My husband and I both laughed out loud the other night when Brian Nakamura announced our city is about $50 million in deficit. Not that we thought it was funny, it was more of a nervous reaction. I had to hear him say it a couple of times before the smile slid off my face.
Then he offered up his puny little reorganization plan that might shave, heavy on the ‘might” – $1 million a year. He’s firing people across the board, and it’s only saving, again, “might” save, $1 million a year. According to the budget figures, that would still leave us in deficit. Has he got some other plans?
His first plan, to land himself a job at $217,000 a year, with a sweeeet benefits package, including a full year’s salary in severance pay, was a roaring success. According to a human resources “wiki” I read, it is customary to give an executive employee a severance of a month’s pay for every year served – Nakamura has not served us six months, yet has a promise of a full year’s salary if we have to let him go for any reason short of homicide or red-handed embezzlement. Thank you again, Mark Sorensen, proxy dupe, and Tom Lando, puppet master. Boy, wouldn’t you like to get a look at Sorensen’s contract as Biggs city manager, or the contract Lando just got as interim rec manager out in O-ville?
And now these overfed blue jays are the ‘thin blue line” between the city and BANKRUPTCY. They are currently negotiating contracts with Chico Police and Fire Departments. According to an article in the paper the other day, I was right, the police alone take over $22 mil, or about half our $43 million a year budget. According to that article, they spend over a million a year on campus, messing with the college kids.
Let’s face it, it didn’t cost them $100 to arrest that pervert that’s been over there raping who knows how many young women for who knows how long. They claim to spend more than $1 million a year patrolling the college area. Why? There’s a college police department. Why not force the campus police to take over? Why do we have to pay more in taxes for a special “C Team”? Can they get Leslie Nielsen for that kind of money?
Chico PD just wants more money, more money, more money. They can’t help themselves, they’re pigs. They demand all kinds of perks and benies out of the city – they don’t even pay to purchase or clean their own uniforms – meanwhile, they tell us, they are too short of staff to actually do the job. They don’t prevent crime, they come along afterward and make a report about it so they can ask for a bigger budget the following year. They still haven’t solved the “clown bandit” capers, or those robberies that occurred every summer, again and again the same victims, including the hair stylist over on East Avenue who had her plate glass window smashed out at least twice and her cash register stolen.
Right now they’re replacing their vehicles – they get new vehicles every five to six years, wouldn’t you like to live like that? Well you ought to, you pay for it! Go on, go over to Wittmeier, and when they send you into Jackie’s office, you just tell her to call Brian Nakamura, he’s got a little voucher over there for you. She will laugh that jersey girl laugh and say, “No, really Hon, how you gonna pay for this?”
Yes, the cops get new vehicles, they get a uniform allowance, they get paid to exercise, they get paid to go to their third cousin twice-removed’s funeral. A bunch of them got paid yesterday, along with Brian Nakamura, to stand around and yak it up over a guy who was killed 75 years ago.
Yes, Officer Carlton Bruce. I didn’t know him, I’m sure he was a wonderful man, 75 years ago. But if I were his wife, I’d still be pissed at him for walking into getting his face blown off. I think Bruce made a number of classic mistakes, and up until now, nobody thought it was worthy of an annual ceremony. Where’s the ceremony for Rod O’Hern? O’Hern was shot in the face and permanently blinded by the accomplice of a suspect back in 1995. He subsequently left the force and moved out of the area. I don’t know if his family still lives here, but at the time of the shooting, he had a six year old and a pregnant wife. These folks could probably use a little comfort for what they went through, but I guess you have to be dead to get any respect out of Chico PD.
I remember that incident, and the problems that caused it have not been solved. Just this past holiday shopping season, only a short walk from the scene of the O’Hern shooting, two women and a ten year old girl were maced and their purses stolen at the MacDonalds on East Ave. That crime has not been solved. Our police department continues to take without really giving us anything. Now they want bigger salaries for their management positions, because they are so jealous and greedy they need to see $$$$ before they will do their jobs.
Please write to your council – at dpresson@ci.chico.ca.us – and tell them the police and fire need to pay their own pension premiums. Currently the police PAY NOTHING and fire only two percent, toward pensions representing 90 percent of their highest year’s pay available at age 50. Our city is over $50 million dollars in deficit on these crazy contracts, and we will soon be forced to pay more toward the premiums. That either means new taxes, or it means the cops and fire need to step up and do the right thing.
Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan ran as “fiscal conservatives.” Somebody should write them a letter and tell them, “that means, you’re supposed to be saving money!” Somebody might ask them what they’re doing taking salary and benefits for their council position when both of them have very nice salaries and benefits from their publicly-paid day jobs.
Write to Brian Nakamura at bnakamura@ci.chico.ca.us, and while you’re asking him to bring the cops and fire to the table, ask him to pay his own pension share as well – he currently pays only 4%.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
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