Joseph Goebbels – “ If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Well, here it is, July, and looks just like the average Chico Summer. As soon as school gets out, the college students “go home,” the school employees take their kids on vacation, and this town looks pretty dead.
Even with those 19,000 extra residents! What the heck has happened to all the Camp Fire evacuees? Remember last November? Traffic backed up, lines out the door at local grocery stores, laundromats overwhelmed. Now what?
The city of Chico and local media still claim 19,000 evacuees have settled in Chico. That is a total crock of you-know-what. Look around you NOW folks, where the hell are they?
So, when I read another false claim in the Chico News and Review, I had to say something. They’ve made all these claims, and all they have to base it on is a press release from the state. The State Department of Finance made ESTIMATES – look that word up, would you? They based these estimates, not on the number of displaced Camp Fire refugees, but on “changes to the housing stock”. The press release cited “new construction, demolitions, housing unit conversions, and annexations.” Apparently, if you build it, demolish it, convert it, or annex it, they assume more people have moved to your town. They don’t have census data, they just ASSUME.
On this “science”, the city of Chico, with the help of a lazy local media, bases their claims that they need more tax money to deal with crapped out streets and a serious public safety crisis.
The real problem with our streets, as Mark Orme admitted at a Finance Committee meeting earlier this year, is that $taff has “kicked the can down the road” on maintenance of our streets. And, the biggest public safety problem are transients, who camp illegally in our public spaces, and then fan out into town during the day to illegally panhandle, shoplift, and predate our neighborhoods while we’re at work all day.
Many of these people are brought here by way of Butte County Behavioral Health Department “transfers” from other cities and counties all over California. Behavioral Health Director Dorian Kittrell told me the county gets $550 a day for each of these people, who are put on a 45 day involuntary hold at the county psychiatric hospital, and then turned out on their own recognizance in Oroville and Chico.
I’m sick of the made-up numbers the city is using as an excuse to raise taxes, so when Melissa Daugherty over at the News and Review repeated the city’s fake numbers and opined we might need a revenue measure, I had to write her a letter.
Wake up – real numbers don’t end “000”.
Chico Police Chief claims Chico has grown by “19,000” since the Camp Fire, the editor uses the figure “almost 20,000”, but still no real numbers.
In April city manager Mark Orme was using his “10 – 15,000″ number, based on ” nonregistration, couch-living, trailers parked on streets”. But to date, there is still no actual count, only “estimates”.
According to the state press release, these numbers are based not on actual population but on new construction. “Changes to the housing stock are used in the preparation of the annual city population estimates. Estimated occupancy of housing units and the number of persons per household further determine population levels. Changes in city housing stock result from new construction, demolitions, housing unit conversions, and annexations.” Everything’s “estimated”. Then they even “adjust” the numbers “to be consistent with independently produced county estimates.”
I don’t support the recall either, but I’m tired of hearing the city and the media make claims based on fake numbers. Our town is a mess right now because people are not doing their jobs, but expecting to be paid into perpetuity.
Read more at chicotaxpayers.com
I originally sent this letter June 28. I used a figure I’d heard police chief O’Brien use on the Ch 7 news – he said “16,000,” whether it was a mistake on his part or not. Daugherty, who is very argumentative, thin skinned, and unable to take the slightest hint of criticism, immediately came back at me saying the chief had told council “19,000”. I told her I disagreed, but since I couldn’t find a clip of the story I’d seen, I edited the figure to please her and sent it back. She neither responded nor printed my letter.
So I just resent it yesterday. We’ll see if Little Miss Thin Skin will remember she’s a “journalist” and print it.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
15,000, 19,000, Hell, might as well be 50,000. The local media could not care less about facts.
The local media is lazy and incompetent. All they do is repeat what the politicians and bureaucrats tell them. There’s not one real journalist among them.
And this is why you will never read that our county has become a dumping ground for mentally ill transients or why the roads and everything else is falling apart.
But you can damn well bet they will repeat everything the politicians and bureaucrats tell them about the “need” for tax increases.
It’s disgusting and the local media deserves nothing but disdain.
Thanks for that Bob, I get very frustrated with the quality of our local papers. I don’t know how many times I’ve attended meetings with no reporter present and then read a bullshit story about the meeting in the paper. They call $taff and repeat whatever they are told. When I have seen a reporter – usually Urseny – the report I read leaves out a lot of important details. Like the time I asked Jennifer Hennessey about the pension deficit, and she gave me the wrong figures, and Mark Sorensen had to step in and tell her to give me the information. Not one word about that in the minutes or the newspaper story.
Local media is embedded, we’ll only get what the local government agencies want us to hear.