One of the best meetings to attend, to get an overview of both city and county business and stuff that will be on future council and supervisor agendas is the Local Governments Committee. These are held four times a year and cover issues that will affect your lifestyle.
The next meeting is Wednesday, May 3, here’s the agenda:
Attached to Wednesday’s agenda you will also find the minutes from the February meeting, be sure to read those. Having attended these meetings and then read the minutes taken by the clerk and approved by the board, I find attendance is better – the minutes are often lacking, don’t tell everything. But they’re better than nothing.
You’ll find, the city is laying free sewer pipe for a new subdivision in the county. That’s inappropriate, as far as I’m concerned, but they’re desperate to get people to hook up to sewer since they expanded the sewer plant.
Yeah, I was wrong about the sewer plant being at capacity. That was several years ago, I found notes for a more recent meeting. Yes, according to the sewer plant manager and ass city manager Chris Constantin, the city spent millions expanding the sewer plant and then the economy took a dump. This was December 2015. The economy has rebounded somewhat, but the sewer plant is still starving. The plant director urged the city to come up with new fees to pay for this stuff, while the city works manager is hooking people up to sewer as fast as he can. They laid free sewer pipe all over the city, and now they’re moving into the county.
But in my neighborhood, a neighbor whose house burned down is being held from rebuilding – they want him to pay the entire cost of having a sewer line laid down the easement alongside his house. That seems weird – county dwellers in brand new houses get free sewer, but my long-time neighbor has to spend 10’s of thousands bringing the city sewer down an annexed driveway?
That’s the kind of stuff you find out about when you attend these meetings.
Pay Attention!
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Hey, it’s the good old days of free spending are back! Money for a homeless facilitator, art director, bike overpass on 20th St. We got money for everything, except fire, police and road maintenance.
I agree with you on road maintenance but disagree on cops and fire. Cops and fire get over half the city budget, they always have. The cops just announced they will have three new officers by the end of the month.
The fire department just paid a consultant to tell them they are inefficient, spend too much time chasing ambulances, and need to close two stations that overlap services. Meanwhile, county station 42 services mostly city of Chico dwellers, but the city says they don’t have money to help support that station.
A friend of mine was just summing it up – Nakamura came in here and fired half the staff, but somehow our budget has roughly doubled from around $53 million a year to over $100 million a year. Management raised their own salaries with savings made from firing lower lever staffers, but have yet to contribute more than 9 percent of their package. So, no matter what they say Downtown, we’re still in heaps of financial trouble. The projects you mention are their big plan – they get grants for that stuff, most of which goes to pay salary and benefits for people who have little or nothing to do with the actual project.
They are robbing Peter to pay Paul – I finally get that expression!