Archive | October, 2016

County clerk still having problems getting ballots mailed to voters

28 Oct

The election is less than two weeks away and the clerk’s office is not taking responsibility for over 1400 ballots that never reached the registered voters  who requested them. 

A friend  of mine tells me he called Butte County elections on Monday and was told it would take 7 to 10 days for him to receive a new ballot by mail. His mail carrier told him that was not true, it should only take two days, even if routed through Sacramento. He waited.

Today he called the elections office to  ask about the ballot again, and was shocked – they told him his ballot had never been sent and they don’t know what happened to it? 

My friend tells me, “She [the clerk  staffer] said it would take 7 to 9 days for me to receive another replacement ballot.  9 days would be the 6th which is Sunday so it would really be the 7th, one day before the election.  This is assuming they don’t screw up like they did on Monday.”

Furthermore, he says, “I was told the ballots are not sent from Oroville but from Sacramento.”

They never mentioned that in the tv news story. Grubbs acts as though she toils night and day to get the ballots and pamphlets out, licks each stamp herself or something. 

When my friend inquired with a supervisor at the Chico Post Office, he was told even from Sacramento, the ballot should only take two days. The post office is denying any fault in this incident, and I have to agree. “He [the PO supervisor] said he did not know why the county clerk’s office was telling me it would take so much longer.”

And now what? Like so many people, my friend signed up  years ago for a mail-in ballot because the polling station in his neighborhood was closed. Grubbs has closed many polling places over the last few elections,  saying they weren’t getting enough traffic, or she didn’t have enough money to keep so many polling stations open, take your pick.

I suggested my friend contact his county supervisor, and I’ll suggest same to anybody else who is in this situation. Ask your supervisor how many returned ballots the clerk has reported to them, and how many  folks have called the office to report missing ballots. This is important – cc county clerk Candace Grubbs – CGrubbs@buttecounty.net – and see how quickly a solution is found to your problem.

 

 

No on Measure K: this bond will leave our kids over a quarter of a billion in debt

27 Oct

https://noonmeasurekchico.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/110/

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Wow, what a bitch – Fillmer seems to be campaigning two years early, goes after Schwab’s seat! Isn’t her own seat big enough?

25 Oct
Some city council members are more internet social than others – Reanette Fillmer seems to spend a few hours a week on Facebook. She also seems to have it out for Ann Schwab.
 
https://www.facebook.com/VoteFillmer/
 
Reanette Fillmer
October 23 at 9:18am ·

So for your information we did further research and a Ann Schwab has recused herself 114 times since she started in office. What are your thoughts?

Sheesh, you’d think Fillmer was up for re-election, but her term isn’t up until 2018. Getting a few cheap shots in early, huh Reanette?

I’m not crazy  about Schwab, but something I’ve learned since she’s been in office – she’s always been the top vote getter, miles ahead of the third and fourth seats, and until Sean Morgan came along, way ahead of the second seat. Does Fillmer actually think she has a chance to unseat Schwab? Does she think she’s helping her chum Morgan? And what about the 12 – 14 thousand people who vote for Ann every four years?

It seems petty and bitchy, if you ask me. I mean,  I’m a bitch, so I can say that. But see, I don’t hold a public seat, I haven’t been given a public  sector job (or a very nice benefits package) like Fillmer has got, or been voted into a seat of public trust. So  I can mean mouth all I want.

Fillmer needs to be more professional and less divisive. The divisiveness on council has got to stop – these idiots are fiddling while our park, our streets, our water quality, and public safety are going down the toilet. All  we need right now is more trash mouth from Reanette Fillmer.

Fillmer is a badge bunny, wants to give the key to the city to Chico PD.  I get the feeling Schwab has voted against that current, and the cops want her out.

Reanette, put your blouse back on and try to act like you have some respect for your constituents. If you want to campaign for Sean Morgan, sure that’s great. You can tell people you’re not voting for Schwab, and why, I don’t care. Sure, sign whatever arguments for or against whatever measure you want.  But this isn’t junior high school, it’s not the cool kids vs the nerds anymore.  Try to act like a grown up.

And, let me take one more shot – Fillmer should probably recuse herself from contract talks with Chico PD, she way too embedded with the cops.

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Butte County clerks unconcerned about 1400 returned ballots – “most of ’em have moved…” Then how did they get their sample ballots?

25 Oct

A week or so ago, a friend of mine complained that while he had received his voter’s pamphlet with his sample ballot, he had not received his mail-in ballot from Butte County Clerk.  I nagged him to call the clerk’s office, knowing what a pain in the ass those people can be, and he did.

He reported back Monday,  “I will be lucky just to vote. I called Candace Grubb’s office and was told my ballot was sent but they said they have heard from many people like me who never got their ballot. They said there are so many vote by mail voters that the postal service is having problems delivering the ballots.  They said they will mail another one to me but I will have to call them when I get it to void the first one.  They said it should take seven to ten days for me to get my ballot.  That’s assuming I get it at all.  I asked why the ballots weren’t mailed much earlier if there were enough vote by mail ballots to be a possible issue but was given no answer.”

I find that stunning. I mean, if they told me that, I’d feel as though they’d hit me with a stun-gun. What kind of crap answer is that? 

In this morning’s paper Grubb’s flipped off the whole affair – “ I don’t know if we have a carrier problem or what,” Grubbs said. “ We’ve gotten 1,400 of them back. Most of them have moved.”

Wow, doesn’t she sound concerned? 

The paper related the story of a lady here in town who had not received her ballot. “She checked her registration status on the Butte County Clerk- Recorder’s website and it said she was an active voter. Her address was right. She had received the sample ballot weeks ago. So, where was her official ballot?”

“ My bills seem to get here okay,” Donahue said with a laugh. Yeah, that is funny, isn’t it?  Cause what else got there, was her sample ballot, just like my friend.  

Grubbs is full of crap.  This is incompetence at best.  I don’t want to get too far out on a limb, but I believe voter fraud is rampant in Chico and Butte County, and  I think she knows it. I think she’s seen people who register at their jobs here in town, I think she’s seen business addresses used for voter registration because the owner lives outside the city, and I think she only calls them on it when they’re registered to the wrong party.  Like the owner of Payless  Lumber, who registered at his business, I assume, so he could vote in City Council and other city elections that directly affect his business. He was called on the carpet.  

When I asked Grubbs if I could get copies of the voters’ rolls (public information posted at every precinct door), she told me I had to register with her office as a PAC. This is information she sells every year to both political groups  and even advertisers, but she wouldn’t sell it to me. Hmmmm.

So believe what you want, but if you’ve lived in this county as long as I have you’ve seen things that indicate I’m right.

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No on Measure K: a look at the campaign contribution reports shows financial support is coming from those who stand to profit from the bond

22 Oct

The campaign reports are available at Butte County elections – 

http://static.netfile.com/agency/bco/

If you don’t know the name of the organization you want to check, look at the measure or candidate they support and you’ll find  their name.  

I’ve been looking over the contributions to Measure K, and as I suspected, it is being funded by people who stand to gain from the bond money – mostly construction companies and telecommunications firms.

https://noonmeasurekchico.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/who-is-funding-measure-k/

But the biggest contributor, at $30,000, is the California Charter Schools Association. It’s a no-brainer the local charter schools expect to get their chunk of this money. Under a great deal of criticism nation wide, charter schools have been accused of violating laws in their enrollment practices and have shown little real improvement over traditional schools, while draining a lot of money out of the school district by stealing students/ADA.  This donation to our bond effort looks like butter on somebody’s donut. 

In looking at all the reports, I didn’t see what I would call a legitimate donation from any local citizen’s group, just big donations from companies that stand to gain from the bond. It’s just one big juicy pie to these people, and we’re supposed to pay for it.

No on Measure K. 

 

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School districts licking their chops over four revenue measures – it’s a lose-lose-lose-lose situation for the taxpayers and win-win-win-win for the unions

18 Oct

Today  as I darkened the bubbles on my mail-in ballot, I again realized – there are four school funding measures on this ballot.

  • State proposition 51 promises $9 billion ($17.6 billion with interest) for K-12 and California Community Colleges for “new construction and modernization” of facilities. 
  • State proposition  55 extends for 12 more years the “temporary” personal income tax increases enacted in 2012 with Prop 30 
  • local measure J asks $190 million for Butte-Glenn Community College District for “upgrading aging classrooms/technology, removing asbestos/unsafe gas lines…” They mention programs for veterans.
  • local measure K asks $152 million for Chico Unified School District, citing leaky roofs, rotten plumbing and electrical, and the need to construct and modernize classrooms,  with a mention of disabled students’ access

The first thing I notice is the repeated claims that our schools are crumbling to the ground, and now we see, Chico schools have not achieved compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990. They keep coming back every  four years with the same claims – when, oh when, will they actually fix the schools?   

Just recently I posted this story from cal watchdog:

https://noonmeasurekchico.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/chico-unified-made-calwatchdog-list-of-schools-with-multimillion-dollar-project-requests-from-districts-where-student-enrollment-has-declined/

While Chico Unified does not mention “overcrowding” in the ballot measure, claims of “preventing overcrowding” are made throughout their arguments in favor of measure K, including the flier that went out last week. But cal watchdog looked at the budget reports for the last four or five years and only one year did enrollment go up instead of down, for whatever unexplained reason. As of 2015, Kevin  Bultema was back to telling the  board that declining enrollment was causing a serious revenue drain for the district. 

Four different tax measures making essentially the same claims, asking BILLIONS in new taxes. And here we have Butte-Glenn and Chico Unified asking for their own measures concurrent with state measures from which they will also benefit. 

Pardon me, but your slops are showing folks.

Here, Legislative Chair of the Cal Retired Teachers Association Rick Light tells us how bad it will be for us here in Chico if we don’t pass Proposition 55, without one mention of Measure K.  He  also talks about a decrease in per-student funding without mentioning that Chico Unified is losing students every year. 

From Chico Enterprise Record:

I respectfully disagree with your editorial endorsement to not fund Proposition 55.

I contacted Kevin Bultema, assistant superintendent of business services for Chico Unified School District, to see his estimate of the loss per student (average daily attendance, or ADA) if Proposition 55 did not pass. His calculations means there could be a loss of $1,330 per ADA. They have approximately 13, 817 students. If they have a 90 percent attendance rate that would be on the lean side of 12,000 ADA. That number times the estimated $1,330 loss would total a whopping $15,960,000 loss.

Since at least 90 percent of a school district’s budget is personnel costs ( being a service industry) there will be a tremendous cut in not only teachers but supporting staff as well. That is $15 million the community businesses will not see. That means classroom size will increase to an unhealthy (educationally speaking) number per certificated teacher.

As to the health funds, many less economically fortunate parents cannot purchase all the needed health care their families require. This produces lost school experiences for our children due to preventable illness.

Are we also losing our sense of humanitarian responsibility? I urge you to reconsider and vote yes on Proposition 55.

— Rick Light, Chico

Here’s who is really pushing these funding measures:

http://div32.calrta2.org/about-us/

“Your partners in pension protection.” 

Yes, they must protect the pensions. A year ago, Rick Light reported to his fellow CalRTA members,

Click to access Winter-2015.pdf

“Governor Brown’s budget now includes in the proposal $1.6 billion in State General Fund money for the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). This represents the full state contribution to both the Teachers Retirement Fund and the Supplemental Maintenance Benefit Account.” 

He continues, “Please show our gratitude for his effort by writing a simple note to the governor…” He ends his column in the newsletter with a warning of “legislation introduced to radically change pensions in California.” I’m guessing he was talking about San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s pension reform proposal, which has since been struck down by Kamala Harris, pensioneer. 

This is the machine we’re up against. These are the school  yard bullies who demand your lunch money, your kids’ lunch money, your grandkids’ lunch money…

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Claims of overcrowding in Chico schools blown out of the water by calwatchdog report

16 Oct

One of the claims Chico Unified School District is making in seeking approval of $152 million Measure K is that they want to prevent overcrowding. It shocks me they’d make this claim when finance director Kevin Bultema has warned the board again and again the district is losing students.  That’s a bummer for them because each kid represents a little over $11,000/year in funding.  Bultema has been crying about declining enrollment for years now, reporting almost 2,000 students lost over the last 10 years, and predicting another 135 to 185 lost over the next two years. 

But here’s this “Yes on Measure K” mailer staring me in the face, telling me the district needs to prevent overcrowding.  You know, they think they can say anything, and we’ll buy it. They know better than anybody how poorly educated we are, they don’t think we can read a budget report. I wonder how surprised they were when a group of investigative journalists from Sacramento came up with this:

https://noonmeasurekchico.wordpress.com/2016/10/15/chico-unified-made-calwatchdog-list-of-schools-with-multimillion-dollar-project-requests-from-districts-where-student-enrollment-has-declined/

Isn’t that a nice distinction to bring to our little town?

It’s obvious Kevin Bultema, anxious to keep funding rolling in to pay his $130,000-plus salary and $25,000-plus benefits package, will say anything to get the voters to swallow this lump of horse puckey. 

Please, Vote NO on Measure K.

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Why are we allowing Chico Unified employees to feather their own nests while facilities “are sub par”?

12 Oct

A reader responded to an old post about Measure K – read her thoughts and my response here:

https://noonmeasurekchico.wordpress.com/2016/10/12/school-district-claims-facilities-are-sub-par-why/

Why has the district allowed these facilities to deteriorate while district employees pay 10 percent or less of their pension and benefits costs? According to district finance director Kevin Bultema, 

“The employee contribution rates are as follows:

State Teachers Retirement System (STRS)            10.25% – 2% @ 60 years / 9.2% – 2% @ 62 years

Public Employees Retirement System (PERS)      7% for employees hired before 2013 / 6% for employees hired after 2013.”

Furthermore, “Administrators with a teaching credential usually participates in STRS and administrators without a teaching credential usually participates in PERS at the same rates.”

So, CUSD superintendent Kelly Staley pays 10 percent or less out of her $175,000 salary toward 70 percent of her highest year’s salary at age 60 – 62. Her package costs the district $25,000 beyond that $175,000 salary. Her total compensation amounts to five times the average family income for our city, but she stands up there and whines about rotten roofs and peeling paint. 

 I think the administration should be taken to court for embezzling funds to feather their own nests while allowing our kids to sit in this disgusting state of disgrace. 

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Butte County League of Women Voters candidates forum worth a listen

11 Oct

Two years ago I tried to host a speaking series for candidates in the 2014 election and wow, what a pain in the ass that was! So I can really appreciate the amount of work the League of Women Voters has done to host their candidates forum series. 

Here’s the link to their website – 

http://www.lwvbuttecounty.org/

and here’s their forum schedule – they will host candidates for Chico City Council on October 20

Click to access 2016-LWV-Candidate-Forum-Schedule.pdf

If you haven’t been able to make these, you can find videos on youtube.  Here’s the video from the October 6 forum with candidates for assembly District 3, Chico Area Recreation District, and US representative District 1.

 

The race here that interests me the most is for two seats on the CARD board.  Tom Lando and Michael Worley were appointed four years ago because nobody else ran for their seats. Now they face ex-CARD director and former board member Jerry Hughes and local perpetual candidate Dave Donnan. I will give it a good listen, this race is more important  than most people realize.

Not that I don’t care about Assembly District 3 or US District 1, but I’m guessing those races are pretty moot. I will listen to what these people have to say, it’s just good to know where your elected leaders stand on various issues, at least for the moment. 

Thanks for asking me about this Kurt, it’s a great resource the LWV is providing and I’m glad to help them spread the word.

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Follow the money on Measure K – 86 percent of the budget goes to salaries and benefits – no wonder roofs are rotten and paint is peeling

10 Oct

https://noonmeasurekchico.wordpress.com/2016/10/09/follow-the-money-according-to-chico-unified-finance-director-kevin-bultema-salaries-and-benefits-are-86-of-total-expenditures/

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