Hobby Lobby…Squid was going to take today off—you know, it’s 4/20, and there’s now a brand-new medical cannabis dispensary, Monterey Bay Alternative Medicine, in Del Rey Tokes, err, Oaks. But then Squid started to feel guilty about slacking when Squid learned that Del Rey Oaks Mayor Jerry Edelen was toiling away in Washington, D.C., stumping for the locals.
Edelen was repping the Fort Ord Reuse Authority and joined FORA Executive Officer Michael Houlemard for a trip to Washington last week to meet with everyone from Congressman Sam Farr, D-Carmel, to officials at the U.S. Department of Interior and Economic Development Administration.
"I used to think these trips were boondoggles, but it's a lot of work,” Edelen says. “From 6:45am to 6pm or so, we're pretty busy here."
Ah, the burden of wading through the red tape. One of the main reasons for their visit: FORA is trying to finally offload Preston Park, an affordable housing complex in Marina. They’ve already muddled through a legal battle and the city of Marina has agreed to buy it.
But Squid finds there's a big but looming: FORA still needs to take care of two pesky parcels of land in the middle that never actually transferred ownership from the U.S. Army.
"We're trying to tie up a lot of loose ends,” Edelen says. “We're trying to get more money— $250,000 here, $250,000 there.”
And of course there’s the requisite snuggling up with military folks—a meeting with the Association of Defense Communities to talk about the potential perils of another series of base closures that may or may not be coming in 2017. Their fear: That the Department of Defense will deem the Naval Postgraduate School too expensive to operate and shut it down and move to somewhere cheaper, leaving a Fort Ord-like hole in the middle of Monterey.
The bigger, more generalized goal of Edelen and Houlemard’s romp in D.C.: “We're going to try to get FORA back to a big happy family."
The odds of that ever happening are about as slim as Squid taking up exercise as a regular habit.
Houlemard and Edelen don’t exactly exude warm fuzzies, but Squid thinks if anyone stands a chance at collecting a bunch of half-million-dollar grants, getting the feds in line and generally getting what they want on FORA’s behalf, it’s probably this duo.
Squid just happened to call Edelen when he was in the reception area of Farr’s office waiting for an appointment with the congressman, and Edelen talked strategy.
"Michael's going to be good cop, I'm going to be bad cop,” Edelen said. Squid can’t help but hope that after the dispensary is open for a few weeks, there will be a role reversal and maybe they’ll try a new tactic, maybe more kumbaya. Or maybe they'll hit up the new dispensary.