Chico Taxpayers Association

I’ll never forget this movie I saw when I was in college – “King of Hearts”, with Alan Bates and Genevieve Bujold. It is set in France during WWII – a British soldier is sent ahead to a French town to disarm a bomb left behind by the retreating Germans.  

What he doesn’t know, is that the residents have run away, leaving the local insane asylum open, and the mental patients have assumed charge of the town.  He explains to them that he is looking for a bomb, but they don’t seem to care, arranging a fabulous ceremony to make him their king.  He’s so polite he goes along with it. Eventually, the Germans return and attack his regiment, destroying the town in the process.  The soldier ends up returning to the asylum with his new friends. 

Ah, wishful thinking, wouldn’t we all just like to throw up our hands and let “somebody else deal with it…” 

Well, it looks like we have done just that – our town has turned into an insane asylum, and the inmates are running it. 

Thanks again Pypr! Cause this picture just says it ALLLLLLL!

I have to say, I’ve fallen into the madness myself – I called out the city manager the other day, and we had a little row that reminded me of closing time at a dive bar. I complained to him about the closed meetings for non-essential items, and he came out swingin’!

I’ve been trying to be patient, because I know the clerk’s office has been working really hard to make the closed meetings transparent, but when I heard the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission, and then the Airport Commission, were having closed meetings that would not be available on Engaged!, I’m sorry,  I lost it. After going back and forth with the clerk for about a week, I had to thank her, and then I let Orme have it.

Thankyou for all your time dealing with this Debbie, 

I’m no shrink, but I think this is “passive/aggressive”.

https://classroom.synonym.com/what-is-passive-aggressive-communication-12084252.html

Passive-aggressive communicators will often use sarcasm as a way of masking their real feelings and opinions while also being inadvertently negative. They will give people the silent treatment and try to make people feel guilty to get what they want, says author and communication skills coach Barbara Small. Passive-aggressive communication also relies upon the subtle use of facial expressions and body language like pouting or smiling when in fact they are angry inside. They will try to appear pleasant and positive, but will simultaneously give off negative cues like ignoring you and trying to play the victim.

Saying you’re sorry when you’re not is “sarcasm”.  The crack “Feel free” is also sarcasm. He also tells me he’s been responsive to my questions – no, I’ve been including him in emails to the clerk but he has not responded until I mention the email a friend shared with me. Then he denies that he said it. And yes, he always tries to appear “pleasant and positive” but still makes some pretty ugly accusations toward me  – “ Yet you continue to falsely accuse me of things that are beyond my imagination, in addition to manipulate, stretch and weave untruths concerning my intentions and beliefs.”

What?

I recognize this kind of behavior because I get it a lot . People get annoyed when you keep asking them for something they don’t want to give you. Orme has taken “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” and I want it back.  He’s the one who continues to “recommend” closed meetings and draconian restrictions on personal behavior. So he’s the one I’m addressing my grievances to. 

The article tries to explain why this person would act this way:

The reasons behind why someone communicates in a passive-aggressive way has to do with the feelings they are experiencing about themselves and an inability to express this openly and honestly. If a person is experiencing some sort of internal conflict, for example if they feel inferior to a work colleague, jealous of a friend or helpless in a given situation, they act in a passive-aggressive manner as a means of dealing with the emotion. It offers them deniability so that they don’t have to take responsibility for how they are feeling and instead they can displace the negativity onto someone else, says Green Psychology. This inability to communicate in a direct and assertive manner is a learnt behavior, says Serenity Online Therapy, and might stem from an upbringing in a dysfunctional family whereby healthy and open communication was not encouraged or exemplified.

I’m sure Orme is under a tremendous amount of self-driven pressure. He came to Chico in 2013 as the Great White Hope, and promised to turn around our near bankrupt town. But he’s done nothing but drive it deeper into trouble, and he knows it. Yes, he’s heard criticism – not just from me. I told him I’d heard from “a man from Paradise” – it was not just “a man”, it’s everybody I meet from Paradise who finds out I live in Chico. I was astounded they even know who our city manager is – how many people can name their own city manager, much less the CM in a neighboring town?  Orme knows he’s on Shit Lists for miles around Chico, and that can make a man pretty paranoid. 

So, how did I deal with this? I didn’t shrink down, I got right back to him, nice and direct. I’m not going to walk away from a conversation just because somebody calls me a liar- that’s the oldest trick in the book. 

Here’s a letter I just sent to the Enterprise Record.

When Chico City Council decided to close meetings because of Gavin Newsom’s shut down, they promised they would only hold meetings for  “essential issues.” They instituted an online program called Engaged! and promised citizens would be able to participate despite social distancing mandates. While I have no idea how much they spent on Engaged!, I know it’s cost a lot of staff time trying to get it to work properly.

Since then council has held “special” meetings almost weekly, discussing less than essential subjects. The Finance Committee, the Police Advisory Board, the Bidwell Parks and Playground Commission and now, the Airport Commission, are all holding closed meetings, discussing non-essential subjects without the public in attendance.

Now staff tells me they are not able to put the BPPC or the Airport Commission meetings on Engaged!  They will be relayed on Comcast Channel 11. I believe this is a violation of the Brown Act. Not everyone is privvy to cable tv at $40/month (including the franchise fee paid to the city).

Council has proposed an “open” meeting for August, but has not divulged details as to how they will honor Newsom’s social distancing mandates. Since city chambers is not big enough, despite a recent $390,000 remodel, council has discussed shelling out more money for another venue.

Why not just stop having non-essential meetings? The only essential subject we have to consider right now is how to get our town up and running again before the city is bankrupt.

Juanita Sumner

I spent most of yesterday on the horn with the city clerk – I got the notice for last night’s Parks and Playground Commission meeting last week, and it said the meeting would only be available on cable Channel 11, with an email address for public participation. When I asked City Clerk Debbie Presson about that, I could tell she was troubled. I know the Brown Act means a lot to Presson. I believe that she agreed with me that it was a Brown Act violation not to have the meeting available for everybody to watch and participate on Chico Engaged. 

My family can’t afford cable, and I don’t think we’re the only ones. We’re glad to be able to afford a meager phone/internet package. Besides, why should I have to have cable when the city has just spent a crap-ton of money updating the technology (as well as the furniture, wall paneling and carpet) in the city chamber, and who knows how much hooking up to  “Chico Engaged!”? That system has it’s flaws, but it’s better than Comcast Channel 11. 

So, I have to hand it to Debbie Presson – she worked her ass off all day yesterday setting up Chico Engaged for that BPPC meeting. I don’t know if that’s even her job, but she wasn’t about to let anything resembling a Brown Act violation go by on her watch. 

But now it’s gone from Granicus. Past council meetings are listed – cause you know what, I bitched about that too, so she added it. But no BPPC meeting. But I’m sorry, I’m not going to complain to Presson again – I could tell she was exhausted when she sent the last email yesterday. 

Why do I care about opening the meetings? Why don’t more people care? That agenda was loaded full of what people have been bitching and complaining about for months now – the condition of the parks and waterways due to illegal campers. The city has finally made it a formal policy, but they’ve been allowing it for years now. I still have the email in which Public Works Director Erik Gustafson told me these people have “4th and 14th amendment rights” to their garbage piles. 

Another big issue on the agenda was fire clearance – but just now, at the end of July? You’re not supposed to mow with metal right now, and you’re not supposed to do it after 11am. But they’re just now discussing their plan for fire clearance in Upper Bidwell Park? There are whole groves of standing dead trees along Hwy 32, left from the 2017 “Stoney Fire”.  Illegal campers pop up constantly in the CalTrans easement right next to the burn scar. In fact, less than a week before the Stoney Fire I reported illegal campers, and even sent Park Director Linda Hermann a picture of a burning cigarette left on a post at the entrance to the Peregrine Point disc golf course. 

Now that area is even more vulnerable, they haven’t mowed the chest high weeds, which are yellow and ready to go. One day we found another cigarette, lying on the ground near a trail. I know it had been thrown down still burning, because it had started to burn the pine needles it was laying on. By some miracle it had just gone out. I believe if it had landed in a patch of that grass we’d have had another Stoney Fire. 

Hey, it’s only been a couple of years, to this date, that my husband and I, driving into town along Hwy 32, noticed a city crew getting ready to mow that vacant lot there on Hwy 32 at Bruce. We wondered what they were thinking, 2:00 in the afternoon, late July, humidity in the single digits. Later that day we heard they’d started a fire and city fire engines were called to put it out. That’s a violation of the law. A man in Shasta County went to prison for 4 years after his lawn mower was blamed for the 2006 Bear Fire. A Tehama County man may still be in prison for the fatal fire he started putting his hot lawnmower in his shed.  But the city of Chico does what it wants without any accountability. Know why? Cause you’re not holding them accountable.

So yeah, that was an essential meeting last night, and it should have been open, or at least on Chico Engaged. I’ll say thanks again to clerk Debbie Presson, along with deputy clerk Dani Rogers, for working really hard to cover these capricious meetings. Council has made these decisions to have closed, non-essential meetings. The Park Commissioners made the decision to go ahead with last night’s closed meeting, without appropriate participation from the public. These are the people who need to be held accountable.

I’ve heard chatter about an open council meeting for the first week of August. But of course, with the social distancing, it will be a tough squeeze getting very many people into the chamber. And Governor Train Wreck is threatening to shut us down again. Wake up and push back Folks, or prepare to be boarded.