Chico Taxpayers Association

Fall is a messy time of year. We have two sycamores and a ton of oaks. They have been shedding like crazy, and I look up there, and there’s still all these leaves. If only I could spin them into gold.

I love valley oaks, and we have a lot of them, they give us a lot of shade and comfort. But sometimes they cause problems. Eversince we bought our house, we’ve been watching a pair of oaks along the front of the property growing further into the saggy old power lines running down the street. They were there when we bought the property, and as much as we’ve wanted to cut them, we just happened to know a guy who got his hands blown off when he messed around with power lines. So we leave that shit to people who get paid a lot of money to deal with them.

Something else we noticed when we bought the place – those two trees have been marked for removal a number of times. Many of you have seen this – different colors of spray paint, different symbols, right on top of each other about midway up the trunk, year after year. We’ve even been contacted by PG&E about those trees, several times – telling us the trees were scheduled for removal. We’ve waited, and we’ve waited, but nobody ever shows up to do the work. They are touching the power lines.

Something else we noticed since we bought the place, no matter how we’ve cleaned the place up, our insurance has gone up gone up gone up. Over the last few years they’ve really been jacking it, and they’re saying it’s because of fire hazard. And not just our place – the city of Chico has been called on the carpet. And I feel the city has moved pretty slowly – the park running right through my neighborhood is a giant mess of non-native volatile plants, shoulder high dead grass and dead and dying trees hung with ivy. All the goats did was spread the poison oak. Have you ever seen poison oak catch fire? Yes, Chico, in it’s entirety, is a giant fire hazard.

Then, about six months ago, we actually got a printed notice about a tree PG&E wanted to cut down. That’s something new! My husband made an appointment to talk to the guy from the consulting firm hired by PG&E, because they said it was along our driveway and we wanted to make sure it wouldn’t cause any problems for our tenant. The consultant came over and took a walk with my husband and they discovered that the suspect tree was actually in our neighbor’s back yard.

As of today it’s still there.

So we were pretty excited to have this young man from PG&E show up in our yard this morning to ask us if he could cut down one of our marked trees. We told him, we’d seen them marked again and again, we’d been waiting for years. He seemed genuinely concerned about how far they’d grown into the power lines, he said, “I hope we can get them done before they get much higher…” So my husband asked him when he thought we could expect to see anybody. He looked a little sheepish, and then he said, “you might see somebody about January…” And then he complained that about eight months ago, the city of Chico put some sort of moratorium on PG&E cutting or removing trees. What?

You ever heard that expression – teasing the monkey in the cage?

UPDATE: After I heard from other Chico residents who have had the same/similar experience with either PG&E personnel or their contractors, I looked at the city code. I don’t know what to think – who’s lying? I know it’s not the people who’ve contacted me here. Read this:

https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/chico/latest/chico_ca/0-0-0-12992

Yes, we have a “tree preservation ordinance”. But it doesn’t apply to our private homes. “This chapter applies to (a) all undeveloped private property within the city…” It’s for developers of undeveloped properties. In fact, we’ve had licensed tree companies remove large trees from our property in Chico without any sort of permit. We’ve cut down more than a dozen sick, dying and dead trees ourselves over the years. Why would the utility companies need a permit to remove dangerous trees?

Listed under Exemptions, are city, county, state, and school properties, parks and cemeteries, as well as “Tree work performed by public utilities in public utility easements or public rights of way… public utility easement means wherever there’s a PG&E power pole, including on your private property.

Why would PG&E need permits to remove trees that are growing into power lines? Anywhere?

I don’t know who else to ask – I called the city at (530) 896-7800, and reached a recording that told me to leave my number and somebody would call me back. On Thursday afternoon at 2:30. So, how long am I on the hook for a callback? That’s what I call a public worker’s way of fucking me off. They also have an email – parkinfo@chicoca.gov Is this just another dead end? I’ll let you know. If you guys are still having this problem please contact the city and between us maybe we can get somebody to pay attention before the town burns down.

I’ve been really mad lately, after watching the whole Fauci thing unfold. I knew that bastard was a fraud, but having to hear it on the news now just makes my teeth hurt.

Yes, COVID was a total hoax, but so many of you went along with it – including our local city officials – that it became a very real mess. We watched our government turn on us with unconstitutional edicts, and a lot of you screaming Mimi’s fell right in line like a tube of marbles. I lost a lot of my faith in people and probably all my faith in the government.

And some of you seemed to enjoy it – there’s a streak of fascism in everybody, I guess, I call it The Bill Dauterive Syndrome. I saw the same thing after 9-11 and in the months following various wild fires. America is only as “free” as we make it.

And yes, the government and the media lie to us, duh. Right now the Big Lie is that we need more housing. That is the mantra for everything from “making America affordable again” to getting the “homeless” off the streets.

Here’s The Truth – Chico, like probably a lot of other towns in California, is overbuilt. The prices will continue to skyrocket until there is another 2008-style correction.

When I opined that Chico does not need more housing, and that Valley’s Edge would just be a feeding frenzy for all those realtors, a local pundit asked me, Groucho style, why I hated realtors. I don’t talk to that person anymore, because you can’t have a conversation with people that try to put words in your mouth.

The truth is, I don’t hate realtors, I’ve worked with a couple of very good realtors – make that three – including the man who told my husband and I to hold on to our property, it would be worth a lot more in the future.

But, if you look at the real estate scene in Chico right now, you see we have way too many realtors, meaning, more inexperienced realtors, that give their clients both buyers and sellers bad advice. They are encouraging their sellers to ask as much money as possible, and they’re encouraging their buyers to offer more than asking price to beat out any competitors. I know this for a fact, Asshole Pundit, and I’ve seen people fall for it many times. We have a manipulated, volatile market in California, and prices will continue to go higher and higher, not despite of the amount of building that’s going on all over Chico, but because of it.

Right now Chico sales tax is flat, and property taxes are only going up because prices/evaluations are up. Wait for it…

Doing some research for a follow-up on a recent post –

I took a trip back in time, courtesy of Dan Walters at Cal Matters. In this article, from 2019, Walters gives a pretty good report of what had happened to our budget since the deal the state made with CalPERS in 1999.

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/12/voters-taxes-pensions/

Local officials, particularly those in California’s 400-plus cities, have been complaining loudly in recent years about pension costs, raising the specter of insolvency if they continue their rapid increase.

Walters, a long time California observer, made that remark in 2019. Just last October, Chico City Council member Tom Van Overbeek complained loudly about Chico’s pension deficit. From the official city record – “Following a presentation from finance manager Barbara Martin, Councilmember van Overbeek stated he is concerned that the unfunded liability number keeps growing and inquired if all employees are part of CalPERS.” The finance director answered yes. “Councilmember van Overbeek stated the UAL increase from $117 million to $180 million is a startling increase.“

At the time, Van Overbeek suggested outsourcing city services. Think, Downtown parking enforcement, and how that went.

Former Governor Jerry Brown made some mild reforms of the pension deal – the Public Employee Pension Reform Act (PEPRA). That legislation required “new hires” to pay more of the agency costs, but not the true cost of the pensions, which has continued to rack up deficits in the millions all over the state. And now, the public safety employees, who essentially run our government with the biggest contributions at election time, are behind this new legislation, AB 1383.

Walters calls it, “Bait and Switch on Pensions” – that’s exactly what it was. The voters were never asked about it, it was all done by the governor and the legislature. They told us CalPERS would make up the lion’s share of the cost with stock market earnings. I frankly think the racetrack would have been more prudent, but nobody asked me. Given the kind of people that are running CalPERS, they probably would have put the whole wad on Santa’s Little Helper.

Way back then, the League of California Cities started telling city managers all over the state to use the Unfunded Pension Liability as a stick on the voters, try to get them to pass tax increases. Walters reports, “Last year (2018), the League of California Cities issued a report declaring that ‘pension costs will dramatically increase to unsustainable levels.’”

The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) confirms that projection in a new report.

The report reveals that mandatory “employer contributions,” including those from the state and school districts, as well as local governments, rose from $12 billion in 2016-17 to $20 billion a year later.“

Employer? That’s the taxpayers, who were lied to again and again. I haven’t seen the budget lately but you will find the pension funds are steadily eating the General Fund. Measure H goes into the General Fund, with no restrictions on spending.

Dave, ask your wife to look at the budget, and tell us where all that Measure H money is really going. Tell her to watch those walnuts, cause those peas just keep disappearing. Our pension deficit has continued to skyrocket since Measure H. Ask Tom Van Overbeek. Here’s what Walters reported way back in 2019.

“Pension costs for “safety employees,” police officers and firefighters mostly, are rising especially fast. They now average about 50% of payroll and are projected in the new report to top 55% by the mid-2020s. A few cities are already nearing or reaching 100%.“

Walters asked back in 2019, “So why don’t city officials just own up and publicly acknowledge that pension costs are driving their budgets into red ink and ask voters for more tax money to cover them?

And then he answers himself – “They — and the unions that finance tax increase campaigns — clearly fear that being candid would backfire. If voters knew they would be paying more taxes to support pension benefits for city workers that are probably much better than they have themselves, they might refuse to go along.“

Yes, the unions have bought our local elections. So they pitched Measure H as a general measure, only requiring 50%+1 of the voters. Just like agencies all over the state, they made vague promises about better roads and public “safety”.

“Hundreds of local tax increase measures were placed on the ballot last year and hundreds more are likely to be proposed next year, but almost universally they are billed as improving popular local services, such as “public safety” or parks.

It’s where the concept of “fungibility” kicks in. If a city’s voters can be persuaded to raise their taxes for parks and recreation, for example, it effectively frees up more money to pay its pension bills without acknowledging that motive.” That’s what you call BAIT AND SWITCH.

And that’s where Measure H is going. Look at the signs on the road work you are seeing around town – they have to be honest – most of the money is coming from state grants, including wildfire disaster relief money they got from the Camp Fire and the Park Fire.

This year’s projected payment toward the UAL is over $16 million. Where does that money come from? Follow the walnuts.

Another election. I have been frustrated with the status quo, but to tell the truth, the alternative looks worse. Not voting is always worse. What to do? Waiting here for my ballot, I have made a plan.

Some are easy. I don’t want Medicare for All, I don’t want a “billionaire” tax, and I want ICE to continue to arrest illegal aliens. So I’m voting for James Gallagher for Congress.

Because Gallagher has endorsed Dom Belza, I’m voting for Belza for Assembly.

I’m voting for Kasey Reynolds because while I haven’t always agreed with her, at least she’s a realist. Reynolds’ opponent, Shelby Hebert, has some pretty pie-in-the-sky expectations. Hebert hasn’t got much stake in Chico, while Reynolds has her life invested here. Hebert has stated her agenda very clearly, and she does not represent me, or my interests.

Frankly, I really don’t want a liberal majority on city council, because I think they’d run amok. People who don’t really work for a living don’t have any appreciation for other people’s money, as has been evidenced in the Downtown discussion.

Actually, that wasn’t so hard. Neither are the propositions, that’s another conversation.

There’s a tax storm afoot. According to Carl DeMaio at Reform California, “Counties, cities, and school districts have placed over 600 local measures on the November ballot statewide.”

And I’ll guess most are simple measures, since the governor and the legislature killed the Taxpayer Protection Act. But what? DeMaio says there’s new hope on the horizon – Prop 43, “Two-Thirds Vote Requirement for Local Special Tax Initiatives and Property Tax Initiative Prohibition Amendment”.

From Ballotpedia – A “yes” vote supports this amendment to require a two-thirds vote by the electorate to enact, extend, or increase local special tax initiatives and prohibit local jurisdictions and ballot initiatives from enacting ad valorem property taxes, except for voter-approved bond debt-service taxes authorized elsewhere in the state constitution.

The opposition is calling it “The Taxpayer Deception Act”. I never trust somebody when they start out taking a potshot at the opponent’s integrity, that is so cheap, it means they don’t have anything better. Their claim that the measure “LIMITS VOTERS RIGHTS, THREATENS LOCAL SERVICES” is a standard case of saying the direct opposite of the truth, and then repeating it until people believe it.

“Prop 43 makes it harder for you to fund critical services like police and fire departments, fix and repair local roads, staff our local schools or backfill federal healthcare cuts.”

First they threaten, then they attempt to shift the burden to the public, for public services. If we can’t get a cop when we need one, or our house burns down because of poor response times, if we have excessive tire damage and pedestrian deaths because of crappy roads, if our kids are behind in school – it’s because we don’t pay enough! They even threaten our healthcare, as if we had any.

Our city council, staffed by the unions, is telling us they must offer competitive salaries to recruit good employees – they keep telling us that, but we get fire fighters who demand to get paid to sleep, and cops who have inappropriate sexual relations on the clock. Just how much money does it take to get good people?

Of course those good people are taking the salaries we pay them to oppose a measure that protects our rights.

From the No on Prop 43 website – “Paid for by No on Prop 43: Stop the Local Taxpayer Deception Act, sponsored by labor organizations. Committee Top Funders: SEIU California State Council, California Professional Firefighters, NPH Action Fund”.

We need to get union influence out of our elections. This measure is a step in the right direction.

Sometimes I don’t think there’s any hope for Democracy as long as we allow the public employee unions to fund our elections. Unions contribute the largest share in elections in California, including Chico. And now California legislators, largely elected by the unions, are pushing through a bill that is, according to Dan Borstein of Bay Area News Group,  “doubling down on a mistake 27 years ago that has helped drive up taxpayer pension costs by more than eightfold.“

Borstein reports, “Affecting workers hired since 2012, Assembly Bill 1383 would raise the salary limit well-paid public employees of all professions could use to calculate their pensions and increase retirement benefits for police and firefighters.“

Yes, former Governor Brown made some modest amendments to the pension agreements – Public Employees Pension Reform Act, or PEPRA, dictated that employees hired after 2013 would pay more toward the cost of their pensions. Still not enough, but yeah, if we didn’t get that the ball would have dropped by now, and maybe that would have been a good thing. This pension deal is like the biggest, nastiest pimple you ever had, and when it pops, California will be sinking in a sea of puss and debt.

Contact your state legislator and ask them how much money they have received from public safety unions.

I spotted a rude sign in a postage stamp front yard in my neighborhood – “No Camping!“. In smaller print beneath, “Tom Van Overbeek for City Council”.

For one thing, my neighborhood is not in Van Overbeek’s district. For another thing, who needs another ugly, pointless, purely political election?

What does he even mean by “No Camping!”? What’s your plan Tom? So far, we have seen you chase them from park to park, from greenway to greenway. It’s just a merry-go-round. They are not being checked for warrants, they are not being assessed for mental health treatment, they are not being referred to programs. There are currently 60 empty beds available at Chico shelters but more people are camping on the street. The city has accepted millions in funding for signing onto the Shelter Crisis Designation – do you have a rational and practical plan to get these “service resistant” people into shelters, into mental health treatment and rehabilitation?

Van Overbeek knows people are very unhappy about the current “unhoused” situation, so he’s just squeezing that teat. Less than a year ago, he was having a cow about our city’s pension deficit, what happened to that angst?

Not too popular a subject for a guy who probably gets most of his election funding from public workers, I’ll say.

Coincidentally, there’s an assembly bill circling Uranus (AB1383) that will put the taxpayers even more on the hook, for even more generous pensions and benefits. From Dan Walters at Cal Matters:

It may be just a coincidence, but when California’s public employee pension system touted very high earnings on its investments last month, it was a political windfall for unions seeking to increase retirement benefits.

They could argue that the California Public Employees Retirement System’s report of a 14.8% gain during the 2025-26 fiscal year indicated that California could afford to boost pensions for police and firefighters with little or no impact on taxpayers.

The public unions are like blue jays. If you feed them they get bigger than all the other birds, and they get mean and greedy – Me! All Mine!

They take those salaries and mount PAC’s that spend more than anybody else in local elections. In Chico it’s cops, fire, and SEIU.

Haven’t played this one for a while. Worth a listen, Honey. But for me, California will always be the Garden, as long as you can put up with the snakes.

Here we are in the mire of the Warren vs Chico debacle – the city has had to declare an emergency, and issue a 7-day notice, to remove campers and ban fires in Lindo Channel. In August, during an 100+ heatwave, with waist-high, dead grass growing up into old trees, across a 28 foot road from a densely populated old neighborhood.

Just Lindo Channel? The staff report listed “143 confirmed unhoused related outside fire types within the City of Chico…” This is a problem all over town. Where will these campers go when they are cleared out of Lindo Channel? There’s a growing camp at Commanche Creek. A row of tents has taken up the sidewalk next to the old 7-11 Downtown.

Where’s the “humanity” in allowing illegal camping to persist? The neighbors aren’t the only people at risk – less than a mile from my house an “unhoused” couple died when their campfire burned them alive in their tent as they slept. Why don’t we ever talk about where they go to the bathroom? How do they stay clean?

Has your homeowner’s insurance gone up? Insurance costs also affect rent. Ours has gone up-up-up the last few years, and the answer to our questions is always HIGH FIRE RISK. Trees growing into power lines, ramshackle camps located in dense underbrush, bonfires glowing at night – a no brainer. It’s not just the fire risk that keeps me awake worrying, it’s wondering how much longer my husband and I will be able to afford to live in Chico.

Winter will come and the issue will change from extreme heat and fire danger to flooding and extreme cold. Allowing camping to persist in extremely unsafe areas always ends up requiring public safety responses. That is an unfair burden on the “housed” population.

It’s a merry-go-round of illogic. But it should be a hot topic during the upcoming council campaign.

Boy would I like to hear Bryce Goldstein explain her ‘No’ vote.