Archive | November, 2017

CARD, city $taff agree on one thing – it’s time to run a revenue measure!

4 Nov

Yesterday [11/3/17] I went out early to attend a meeting of the ad hoc committee formed between Chico City Council and Chico Area Recreation District to divvy up local parks, including Bidwell Park. 

There’s a lot of funding involved in these parks, and this was essentially a grab by CARD to get some of those revenues. The last thing CARD director Ann Willmann asked before she left the meeting was when she would start seeing the $$$$ from the neighborhood parks they were about to take over.

Ad hoc meetings do not have to be noticed to the public, but for some reason the news ran a story saying this meeting would begin at 9 am. There was no agenda posted either on the CARD website or at the city website, so I had to trust the news. When I arrived at the city building just before 8:50 I was glad to see the agenda posted alongside the door – it said 9 am. I went to a lot of trouble to push though my chores and get down there on time, and hey, my time might not be worth $139,000/year plus benefits but it’s worth something.

The Enterprise Record reporter and another woman, who told me she was at the meeting to see “if I still have a job” were waiting at the door when I arrived. As time went by and nobody came to let us in, we began to speculate. 9:00 came and went, so the reporter went over to the city office to inquire about the meeting. At 9:10 we were told that the meeting notice was wrong, the meeting didn’t start until 9:30, and someone would be along to open the door for us. 

Later, when councilor and committee member Karl Ory walked in a few minutes after 9:30, he looked around at the gathering and said, “I thought we agreed on 9:30?” Committee members and staffers all laughed. 

Like Lawanda Page says in “Friday,” “Well…Fuck You!” The way they treat the public down there is just gob-stopping. Our inconvenience doesn’t mean Jack Shit to $taff.

I’m sorry to be coarse, but these people treat me like garbage, and I get sick of it. 

Let me cut to the chase – the meeting started at 9:30 and by 9:45 the words “tax”, “assessment” and “tax assessment” had been used by staff or CARD representatives three times. Two staffers, Linda Herman and Eric Gustafson, said in so many words they want the city to pursue a revenue measure, and Tom Lando, CARD board director, made it clear, again, that he also wants a revenue measure. 

Herman said at one point, “I believe we have a united front for a tax [measure]…that’s better than going at it from opposite sides…”

It sounded as though CARD has already decided on a mailed assessment, but hasn’t made the formal announcement. I’ll try to attend the next CARD board meeting, usually held around the 15th of each month, and get more clarification on that.

The rest of the meeting was a jawdropper, the way these people wheel and deal behind closed doors, the stuff they say. I can’t write that fast, but the notes I was able to get are stunning. 

These people are not out to protect our interests, that’s for sure. I’ll cover it more when I get another chance to sit down. 

 

 

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Again, the city fiddles while Chico burns

2 Nov

I got a notice yesterday about a “special meeting” Downtown, starting at 8 am today. A “special meeting” only has to be noticed 24 hours in advance, and as I have understood it, is supposed to be called only in the event of some sort of emergency, like a fiscal crisis, or some item that has to be executed within an immediate time frame.

The notice said only that it was a special meeting of the council and all the commissions – airport, art, architecture, planning and parks for a “Required Orientation Pursuant to AP&P 10-1”  This I only knew had something to do with the “code of conduct” for council members and commissioners.

My husband and I had a lot of work today, again – there’s going to be a storm tonight and tomorrow, and we wanted to be ready. But when my husband told me he needed to go out to Payless Lumber and Home Depot to get items to make repairs, I asked him to dump me off at the meeting, which was scheduled to run all day.  He said it shouldn’t take him more than an hour to do his errands, and I couldn’t really get away any longer than that, I had a lot of stuff to do today too. So I got cleaned up and hopped in the truck and he dumped me off at the old city municipal building.

It was a little after 10 am, the room was packed. Clerk Debbie Presson was about a third of the way through the presentation, telling the story of how Larry Wahl got nailed for $12,000 by the FPPC for violating some sort of rule when he was a planning commissioner.

This room, although very nicely restored, was not adequate for public participation in this meeting.

The staffers manning the door looked distressed as I approached – they couldn’t turn away a member of the public, but there we no more chairs. One of the clerks offered hers, and I was on it like white on rice. I wondered why they didn’t use council chambers, I’ve heard the repairs are finished over there. The “big room” at the old muni building isn’t nearly adequate for a joint meeting of council and all the commissioners, and still allow for members of the public or press.

The deputy clerk gave me a thick packet of more than 20 pages – a power point presentation for Board and Commission Orientation. Aside from the greetings and introductions, most of the information pertained to the Brown Act.

I’d seen clerk Presson do this presentation – complete with the same anecdotes – in about 45 minutes for the Sustainability Task Force a couple of years previous.

Sustainability Task Force meeting a lesson on “open meetings” law

Why was this an emergency?  At some point, looking at all these people around me, I realized – they must have known more than 24 hours ahead of this meeting, most of them are employed, and would have needed a little more wiggle on the schedule. I can’t imagine telling my boss, “I can’t come in tomorrow, I have an emergency meeting to become oriented with a post I was appointed to months ago…” I saw many who had held commission positions for years, how was this meeting so “special”?

I wonder if the last minute nature of this notice was because they suddenly realized they had to notice members of the public. And since they only had 24 hours, they decided to call it a “special” meeting?

Frankly, if I wanted to nit-pick, I’d say, they only sent the notice 23 and a half hours ahead, at 8:29 am yesterday.

But, I didn’t have time to ask questions, I wanted to get to the bank. So I hustled out the door and beat a path for Wells Fargo over on Memorial Way.

As I approached the building from the corner by Morning Thunder, I noticed something didn’t look right.

Windows covered with plywood and cardboard.

When I finished my transaction I asked my teller if they’d been vandalized, and he reported they’d come to work this morning to find those windows smashed out.  He said he and other employees suspected “them,” and indicated the stretch of lower Bidwell Park right across Vallombrosa from the bank.

Right down the street from the post office annex, which recently shortened hours.

When my husband pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later and I told him about the windows he immediately asked if our security had been compromised. I felt stupid – I hadn’t asked. We drove over to Safeway to pick up some groceries. A person stood yelling obscenities in the middle of the parking lot, and we watched the Safeway security guard walk out to see what was going on. The man immediately stopped yelling and stood conversing quietly with the security guard as we entered the store.

Chico is in trouble, we need to have a “special” meeting about that.

UPDATE:  Here’s clerk Dani Rogers’ explanation about the poor noticing of this meeting:

“The agenda was not posted on the Minutes and Agendas page because there was a problem with the program that we use (Contribute) that allows us to post on the City website.  The agenda was posted on the bulletin board at the Chamber Building, the City’s designated and required posting location, on 11/1/17 before 8 a.m.”

One day I’ll do a post with all the excuses this woman has sent me – over $100,000/year in salary and a sweet benefits package and she still can’t use the software. So, all you citizens out there – either walk around 24-7 with your hands over the seat of your pants, or drive down to City Hall every day to check that bulletin board. 

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