Letter: Start Paying More

Editor, The Friday Flyer:

The tactics our negotiators are employing are so poor, so amateurish, so radical that it almost looks deliberate to me. We all should be familiar with the Golden Rule, “He who has the gold rules,” and its equally famous corollary, “Possession is 90 percent of the law;” which puts us in an extremely weak negotiating position.

We need to face the facts. EVMWD owns the water. We don’t. What we do own is a very weak, very poorly negotiated lease that gives us very little negotiating power. So why do we try to play hard ball with EVMWD? It makes no sense.

We need to stop the insistent complaining and whining and accept the fact that water is an increasingly expensive commodity and start paying more for a period of time so we can regroup and come up with a more rational, win/win position instead of threatening the owner of the water.

Unless, of course, you want to see the city go into bankruptcy, see our houses collapse in value as our most important asset is turned into a beautiful pond that we can only look at but never use or access.

Jim B. Parsons