There’s a talk-radio host in Los Angeles who facetiously claims that he’s a member of the church of Tiger Woods. He loves Tiger’s aggressive and successful style of play. He appreciates Tiger’s easy-going personality. He lusts after Tiger’s financial success. It’s all a gentle joke to curry favor with his listeners.

Interestingly, members of the Goleta Water Board must be members of that same church. For decades, they’ve provided local golf course owners with significantly discounted water in order to keep up their lush greens and fairways. In order to do that, they’ve charged residential customers —you and me — much higher rates. I’m sure that must make Tiger very happy, plus all the wealthy locals who can afford to go golfing in their free time.

Big agribusinesses and golf course owners are the largest customers of the Goleta Water District. They’re currently charged between $1.00 and $2.68 for a hundred cubic feet of water — much less than local residential customers who pay $3.71 for the same amount. That serves to encourage conservation by residential customers (not a bad thing!), but places a much lesser burden on farmers and golf-course owners. Praise be to Tiger!

This disparate pricing structure has been in place for years, so either the majority of rate-payers are also members of that same Church of Tiger, or they’re purposely inadequately informed. I’d bet on the latter.

The Water District has recently sent out notice that it now wants to increase my residential three-quarter-inch meter charge by 50 percent in order to improve and enhance our local water supply. Larger meter owners would be charged even more each month. That’s a small step in encouraging conservation of this critical resource. Yet the continued supplementation of the rates charged to agribusiness and golf-course owners appears counter-intuitive if conservation is the ultimate goal.

A public hearing on this meter charge plan is scheduled for May 22, at 7 p.m. at the Goleta Union School District. I’d encourage residential customers to show up in force. It’s time that District officials hear that we’re tired of supplementing the cost of water for those who use the bulk of our community’s precious resource.

Let’s let agribusiness pay its own way for a change. And the same for Tiger and the golfers! It’s time to get “religion” out of water conservation and rate planning!

Daniel Levy, MD
Santa Barbara

Time for the next revolution

Homeland Security is a farce. I’d feel much safer if the truth and nothing but the truth was coming out of the mouth of President Bush and his Executive Branch. They should all be fitted somehow with hidden lie detectors.

I am heartsick watching what this Corporate America Government is doing to our country today. Do we really need to be a global empire controlling all the trade and oil in the world? All previous empires have fallen because of the evils of money, power and greed. Are we next on the list?

You can almost bet we will be if we do not stop this hypocrisy, this insanity coming out of Washington. We really need to act before it is too late. It will probably take a revolution to end this madness. Americans did it before. Remember the Boston Tea Party? We did it then and we can do it again. Only a tax revolt can restore our precious freedoms.

Homeland Security will not stop terrorism. Only an aroused American people can by going to the source of the whole problem. The evils of money, power and greed controlling our government must be eliminated by a good ol’ all-American revolution.

Nancy D. Arnold
Goleta Valley