Occidental Oriented by Gino Gaffney — June 2019

Let’s Go Warriors! Five straight trips to the NBA Finals, pretty phenomenal. Hopefully, we can close it out and complete the three-peat. I have been a life-long W’s fan, enduring many years of futility and now getting to relish an amazingly sustained run of excellence. I’ve appreciated the teams “Strength in Numbers” motto, and that has really been on display in recent games. Earlier this postseason they were relying a bit too heavily on their core of superstars, easy to do when they’re some of the best players on the planet. Injuries forced them to go much deeper into their bench during this last series and everyone who’s been called upon has contributed. Even though many of these players hadn’t gotten much (or any) playing time in weeks, they are all ready to pitch in when their number is called, and help the team win, anyway they can. I like to watch because it’s exciting, you never know what spectacular display you might see on any given night. I also tune in because I really enjoy getting to see people work together as a team. Sure some players carry more of the load than others, but no one player can carry the entire team. It takes everyone playing their part and the Warriors are the best example out there of this, a “Strength in Numbers” that can’t be beat.

Can you guess where I’m going with this? Yes dear readers, we residents of Occidental are a team and our strength is gathered from our numbers. There are so many folks doing good around our community and such a need for more members of the team so step up on a regular basis. I want to see us not just stay in the game but hopefully continue to improve our team & town every season into the future.

By the time you read this a big improvement for town and team will have been completed in the form of the new gym floor at the Community Center. Kudo’s to all who made this project a reality. Come by and check it out, join one of the many groups already using the gym, or perhaps come up with a new group use for it – there’s plenty of open time in the gym schedule. Now that we’ve got this spiffy new floor it would be great to see the gym get even more use and attention. At some point in the near future there will be an open house type event to show off the gym to everyone, I will keep you posted.

A way to keep the County abreast of our needs out here is the SoCo-Report-It feature through the County. You can submit requests directly through the website or download the app to use. It is currently focused on issues with roads, anything from potholes to litter or vegetation issues. I just used it for the first time to report the road collapse issue with Coleman Valley. Obviously, the County is already aware of this issue, but I was recently advised that Supervisor Hopkins encourages all of us to report issues that haven’t been taken care of yet. The more times a particular issue is submitted will allow it to climb higher up the list of priorities with the County.

So it looks like the Farmers Market is definitely going to happen this year!If all goes according to plan the market will open on June 7th at its normal time of 4pm in the same general location. The new board is currently raising funds to put on the market, requiring seed money for things like hiring a market manager, paying for bathrooms, and various other needs. Go to the website .www.occidentalcommunityfarmersmarket.com for a link to the GoFundMe campaign. The site also has a cool video about the importance of helping make this new market flourish, as well as general information and places to sign up to be a vendor, musician, etc. I am so happy to know that we will continue to have the market here in Occidental!

As I hear it this year’s market will maintain the continuity of past location & timing, while continuing the conversation as to the future structure of it. The new board has been interviewing every business in town to get their input and ideas. This could include changing the day of the market or moving the market within town – the Community Center area is a potential logical choice. I think it makes great sense to re-birth the market this year with minor changes while opening up the ongoing conversation to see if there’s any new ideas that could actually make for a better market going forward.

Ciao for now Occidental folks, see you out in the community!