Editorial, continued.

   We also had an opportunity to attend the Jan Joaquin Human Resources Association presentation on "Worker's Compensation in California."  This was a captivating presentation on the new reforms in the California Worker's Compensation law.

   Our feature this month is on how to develop a business budget for the small business.  We feel it is important to cover these business basics because of all the small companies that do not budget their money and then get into trouble when the economy declines or the market changes.

   Kevin Richter has also prepared another excellent article on using humor in public speaking.  Kevin reminds us that humor does not backfire unless we allow it.  I learned this from my own experiences in speaking.  Act like the problem is normal and nobody will notice.

   Now for my local rant about problems in the City of Tracy.  The Tracy Press recently did a nice article about the traffic delays caused by students leaving school in their own cars.  I can tell you from personal experience that ninety seconds of delay is nothing compared to what people experience when trying to leave their homes near an elementary school.

I live three houses from an elementary school and cannot leave my home during certain hours of the day.  It is not because of the heavy traffic, which is heavy, but because the inconsiderate parents who have the audacity to park across driveways and walk into the school to pick up their children.  That is right, they park right across residential driveways, with cars parked in those driveways, and lock the homeowner in for sometimes as much as a half hour.

   I want to know who has been messing with the traffic signals in this city.  I noticed about a month ago that it is very difficult to get off I-5 and drive south on Tracy Blvd, or make a left turn.  Even late at night, the traffic signals seem to take forever to change and the cars sit with the drivers watching no cross traffic.  There used to be no delays late at night, but now it can take an additional several minutes to get through those darn signals.

    Let's also rant about the signal at Eleventh and Holly.  If a person is driving south on Holly and wants to turn left on Eleventh, the driver is often in for a long wait.  Why?  Because Holly is a single lane, but there is a second left-turn lane that is blocked by the cars waiting to cross Eleventh and head down Central.

   It is a lot of fun to sit through several operations of the signal because it was necessary to wait with the southbound traffic until reaching the left-turn lane.  The problem is that the left-turn lane gets to turn first, which only releases the five or so cars that can fit in that short left-turn lane. 

If the city traffic manager would let both southbound lanes go at the same time while stopping all of the other traffic, then there would not be the problem.  I think the problem is that we have installed too many traffic lights in this city and they are too close together.  I actually changed banks because I can sometimes reach Stockton faster than I can cross Tracy through the plethora of traffic signals.

Keith T. Chiles MBA

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