Tomorrow night council will probably pass the employee contracts. There are improvements, but only because we are at rock bottom now, would what they are doing look the slightest bit good. It’s not good enough.
Oh Geeshy! The cops and fire are being asked to pay (gasp!) nine whopping percent of their own pensions. Yeah, they will receive 90 percent of their highest year’s salary – most of them taking home $90,000 to $100,000, some even more, for RETIRING. For not coming to work. Wow, that’s just a gobstopper.
I will predict that Gruendl and Sorensen will lead the kudos team with exclamations about how much money they’ve saved!
Let me put this in perspective. Imagine, you are out in the ocean in a disabled boat, a week’s float from civilization. You have the city staff in the boat, and exactly enough water to meet their dire need for the exact amount of time it will take to reach land. But, of course, passengers start bickering – the cops and fire employees feel they should have more water than others, because they can’t stand their own body odor. Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan take over the boat and announce they will give the cops and fire employees more water, cause they need to shower, so the cops and fire start using up all the water. A few days later, Sorensen, under pressure, decides that the cops and fire need to cut their showering by 50 percent. Then he takes a shower to celebrate – “look at all the water we’ll be saving!“
Plug this into our scenario – Sorensen’s shower is the $21,000 health insurance package he takes off he taxpayers, for which he pays a Jesus H. Whopping amount of two percent of his council salary – less than $200 a year for a $21,000 health insurance package. He also gets a package from the city of Biggs. I’ve asked him again and again, why does he need us to pay for that $21,000 package? On his FPPC Form 700, he claims his satellite tv business yanks in over $100,000 a year. What’s he need the taxpayers to pay his healthcare bills for? But he won’t answer. He’s a weird bird – if you ask him a question that suits his propaganda, he’ll yak all day. But if you ask him the wrong question, it gets so quiet you can hear a cricket fart.
Maybe we should ask him how much money he’s been taking from the “public safety” unions. I’ll tell you what – you won’t pull that out of him with a tractor. And, as of a minute or so ago, it’s not on the city website either. After all that bitching I did about the minutes not being up to date, I’ve let them get – are you ready for this – YEARS behind on the campaign reports. The clerk doesn’t even have the reports for the last election – and I’m sorry, I know it’s on purpose. They were there and they were taken. Gone. Kaput!
I sent an e-mail to Clerk Presson, City Manager Nakamura, as well as Mark Sorensen …. oh excuse me, that must be “Sorense,” because he’s dropped that last ‘n’ from his e-mail. You know he’s CRAFTY!
He’s TRICKY!
That’s Mark Sorensen at msorense@chico.ca.us. Wait! That’s mark.sorensen@chicoca.gov – see Mary’s comment below, I had forgot about that. I asked very nicely why the reports aren’t on the website, and where can I find them. We’ll see what we get.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Juanita, everyone at the city has new email addresses, now that the taxpayers have funded an upgrade of the entire computer network to Microsoft products. The convention is firstname.lastname@chicoca.gov. For example, Sorense’s email address is now mark.sorensen@chicoca.gov.
All I can say is, good thing the city had sufficient General Fund dollars to make that critical change. Priorities, you know. I’ve been meaning to ask what the total cost of the upgrade was, but you would probably get an answer more quickly than I could.
Thanks for what you do.
Thanks for that – I have so many addresses for Sorensen in my address book, I knew something was kinky there.