Archive | July, 2015

Stephan Farris, you need to do your homework Sweetie

4 Jul
I wrote a letter to the Enterprise Record about the new budget. I’ve been going to meetings and reading documents for years now, I’ve watched the budget very closely, I’ve watched the agendas. Every year they throw out a budget, but it’s a joke – through “appropriations” they manage to raise spending millions over budget, all they have to do is file an “appropriation.” 

“Appropriate” means “take,” by the way.

City salaries rise and council won’t control it

The taxpayers must be asleep when city staff more than doubles the budget from $43 million to $109 million, giving themselves all generous salaries and paying the lion’s share of their own benefits out of the public till.

City staff has done very well for itself. Meanwhile, the park looks terrible, with liability issues such as rotting tree limbs, pot-holed roads and gopher-pitted trails. Our neighborhood streets are also a liability issue.

Our city staffers are making as much as five times the median income, but complain they can’t serve us. City Manager Mark Orme takes over $200,000 in salary, pays less than 10 percent of his own pension and benefits, but complains he needs an assistant. At that kind of salary, I’d expect Superman, but Orme complains he can’t do his job. That’s become a pattern of late — he justified his salary raise saying he had a big job to do, gutted staff to save the money to give himself that raise, but now complains he needs help.

And our “fiscal conservative council” — don’t make me laugh. They approved the budget and the salary increases, now they will ask us to raise the sales tax rate to pay for these outrageous salaries and pensions. They will promise us a stadium, a new swim center, smiling cops on every corner — but all we’ll get out of it are more overfed bluejays to screech and squawk for more money, more money, more money.

— Juanita Sumner, Chico

I hate writing to the ER because they allow Topix. Topix requires membership with Facebook or Twitter or another one of the social networks, to which I do not subscribe. I can’t stand Tweeters, I’m sorry, get a life. Sounds waaaay too much like Tweaker, anyway.  So, Topix users are able to say whatever they want about a letter, and I can’t respond. Here’s a comment that is just flatly insulting and uninformed.

Stephan Farris • a day ago

“You need to do your homework… The total budget approved for 2013/2014 was $110,519,079. The total budget approved for 2014/2015 was $120,449,882. The approved budget for 2015/2016 is $109,700,000 (rounded) which is a significant reduction from last year and small reduction from the prior year.”

Mr. Farris, you do your homework, Jackass. I think you actually know the truth, but you spread misinformation to further your bottom line, whatever that is. Wife a public worker? You might want to attend a few meetings, read a few documents Mr. Farris before you tell somebody else they don’t know what they’re talking about. 

And, of course, the old budgets have been taken down from the city website. Oh well – this is it folks, either you believe me or you don’t. Ask yourself – who’s been going to meetings all these years, and who’s just been jerking their wad on Topix? 

 

Here’s the real story behind Brian Nakamura’s sudden departure from Rancho Cordova

2 Jul

The article in today’s ER didn’t really tell the whole story. Here is a recent piece from Sacramento Ch 10 and a piece from last October, KCRA Ch 3.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/07/01/rancho-cordova-city-manager-resigns-after-negative-performance-evaluation/

http://www.kcra.com/news/rancho-cordova-faces-formal-campaign-mailer-complaint/28980752

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You get what you accept – Chico, you need to raise your standards!

1 Jul

Yesterday  was the last day to turn in you Utility Tax Rebate application. I wonder how many people applied for that this year.  When I go in to collect my rebate, I feel like I’m making some attempt to hold city council and staff accountable for the mess they’ve got us in. But you can’t hold these people responsible, they just wiggle out. They’re insane – one minute they’re telling us they’re too broke to keep the library open and the next minute they’re more than doubling the city budget  to accommodate their pensions.

I’ll tell you what else is insane – Scott Gruendl has got a new job! He’s been hired as the Assistant Director of Behavioral Health Services for the County of San Mateo. There’s just no accountability for these people. Gruendl just retired from Glenn County Health and Human Services split hairs ahead of being fired for substance abuse. He just got his hat handed to him in the last Chico city election, having led the city on a drug-influenced spending binge for 12 years. 

And now, read back over the stories about his 100 mph+ speeding ticket, and look at all the lies. The guy has got a serious problem with The Truth – it doesn’t fit in his mouth!

Go ahead, have a good laugh at your own expense – this is the guy who kept insisting that Chico was his “hometown” all these years. If you look at his Twitter account here, you’ll see just how sincere that was as he talks about the spendy new homes he’s looking at in the Bay Area.

https://twitter.com/ScottGruendl

“The winner is: Candidate 1 – Upper Market/Castro Home – welcome to the new home of Scott and Nicholas Gruendl..”

Excuse me – barf!  I just can’t stand this kind of carpet bagger.  I knew he was a fake, and there it is. And you won’t hear any of his former friends down at Democratic Headquarters making any excuses for him, they’re pissed at him too. He used to brag to me about having dinner with little Janey-bob MulDolan and her friends – I’m guessing Bob Mulholland wouldn’t admit knowing Gruendl at this point.

My question, and I don’t know where to get a straight answer on this – how does he retire from one public agency and then take a job with another? Will he collect a salary and pension simultaneously? This is a question that needs answering, I just don’t know where to get that answer.

Speaking of crime, Rose wrote a thoughtful note to the ER letters section, encouraging people to take notice of suspicious activity around them and say something to the cops. But, I don’t know how seriously the cops would take my reports.

There was the conversation I overheard at the Mangrove Safeway. We always park our bike near the entrance, where there’s oftentimes a little group of, well, I’ll say it – ne’er do wells – hanging around. I think they’ve been warned not to panhandle, but if they get your eye they’ll start a little conversation – “wow, great bike!” – and the next thing you know they’re asking you for one thing or another. We try not to make eye contact, play deaf, just smile and turn away.  The other day one guy was talking about having beaten up another man who said something he didn’t like – “that’s when I head-butted him!”. I wondered, where did this take place? Here at my grocery store? I kind of doubt it, the Safeway management keeps a tight lid on these guys. A few days later I heard about a stabbing at One Mile.  I realized suddenly how unsafe the park really is. 

Yesterday morning we were driving our car across town to get it serviced, and I noticed, at the corner of 4th and Pine, somebody had raked together a little pile of tree debris and burned it like a camp fire right in the middle of the lane, just north of the intersection. I guess they thought that would be safer than a fire in their side yard? Or maybe they don’t have a side yard? How would somebody get away with this in a town where the cops were doing their job?

When we went Downtown later yesterday afternoon, we found the usual little encampments at City Hall and The Plaza. Some creeps were jumping their BMX bikes off the stage at the plaza, right in the middle of the day. Earlier yesterday they had that “Picnic in the Plaza” nonsense – what a laugh!  That is just a fundraiser for the sales tax increase campaign the city will be running by next Spring.

When we drove by the CARD center I again saw why the CARD board decided to move most of their business sessions out to Cal  Park Pavilion – there is a regular little encampment on the back patio of the CARD center. I’m guessing that a closer inspection would find they are smoking and drinking alcohol and that’s not permitted there. 

People are allowed to gather, but they’re not allowed to loiter. The cops are supposed to have a very clear legal understanding of the difference between those two words. Frankly, all you have to do to get rid of a lot of these people is put on a uniform and talk to them regularly. It makes the creepy ones uncomfortable, you know – like shining light on a cockroach. I don’t have a uniform, or a taser, or even a can of hairspray to protect myself. I don’t get $70,000+ a year to spend my time moving creeps along. I don’t get what amounts to a hand-out for the rest of my life either. I want to see Chico PD doing their job. 

 

The problem with the online reporting mechanism is, for me, if the crime is important enough to take my time to report it’s important enough to talk to a cop. Having these people tell us, they don’t have time to take reports – that’s the essence of their job. When they tell us they don’t have time to do their job, my mind goes straight to a picture of a pig wearing a cop uniform, stuffing a doughnut into his face.  What else? I sure don’t see them racing through town  catching perps red-handed.  For every little victory you read about in the paper  – oftentimes citizen action or just plain stupidity on the part of the criminal – how many crimes go uncovered and unpunished and will happen again and again? Meanwhile they demand more and more money. 

Whenever we pick up our lunch at Chico Locker, the place is full of Chico public safety workers. They won’t make eye contact, they act nervous and suspicious, like little children whose Momma just discovered a discrepancy in the cookie jar.  It’s GUILT.

This is our fault. We don’t hold these people accountable. Lie in your dirty bed Chico, it’s the bed of your own making.

 

 

 

 

 

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