On next Tuesday’s agenda we again find the council in closed door conference with Chico Police, but no “sunshine” on the discussion. The last thing we have is the CPOA proposal from the October 21 agenda:
http://chico-ca.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=512&meta_id=42166
Council has been in closed door conference with the CPOA at every meeting since October 21, but that’s all we know. I have not seen any kind of proposal from the city, only the demands listed by the CPOA.
Read it yourself – right off the top, they want 5 percent raises, more holiday and overtime pay, and they want the city to pay benefits recently surrendered by management employees, like FICA. Here we pay 91 percent of their pension and benefits – on a pension worth 90 percent of their highest year’s salary, available at 50 years of age – but they still expect us to pay their workman’s comp.
The cops already get about half the budget – over $20 million out of about $43 million total budget. Yes, we have crime here, but Chico Police get paid on par with cities like San Francisco – that hardly seems legitimate. More people have been killed here by the cops than cops have been killed, that’s a brutal fact, Ma’am.
We hear threats they will leave if we don’t pay them enough – I can’t believe our council folds to that, and expects us to fold too. That is the kind of extortion we can count on from these people – none of them are fit to wear a badge, to serve in a position of trust. The idea that a cop would threaten the citizens – what are you people thinking, putting up with a bag dog?
Bad dog, bad bad dog!
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Frank Fields says that current Police and Fire consume 76% of the General Fund (wages, benefits, department administration, and allocated expenses from general government). I estimated that CPOA demands raise that to 81%, and it was confirmed by staff to me personally that it would 80% or higher. So David Little and many of the “conservatives” think local government is supposed to be primarily a provider of public safety services. To them I would ask, and what percent of resources would you direct to public safety? I would say an extremely “conservative” philosophy of local gov’t would be public safety AND public works. Is public works functional when public safety get 4 times as much? And forget about progressive programs; Bob Mulholland saw to that by supporting Lupe who stated she wouldn’t cut public safety all. Bob is destroying progressiveness in Chico. All true progressives need to dump his patriarchal, white, male, bully, over-the-hill, self. And his condescending, matriarchal, white, female, significant other, Jane.
Thanks, I couldn’t remember the exact figures, I knew it was bad. I do believe that public safety is the main concern of public government, but here it just plain costs too much. They use the paltry art department budget as a whipping boy, but that is only a hair of a slice of the budget pie.
Scott Gruendl said he wanted the public to weigh in, decide, which services are worth paying for. I have never been served by either Chico Police or Fire. When homes in my neighborhood have caught on fire, they’ve been attended by county and volunteer firefighters, and that was more than adequate. When we have asked for help from Chico PD we’ve been refused, so we don’t bother anymore.
Last night my husband and I were sitting in our back yard with our dogs, getting ready to call it a night, when the dogs started nosing like they had a scent, and my husband said, “there’s somebody in our back yard – there’s a person right there!” I looked through the dumping rain to see a man with a longboard walking through my garden gate. He’d jumped over the back fence just out of our sight. He just staggered right up to our patio like he knew where he was going. He was so drunk, he didn’t even see us until the dogs were on him and we were yelling at him. I immediately reached into my garage for a broom, and baby, I was ready to take his f-ing head off, but he got real apologetic. My husband was pushing him toward our gate, telling him what a idiot he was – boy, if our old pit bull was still alive, we would have been extracting her from his face. The last time she did that, we had face all over our back yard for a week!
It’s good to have dogs, but they can go crazy and get you sued too. Biscuit was ready to go into flanking mode – ever know anybody who’s been flanked by a dog? Ever seen somebody who’s had their face bitten by a dog?
Of course I was afraid he was going to try to swing on my husband, but Andy took him by the back of his jacket and started telling him how lucky he was to be alive – “my wife is worse that the dogs, okay, don’t ever come back here again…” He ushered the kid out our front gate and through our tenant’s yard and off the property. He watched as the boy staggered first up, and then down the street, finally taking a side street that led to Bidwell Park.
Since we’ve bought this property, we’ve dealt with one trespasser after another. We’ve also had trespassers on our rental properties – Chico PD has given our tenants the runaround too, telling them they are not allowed to make a trespassing charge because they aren’t the property owner? They told me I had to post NO TRESPASSING and NO PARKING signs – that’s ugly and offends other neighbors, who have actually come onto my property to rip down the signs.
So, next time I’m alone here, you better believe I won’t be depending on Chico PD to protect me. I have a broom, and I know how to use it. Yes, I’d like to use it on the cops big asses, as well as Sorensen, Morgan, Coolidge and Fillmer. She’s an idiot. A friend of mine heard her talk for the first time at that meeting, and observed, “sheesh, they were smart to keep her quiet during the election!” He’s right, she comes off dumber than Judy Holliday.
If it is any consolation, a group of Chico PD officers opened a gun range/store on the north end of town, and will be happy to teach you how to defend yourself, for a fee of course.
I don’t use a gun – hurts my arthritis. Besides, I keep the guns locked up, but I got a broom at every door, and then there’s my shillelagh – I keep that on the coat rack by the front door. It’s got a knob about the size of a hardball, and at least as hard.
Will Clark’s little gun club is pretty pricey, I have a friend who comes in to town about twice a month to shoot there.
I’ll tell you what, the people that scare me most in this town are the cops. If I had to defend myself against the cops, I’d get a lawyer with a taste for testicles.