Voter complacency and ignorance is killing not only our state, California, but the country as well -- just look at what the Congress is trying to do to us now!!! (illegals issue)
I have seen surveys that state that most voters rarely STUDY the propositions and referendums that come before them. If it says "education" on it -- they vote for whatever it is -- not really knowing what their vote means, or what the real content of the measure is. It is true. Many propositions are deliberately written upside down, because slimey politicians realize that the votes this "yes" means for, and "no" means against. Not so in an "upside down" written proposition. It is an old trick.
In our state, we are taxed to confiscatory levels, paying in many cases for things we should not, and do not, want to pay for --- like $10 billion dollars per year to reward illegal criminal aliens in our state. This, nowadays, with our liberal state govenment working against every element of sanity left in the voting base, my voting is simple. If a measure creates more debt for the taxpayers, it gets buried -- if the opposite is true, it gets supported. Most items voted for are buried because of this -- and government, especially our flaming liberal government of this state, just does not get it. To them, the voting taxpayer is an infinite resource of money, never-ending.
I serve on my County's First Five Commission. We are classified as a "frontier" county with more than 6,000 square miles and about 43,000 total population. 30% of our children live below the federal poverty line and 53.9% of our children live in low income households.
We have established 10 community teams in the various far- flung communities in our county. They have all evolved to establish Family Resource Centers. These provide a variety of services, including parenting kits and home vists for new parents; parenting classes; anger management and child abuse prevention; play groups; resource and referral services; school readiness (health, oral health, early literacy, assistance with Healthy Family Insurance enrollment); nutrition education; education incentives for childcare providers; training (including first aid) and certification for babysitters.
They also receive funding from other sources for things like teen programs, family based substance abuse counseling, adult literacy, after school tutoring, art and recreational activities.
We do have a paid contractor that implements Commission decisions and manages contracts, but none of the Commissioners are paid for their time out of First 5 funds.
To be honest, I did not vote for Prop. 10, nor did I vote for the Prop. 63 mental health initiative, althouigh I am involved in both. As a fiscal conservative, however, I am tough on accountability and demand collaboration among agencies and non-profit organizations. I believe in the Family Resource Center Concept and see it as community infrastructure to which we can hand off many of these social programs once volunteerism and organizational capacity is in place and adopted by the various communities.
First 5 has been a good program for our County. Trick is for these programs to become sustainable on their own as public funding is phased out.