plans to continue partnering with Ingenuity in twenty twenty
four to twenty twenty five to maximize opportunities for students
to earn a high school diploma and access post secondary options.

(14:49):
It's hard to see how diminishing the worth of high
school diplomas in this fashion serves student's interests. Such individuals
might indeed get into college programs, but will they be
prepared for the challenges that how to wait them there.
A cross functional team has also been meeting each month,
according to a district spokesperson quote, to determine next steps, trends,
system recommendations, and best practices. Given the bogus nature of

(15:11):
credit recovery. When wonders what the phrase best practices could
possibly mean in this context, this is the district that
wants you to give them a almost a billion dollars
of your taxpayer money so that they can get five
hundred million dollars. That's what this bond measure coming up

(15:32):
is going to be for fres New Unified. And by
the way, it looks like close Unified uses this program too.
I don't have the numbers for how many kids within
Clothes Unified use this program, but they're using it also.
When we return, we'll talk a little bit more about
the funding side of all this with the bond measures.

(15:54):
This was a dynamite article, Jesuis. We'll be back with
more on the John Girardi Show. An incredible piece in
GV wire. You got to check it out. I've retweeted
it from my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash president
Johnny at Fresno Johnny, this is about the credit recovery
program that Presney Unified has through a company called Edgeenuity,

(16:16):
where basically, a kid fails a course over the course
of a whole semester can goof off, not pay attention,
not participate for a whole semester, and then after the
semester's over, can participate in.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
A several days long.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Credit recovery class. Where As this teacher, Stephen Resh who
is a longtime German and English professor at teacher within
Presney Unified, Basically they can sit around in front of
a computer for a couple of days, take an extremely
watered down version of the course. You know, a whole

(16:55):
semester's worth in just a couple of days and still
get the necessary credits from that class. And again I
think this needs to factor in. Stuff like this needs
to factor into the local discussions about school bond measures. Okay,

(17:20):
because clearly, if school districts are using this thing, this program,
it's making a mockery of the whole system.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
This is just a.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
As Resh pointed out, this is insulting to the teachers,
like why on earth should a teacher try hard all
year if the kid is just gonna blow it off
and do an ingenuity class in the summer. But as
Resh also points out, maybe teachers' unions that maybe the

(17:52):
teacher's union within President Unified doesn't mind it.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Why because.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
You can pay some teacher for summer school just to
sit there while kids sit on their computers doing their
credit recovery ingenuity class for a couple of days, and
then the student leaves, but the teacher still sits there
for whatever is the allotted time frame. The kid doesn't

(18:18):
have to stay the whole time, but the teacher sits
there the full time, earning their union negotiated I'm sure money.
And this is the frustrating thing about this is that
the interests that so many of these people have, the
interests of the various parties don't really seem to be

(18:43):
aligned that much towards students succeeding. The teacher's interest so
much is in schools as a jobs program for them.
That's the Here's the teachers' union, one of the massive
negotiating partners in all this, within Fresney Unified. Who again,

(19:04):
what is the point of a union. The point of
a union is to get more money, more jobs, better hours,
better working additions, better benefits, et cetera for its members.
It's looking at this that the union exists for the members.
That is how you judge the effectiveness ineffectiveness of a
teacher's union, of any union. It's not so much focused

(19:28):
on the work product. Okay, if kids get educated, I
mean that's maybe that's a happy buy product. But fundamentally
educating kids is not the job of the union. Meanwhile,
administrators within Fresney Unified are not so much interested in

(19:48):
kids learning as much as they are interested in giving
off the public perception and that kids are learning. Because
if the public thinks kids are learning, then the superintendent,

(20:10):
the school board members overseeing at the administrators get to
keep their jobs, so of course they're going to be
they're going to look at, oh my gosh, we're going
to have such a huge dropout rate. What are we
going to how are we gonna get these kids to

(20:31):
actually graduate? And then along comes a program like Ingenuity,
this credit recovery scheme where basically, well, well the kid
can just kind of take a water down version of
the class for a couple of days after the semester's over,
after they've blown off the whole semester and uh, and
then they get the credits.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
And then that'll allow them to graduate.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
And fifty three percent a President Unified seniors apparently are
doing this credit recovery scheme for at least some credits.
So this is massively overinflating, Like why do the state
standardized test scores show that two thirds of kids in
Presdey Unified can't read at grade level, three quarters of

(21:13):
them can't do math at grade level, and yet their
graduation rates are still quite high. Well, it's because of
stuff like this. They are advancing these kids who have
not actually achieved. And then they ask you for five
hundred million dollars in a bond measure, which really means

(21:34):
you have to pay almost a billion dollars in taxes.
Clovis Unified is asking you for four hundred million dollars
for a bond measure, meaning that you have to pay
almost eight hundred million dollars in your taxes.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
Why do we want to keep financially and physically investing
in schools that are committed to just fundamentally flawed visions.
I've said it once, I have said it a million times.
These schools take it as their goal. Universal college. Everyone

(22:17):
who if you graduate, it means you're ready for college.
Everyone should go to college, every universal college. Refusing to
acknowledge that most people in America will not get a
four year college degree, and that those people need jobs
to those people need gainful employment. Those people need some
opportunity to find the work for themselves, to give them

(22:41):
purpose and a meaningful life. And with President Unified, with
so many public high school, public schools in California, we're
preparing kids for nothing. We are preparing they're not adequately
prepared for college. We keep graduating them as if they are,
but they're not, and they're not prepared to get a

(23:02):
normal job in the real world.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
You know what, they're prepared for. It.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
They're prepared for a liminal flim flam three or four
years of maybe taking some classes at city, not sure,
getting into debt, maybe going to State, getting a couple
of credits. Maybe maybe they get some Mickey master degree.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Maybe they don't.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Maybe they waste through four or five years flim flamming
around between president, city, president, State and don't even wind
up with a degree. And they want you to give
them five hundred million dollars for reasons that seem to

(23:40):
have nothing to do necessarily with imminent need of the
physical spaces in their buildings, but just because well there's
a state bond measure, so and we want to get
the money, we want to get the matching money.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
So all we got to do with bond measure.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Just this reflexive, unthinking instinct that you need to pay
them more money when we return. How housing issues get
distorted by California law. That's next on the John Gerrardy Show.
One of the many things I hate about how California
kind of regulates housing.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Is how it turns.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
It makes everything like so ramped up and critical and important.
It leaves you with so few options that any objection
whatsoever to some kind of lower income housing development or
a homeless housing development, any kind of objection to it,
you get labeled as a nimby a not in my

(24:39):
backyard person. Which this is a problem up and down
the state in a lot of different contexts. Basically, there
is a dearth of housing in California. We have way
more people seeking homes than we have homes available. This
artificially inflates the prices of homes, and one of the

(25:00):
many factors that contributes to it is the attitude within
a lot of local governments called nimbiism not in my backyardism. Basically,
if you're you know, some bougie city in Marin County
and someone says, hey, I'd love to build a one
hundred unit apartment complex for middle income people to live in, well,

(25:25):
the bougie residents of this bougie Marine County town will
probably go to their city councils we don't want that.
Why it'll lower our property values, and then that shuts
it down, and that's why Marine County gets sort of
it's this vicious cycle of if you never allow more

(25:46):
housing for middle class people, then no middle class people
can afford to live in Marin County, and anyone who
wants to work in San Francisco has to live further
and further and further away, unless they already own the
home or have been there, or.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Et gazillionaires, or they're just homeless, so.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Not in my Backyardism is a kind of attitude that
results in local governments blocking the establishment of various kinds
of housing. But you also have that in confluence with
California environmental laws and California labor laws that make the

(26:30):
cost of construction so much higher. SEQUA, the California Environmental
Quality Act requires all kinds of environmental impact plans and
studies to be drawn up in advance before the development
of some new house or housing complex or multi unit dwelling.

(26:52):
The City of Fresno had done one, an extensive one
for the city, which the courts are now saying is inadequate,
which could be putting a halt to like a dozen
projects in the Fresno area. You have the threat with
SEQUA of some outside group coming in to sue to

(27:16):
stop construction of some housing projects, and sometimes so they're
importing sort of NIMBI concerns about not wanting lower income housing,
not wanting property values to produced, et cetera, importing NIMBI values,
using environmental law as a pretext for doing so, saying oh,

(27:36):
this will.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Have such a bad impact on the environment, you can't
approve that.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
We need to stop this, And people can file these
sequa California Environmental Quality Act lawsuits even if they are
not really directly impacted by the construction of this multi
unit dwelling or this this construction project, this housing project.

(28:00):
California changes the normal American rules of legal standing. So
usually again, to file a lawsuit, you've got to show
that you were actually somehow directly harmed by some action. Okay,
someone hits me with a car, I can sue them.
If someone hits my buddy with a car, I can't

(28:22):
sue them. My buddy has to sue. Right, With an
environmental law, it's really hard to show that someone actually
is experiencing direct, cognizable harm. So California just kind of
opens it up to anybody. So what you're seeing is
not just you know, whacked out left wing environmental nonprofits

(28:42):
who can sue to stop some kind of construction project
and hold up the whole thing. You can also have
people who just you know, don't want their property values
lowered by a multi unit dwelling complex. They can jump
in and file a phony, baloney environmental lawsuit. You can
get competing builders jumping in and filing a lawsuit to

(29:06):
stop construction. And if you think about the cost and
the risk of like, okay, well, if you want to
commit to building a major construction project as a builder,
as a real estate developer, as an investor, I mean
that's a huge additional amount of risk. That adds additional

(29:26):
cost which eventually trickles down to the consumer, making it
such that it's almost impossible to build housing that is
actually affordable to lower income people. Meaning the state, in
its infinite wisdom, instead of addressing all of those root problems,

(29:46):
instead subsidizes the demand, instead of doing anything to allow
more supply, getting rid of its environmental it's insane environmental
laws chipping away at the the ability of local governments
to sort of stop things like this. No, instead we
subsidize the demand. The only way that builders can afford

(30:12):
to build lower income housing units is with huge handouts
of cash from the state. Then there's labor union stuff
that forces the construction prices to go up, up, up,
up up up up, which that increases price. You know
in red states where they don't really have much homelessness
at all, how does this work. Well, they don't have

(30:32):
insane environmental laws. Construction workers make a normal amount of money.
Cities don't have as much ability to zone and restrict things.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
And so people just build more stuff.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
They build more stuff, and they don't have as many
homeless people.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Now.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Fresno is unfortunate in the sense that I think our
city council on this issue is full of fairly reasonable
people with a fairly reasonable spectrum of opinions. But the
problem is any one side or the other can get

(31:20):
really bitter at each other if they disagree, because there
just aren't a lot of options left. Okay, we want
to build, we want to convert some hotel to housing
for more homeless people. Some city council members are concerned
about it because there's a cannabis dispensary and a liquor
store right nearby, and says, hey, maybe this isn't a

(31:44):
great idea, And then they get blowbacks, ay, oh what
is this nimbi as, Oh, you just hate the whole
you don't want any housing. You want all the homeless
people out on the street. No, I don't want homeless
people out on the street. But you're talking about setting
this up right next to a cannabis dispensary, right next
to a liquor store?

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Is that really a good idea?

Speaker 1 (32:05):
And the urgency of it gets ramped up to eleven
because there just aren't a lot of options.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
There aren't a lot of options.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Builders have only so many places where they can build,
only so many ways they can start projects without facing
environmental lawsuits, only so many opportunities to obtain state funding,
and usually you need the local government to.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Support you to obtain state funding.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
So this dynamic is at play right now within the
City of Fresno over a couple of housing projects. So
Dot Mayor Jerry Dyer spoke Friday at Fresno Housing That's
nonprofit Fresno Housing's first inaugural State of Affordable Housing luncheon,

(32:51):
alongside Fresno Housing CEO Tyrone Roderick, Williams County Supervisor Nathan Maxick,
State Housing and Development Director Gustavo Velaskaz, and others, dire
emphasized the central role the city plays and securing funding
for housing, especially affordable housing. So yeah, so again, because
there's no way it's financially sustainable to build multi unit
dwellings for lower income people because again the state makes

(33:14):
it way too expensive. Ever to do that, you need
a state subsidy to make the thing financially feasible. The
city is the one that goes to the state to
ask for those subsidies. Local government must drive housing. If not,
our unhoused population will increase dramatically, DIYers said, But the
city council may not be on the same page. In
the stories in Gvware, Council members have twice in the

(33:36):
past eight months denied multi family housing projects. One vote
in July rejected a four story market rate apartment complex
at Herndon and Prospect Avenues. In December twenty twenty three,
the council turned down in an affordable housing project at
Bullard and Fresno Air Avenues it had previously approved, and
on August seventh, the state's Housing Department sent a letter

(33:56):
acquired by Gvwire to Diyer's administration saying the decision thretens
the city's required housing goals. Now there's this discussion about
the Quality Inn located at Bullard, just a little bit
east of the forty one, in between the forty one

(34:17):
and Theesta Street. The Quality In conversion proposed by rh
Community Builders and Upholdings would have provided fifty eight units
of affordable housing, with thirty dedicated to the chronically homeless. Okay,
so there's this old quality in there. They want to
turn it into affordable housing, have thirty of the units

(34:39):
dedicated to the homeless. In April of twenty twenty three,
the council unanimously agreed to submit an application to request
home key funding to convert the motel into housing. In November,
the state granted the project sixteen point five million dollars.
After vocal opposition by some neighbors to the project, Council
members Miguel Arius, Gary Brettfeld, Microbossi Tyler Maxwell and Luis
Chavez denied the project on a technicality. Council members on

(35:03):
Alisa Pirea and Nelsa Sparza support of the project. Now,
gv wire has this map showing the proposed site, which
again it's on It's at Bullard and Theesta Avenue, just
a little bit east of forty one. There's a housing
project right next door, a cannabis dispensary right next door

(35:25):
to that a liquor store. Opponents of the project talked
about the blight brought by homelessness. Project developers during the
council meeting said property management ensures safety among residents. So,
and that's the thing, Like, I kind of think people

(35:47):
on both sides of this are fairly reasonable people, and
their concerns are fairly reasonable. On the one hand, Asparsa
and Perea are saying, hey, we got to build something,
We gotta build something somewhere here, an opportunity to let's
do it. On the other side, you've got you know,
it's not just right. It's not just a right winger
Gary Breadfeld. No, it's not just Gary. And by the way,

(36:11):
Gary Bredefeld gets painted as this right wing, wild eyed
right winger. He's a really pretty reasonable person. So him
and Carbasi and all these other Tyler Maxwell, all these
other members are saying, hey, it's right next door to
a cannabis dispensary.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
That's a bad idea.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
So these legitimate concerns, legitimate disagreements that would otherwise be
the result of normal give and take, they get ramped
up to eleven that the city.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Is, Oh, you're not doing enough for housing.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
No one can do enough for housing under the conditions
that California sets when we return. My continued frustration with
the Trump and Dvance campaign and messaging on abortion. That's
next on the John Girardi Show. I gotta confess I'm
getting more and more down in the dumps about this election,

(37:02):
not only my conviction that Kamala Harris can win, but
also the messaging from the Trump Vance camp about abortion.
On one of the weekend shows, Vance said that Trump
would not sign any kind of national abortion prohibition that
came across his desk. Trump tweets out or truth socials out, whatever,

(37:24):
that his administration will be great for women and their
reproductive rights, reproductive rights, and now we're using the euphemism
of the pro abortion side.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
All I want to.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Hear from them is one statement, one statement that we'll
appoint the same kinds of judges we had did did
in the first Trump administration, and we will cut off
federal abortion funding in the ways we did in the
first Trump administration. That's all I want to hear, and
they're not giving it to me. I'm really afraid of
the direction the Republican Party is going. I'm really afraid,

(37:59):
and I think so. Some people are gonna just have
faith in Trump that he's gonna do the right thing
when he comes into office. Some pro life is doing that,
and I really think the pro life movement deserves a
little more than this. It's really frustrating. That'll do it,
John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk.