Our wretched legacy

By most standards, it’s a newer grocery store in town. I stopped in the other day and while at the check out I asked the clerk (who said she doesn’t live here) how the business is going. “There is a lot of shoplifting here every day. But this is Vallejo. I have learned that everybody steals in Vallejo. There are no rules or pride here,” she said.

Wow, I thought. What a legacy for our town. There are thieves on the street as well as at City Hall. People have their hands out and are on the take everywhere? Arguably, we now have the worst city manager we have ever had in Greg Nyhoff. As a member of the Vallejo City Council said at a recent meeting, the City of Vallejo employees are paid some of the highest salaries in this state, and they want even more money now. So they are on the big take, too.

Now we hear that Goodwill is closing its doors here. Have they experienced super shoplifting, too? Vallejo is slowly creeping toward bankruptcy because of the recent police shootings, which are costing us millions of dollars, and Nyhoff wants more money from the backs of the people? This is one of the poorest towns in the state of California.

The picture in Vallejo is already bleak. We still have hope for our newer mayor though. People still hope he will help do the right thing. Hopefully, the city will sell that former State Farm building and get our millions of tax dollars back. Well, at least we were able to fight back the cement factory. What will the city manager try to force upon us next? I shudder to think about it.

You know what they always say: The last thing to go in a failing town are the bars and the churches. That is OK, because God knows we have lots of churches to go around in Vallejo, so there will be no shortage there for a long time. We can breathe now.

— Mary Washington/Vallejo