I am really disappointed in the lack of response I’ve had from our elected and wannabee elected officials over PG&E’s proposed rate hike. I have heard from Maureen Kirk, Bill Connelly and Rodney Willis, and that’s it.
I can only assume that Scott Gruendl and Mark Sorensen and the rest of council are well aware that as rates go up the city’s Utility Tax revenues will go up right along with them. UT is one of our top revenues. This city doesn’t produce anything – like a leech, it just attaches itself to the flesh of the taxpayers, and SUCKS!
I don’t know what the other supervisors are thinking, but I appreciate Kirk and Connelly at least having the decency to respond. And Willis seems to be the only candidate who sees the opportunity to do something real for the community, too bad.
The candidates aren’t talking about any real issues. Some of them say they want to fund more positions in the cop shop, but only Willis will talk about how. They’ll put “At Least He Was Honest” on his political tombstone. Nobody else has the nerve to touch the tax maggot. But I’ll predict now – as soon as the dirt settles from this election, they’ll trot out their sales tax increase, with Gruendl and Sorensen driving the bandwagon. Or maybe they’ll go for a bond – if those two win, they will consider it a solid gold mandate from “the people,” and there will be no stopping them.
So, we just got a 19 percent water rate increase, and Cal Water has already informed us they have another rate increase proposal coming in 2015. Our electric rates trickle up steadily by a variety of means, as I’ve explained, and now PG&E wants to effectively double them. Statewide lemmings voted to raise our sales tax two years ago, and now cities up and down the state are tacking another quarter to full cent onto every dollar their taxpayers spend.
“Bad consumer, stop spending so much money!” is what I’m hearing, and I’m listening! I just ordered all our winter underwear and socks on Amazon.com, thankyouverymuch. And I just got another order of household goods like soap and toothpaste from Lucky Vitamin. I’m just doing what my local officials are telling me to do – stop spending money. The prices are waaaaay cheaper than local stores, and here’s the cherry on top – the sales taxes I pay never get within 50 miles of Chico.
Until I see more community spirit out of Chico City Council, I will continue to spend elsewhere. I don’t have to go online. It’s fun to holiday shop in Oroville, they have a lot of grocery stores and gas stations too. Red Bluff is a great Christmas shopping town, big sidewalks, lots of ginchee locally owned shops.
So, I sent the following letter to the ER, asking our “leaders” for more help with this PG&E rate hike. I honestly do believe that the letters written by the supervisors had some effect, when taken in with all the protests from people around the state. I’m asking you to jump in too, write those e-mails – check my previous post for addresses. We can beat this rate increase, at least beat it down a little.
PG&E is making proposals that may double our electric bills. The Public Utilities Commission will convene public hearings in Chico at the Holiday Inn, on October 9, at 2:00 and 6:30 pm.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
I have got no response from the ones I wrote.
I did see something very surprising in the ER. There was a letter urging voters to pass measure C in Paradise. It sounded like a tax increase but the letter didn’t say specifically so I checked it out.
Turns out the Paradise city council put on the ballot a half cent sales tax increase. And guess who one of the signatories to the ER letter was? A retired cop posing as a business man. If you guessed trough feeder go straight to the head of the line. The other signatory may have been a trough feeder, too. Didn’t have time to check it out.
Anyhoo, I thought the people of Paradise had more sense than to do stupid things like propose tax increases? What’s next, a bag ban?
Yeah, Measure C is news to me too, I haven’t been watching Paradise. They are a weird little town, they might just pass it. I think it sunsets in six years, so they might fall for that. I think it’s a stupid move – when did you hear of anybody going to Paradise to shop? They’ve been everybody else’s shoppers all these years. Where they gonna collect that new sales tax – at the WalMart they won’t approve? They do have a pretty good hardware store. And they are the king of thrift and army surplus. Go get ’em Paradise!
I’m afraid to use a public restroom in Paradise – Little RJ Pickering might bust the door down and try to rip my arm off.