It appears the motto of the cities of Moorpark and Simi Valley is "Do as I say, not as I do" when addressing the subject of water conservation.

As residents and business owners, we have been asked to cut down on watering our property to conserve water. But it appears that these two cities have failed to abide by their own directives.

My wife and I were riding our bikes through Moorpark, and decided to visit the new Veterans Memorial on Spring Street.

Beautiful memorial and plants, and we were amazed that they were being watered at 11 a.m. Not only were they being watered, they were being overwatered because there was a huge puddle in the center of these new plants.

Now anybody with "common sense" knows that the time to water is around 2 a.m. But I'm sorry, I used that phrase: "common sense."

Now in Simi Valley, they suffer from "green thumb" syndrome. It's easy to tell when a city bureaucrat is afflicted with this financially deadly disease.

When the poor contractors submit the building plans, this little bureaucrat is the one who starts to become obsessed spending the developers' money with no regard for water conservation or using waterconserving plants.

A case in point: the beautiful Sunrise Assisted Living facility on Tierra Rejada Road. Those developers must have been directed to buy out a local nursery.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, the water was going hot and heavy. Now grant you, the city probably had nothing to do with running the water on private property, but the owners are probably in financial shell shock, and they are overwatering to keep their financial investment from dying.

My question: Why didn't city planners have drought-friendly plants put in rather than these expensive water drinkers?

But what the hell, it wasn't their money; it was the property owners who were told "Don't water the plants."

Excuse me, how much of this makes sense? That is "green thumb" syndrome. The key word here is bureaucrat, and he could care less about saving money. It's not his; he just spends it.

City governments and big government are great on telling the taxpayer to save and conserve, but when it comes time for them to follow the rules, it's not applicable. Chris Biller Moorpark

Biller is a business owner in Simi Valley.