This article has so much content and so much to comment on, I think I will have to revisit it a few times.

John Inks, thanks for standing up for reality and for a bit less government; personal responsibility yes, certainly some regulatory oversight, but holy cow, let's not make Mountain View a model nanny city where folks just get fined for thinking out of lock step with the government knows all and does all for you mentality.

As owner of the Milk Pail, I would like to correct an error in today's newspaper article. The Milk Pail was not fined for our yearly display of pumpkins. We were given a warning by the City Attorney's office to remove our very small display and we complied with this request. I should mention that 300 yards from our market there was a "Pumpkin Patch" in the middle of the Sears parking lot with thousands of pumpkins for sale. The Milk Pail did not know about the requirement to obtain a special permit from the City to have a holiday display like pumpkins.

Last year, the Milk Pail gave 12,000 mini pumpkins free to school children in the Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Palo Alto and Menlo Park schools. We did this to celebrate our 35 years in the community along with the successful completion of a very expensive renovation to our small store which brought us into compliance with various current City Code requirements.

This year we again reached out to school children and the elderly by supplying mini pumpkins to our customers who were teachers, senior citizen centers, hospitals, pre schools and day care centers.

While the article focuses on one specific fee, Tom Means raises the bigger point - what are the standards used to set fees?

Those standards need to include both WHAT should have fees, and HOW MUCH the fees should be.

But in order to be fair, and make an informed decision, both the Council and the public needs data on what other cities do. Today that info is either not collected or not easily found.

And any final policy needs to be clear on how different city departments are treated and reasons why they are treated differently. For example, if the fees for Parks/Rec are less than those charged by similar cities but fees for building permits are more than those charged by other communities, we need an explanation.

Instead today it seems like everything is arbitrary. Some fees are higher and some are lower and there is no public rationale. Wouldn't it make sense to have a policy that says fees should be the average of other cities - and exceptions require special votes and rationale that are listed with the fee schedule so everyone is very aware?

Sorry for the error on the pumpkins. The fine actually involved the rotation of corn bins in a produce display on another occasion.