Kiosk In This Issue Fridays Pacific Groove Dance Jam Chautauqua Hall 8-10 PM • Saturdays Dance at Chautauqua Hall $50 Wed., Sept. 27 State of Monterey County Keith Larson’s drawing of William Neish, included in the Life in Pacific Grove book. With Supervisor Mary Adams 8 AM - 9 AM Stories Abound - Page 7 Honored - Pages 13 It Ain’t Over - Page 17 PG Museum of Natural History Www.pacificgrove.org 831-373-3304 • Pacific Grove’s Sat. Oct. 1 Butterfly Parade and Butterfly Bazaar Parade starts at Robert H. Down Elementary and runs through downtown, starting at 10:30am Bazaar will follow the parade 11 am to 2 pm, behind Robert H. Down Elementary school • Wed. Oct. 4 Sept. 20-Oct. 5, 2017 Your Community NEWSpaperTimes Vol. X, Issue 1 Coffee with a Cop Pacific Grove Police 1 to 3 pm at Juice N Java A Summer’s Day at Lovers Point (599 Lighthouse) Mary Adams • Thurs. Oct. 5 Sea Scibes tells Chamber Calligraphy Club 7:00 pm Gathering Park Lane Hyatt, 200 Glenwood Circle, Monterey The Program is free County’s Pieces exhibited at County Fair • Issues Sat. Oct. 7 Huge Book Sale By Marge Ann Jameson P.G. Library Arcade 10 AM - 4 PM At a Chamber of Commerce gather- Great bargains in many genres! ing, held at the Pacific Grove Museum of • Natural History, 5th District Supervisor Sat. Oct. 7 Mary Adams told the attendees about the Book Launch big four issues facing Monterey County Life in Pacific Grove in the upcoming months and years. 11:30 AM Tops on the list is housing. Chautauqua Hall The county at large has seen a • Sat. Oct. 7 23 percent increase in homelessness Poetry in the Grove since 2015, with 57 percent in Salinas Round Robin Reading alone. There are, according to Adams, Little House in Jewell Park more families now homeless, including 3-5 P< children and single mothers. Many have Free been living in the area for more than 10 • years. Among the primary causes for Oct. 14 homelessness, beyond the high cost of Blessing of the Animals housing in the area, are divorce and loss Berwick Park of a job or working at low-paying jobs 1-3 PM with no pension opportunities. Health • issues are also high on the list. Thurs. Oct. 19 The county is working on opening Chamber Mixer Learn about a warming shelter in Salinas which will Sunday, September 24 was Pacific Grove’s first real summer day, and people head- Community Power ed to the beach at Lovers Point. No diving - but flipping seems to be OK. Photo by 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. Gary Baley. Pacific Grove City Hall See COUNTY ISSUES page 2 • Parkinson’s Support Group MPSG meets the second Tuesday The Equifax Meltdown of every month except December, 3:00 at the Sally Griffin Center Pacific Grove Contact: 373-8202 Fallout from the Data Heist of the Century tion Act which would cut back financial penalties for errors in credit http://www. By Gary Baley montereyparkinsonssupport.com/ reports. Chi Chi Wu, a lawyer for the National Consumer Law Center meetings.html was testifying against the bill. “The three credit reporting agencies Day by day we learn more about the Credit Triopoly of Equifax, are a natural oligarchy,” said Wu. The bill was sponsored by 10 Experian, and TransUnion, and a corporate culture that puts ordinary congressional representatives who had received campaign donations Americans and even our national security at risk. linked to the big three credit bureaus according to NBC News. Equifax, the company that failed to protect sensitive private The New York Times reported that CEO Smith’s Equifax information on up to 143 million Americans and lost it to criminal strategy was to amass as much personal data as possible and sell it. hackers continues its meltdown. Three senior executives sold their “Safety Was a Sales Pitch” headlines the NYT article. In a master Inside stock after the heist was discovered but before it was made public. Other Random Thoughts .................. 10 stroke, Equifax convinced 7,100 employers to cough up salary Breaker of the Week .......................... 9 Weeks later came public disclosure. Then the Chief Information information of their employees totaling nearly half of all workers Cartoon ............................................. 2 Officer, David Webb, and Chief Security Officer, Susan Mauldin, Crime ................................................ 6 in the United States. Astonishing! retired “effective immediately”. Days later, the CEO, Richard Smith, The NYT article states: “Ordinary people are not Equifax’s Financial ........................................... 8 retired “effective immediately.” All retired, not fired? FYI ................................................... 19 customers. They are the company’s product.” The Gray Eminence ........................... 8 But will this help? “Not at all,” said Ed Mierzwinski, Senior The same could be said of the other two national credit bureaus. Homeless in Paradise ....................... 18 Fellow at U.S. PIRG, a consumer advocacy group in an email to From cradle to grave, the Credit Triopoly round up over 4.5 billion Legal Notices ................................... 19 NBC News. “These are calculated sacrifices at a company with Obituary .......................................... 12 pieces of wide-ranging personal data every month without our a troubled record. All the credit bureaus have a troubled culture consent and in most cases without our knowledge. The data dragnet Otter Views ...................................... 16 because consumers do not regulate their markets.” He added that Painter’s Painting .............................. 14 now includes computerized trawling of all kinds of social media People ....................................... 12, 13 these credit bureaus had been sneering at consumers for 40 years sites where the unwary public volunteers reams of personal data. Postcard from the Kitchen ................ 11 because “You cannot vote with your feet.” Consumers have no way Rain Gauge ....................................... 2 Connecting the dots is big business. It’s also Big Brother. The Credit of opting out of their massive data dragnets. Triopoly is ensconced in virtually every American’s financial life Reasoning with God ....................... 16 The same day that Equifax announced their unprecedented data Real Estate ................................... 3, 20 breach, Congress was hearing testimony on the FCRA Harmoniza- Sports ................................................ 9 See CREDIT page 4 PENROLLMENT From Page 1 Page 2 • CEDAR STREET Times • September 22, 2017 Joan Skillman PCOUNTY ISSUES From Page 1 Skillshots 5th District Supervisor Mary Adams addressed an interested group at a Chamber of Commerce Meeting Wed., Sept. 27. Photo by Peter Mounteer be available from November 1 through May 1, says Adams. She pointed out that affordable workforce housing, such as the project at Pebble Beach which has met with controversy. The second issue on Adams’ list is water. She noted that it has lost a bit of its urgency with the ostensible end of the drought, but that desalination is still the preferred solution.She said that supervisors were looking at scaling back the size of a possible desalination plant. Infrastructure will probably always be high on the list of issues. Mowing weeds, she said, is the number one reason for calls to the County offices, particularly in light of the Big Sur Fire. Not only was it the most expensive fire ever in the history of the fire-prone state of California, it continues to be costly in terms of loss in tourism for the Monterey Peninsula, which has been, to date, $554 million. “It takes several years to get back on the ‘bucket list’ for tourists,” Adams pointed out. Supervisors and other agencies are diligently eploring ways to get the Monterey Peninsula — and Big Sur — back on the tourist map. Under infrastructure, repair of pot holes is high on the list of projects. Supervi- sor Adams said that the county powers that be have only been patching things, not actually repairing them. She said we should be thankful that we passed Measure X and SB-1, both of which tax gasoline sales, but that the $9 million in revenue is at risk as there are people fighting to have them overturned. Also affecting the bene- fits are the increased humbers of electric cars and other vehicles which do not use gasoline. The financial solvency of the county is high on everyone’s list. Adams pointed out that cannabis revenue could add $7 million per year in income to county coffers. She touted members of her staff who are working on public accountability, too. The newly-elected County Supervisor, who took office in January, 2017, was almost immediately selected a chair of the Board not -- as she will point out -- be- cause of experience or favoritism, but because it was the 5th District’s turn to sit in the chairperson’s seat. Mary Adams can point to 30 years of public service. She served for 14 years as CEO of United Way Monterey County, after years in leadership roles with the Amer- ican Cancer Society and the American Heart Foundation. Pacific Grove’s Rain Gauge Data reported at Canterbury Woods Week ending 09-28-17- at 9:00 AM ....... .00" Total for the season ................................ .11" The historic average to this date is .......N/A" Times Wettest year ................................................. 47.15" Cedar Street Times was established September 1, 2008 and was adjudicated a legal newspaper for Pacific Grove, Monterey County, California on July 16, 2010. It is During rain year 07-01-97 through 06-30-98 published weekly at 306 Grand Ave., Pacific Grove,