Archive | June, 2020

Joe Azzarito: do not let Orme spend another $22,800 of our money on a survey that is nothing more than a marketing tool for a tax. 

9 Jun

Sorry this post is kind of a mess, I don’t know what’s up with word press, but the settings are whack. It’s kind of hard to read, but try anyway, it’s worth it. 

I’ve heard it through the grapevine that council is currently being “bombarded” with requests to “de-fund the police department”. Well, they are also being “bombarded” with requests and demands to drop the sales tax increase measure. Which, frankly, an intelligent person would see as de-funding the police department, since that department is currently the biggest part of the city budget.

In fact, across California, financial experts are pointing to “public safety” as our financial problem – salaries well over $100,000/year, overtime written into their contracts, spiking by way of accruing vacation and sick time – these contracts are the hole in our little dinghy, and we’re sinking fast.   Management employees are way overpaid, but they’re vastly outnumbered by over compensated public safety employees, who are the primary drivers of the pension deficit or Unfunded Actuarial Liability. 

I’m not saying get rid of the police department, I’m saying, cut the costs and make it viable again. Not only do we need to rework the contracts, we need to train these people to stop pulling out their piece at the drop of a splinter.  As Scott  Rushing has pointed out time and time again, these cowboys cost us a lot of money with their behavior, triggering lawsuits that cost the taxpayers millions. 

So yeah, a demand for new, more sustainable contracts would mean more, better police that protect everybody. 

Here’s one citizen’s demand – thanks Joe Azzarito for answering the call to duty and sending an email to council. Joe points out, this is a regressive tax that hits lower income people harder – people making less than $40,000 a year on the hook for pensions of 70 – 90% of salaries over $100,000/year. He also points out that city staff is misleading the public about the true costs of this measure – starting with another $22,800 for a consultant to run their campaign, on top of $22,800 and plenty of $taff time already spent. Ending with a bond – and none of the money restricted to anything.

And, I’ll point out – the letters Mark Stemen has been circulating are all FORM LETTERS. How much conviction do you think it takes to sign a form letter written by your college professor (the guy who hands you a grade)?  Chico Taxpayers are intelligent enough to come up with their own material, thankyouverymuch.  So, let’s take Joe’s example and get busy “bombarding” council with your thoughts on a sales tax increase. 

 

Chico City Council Members,

As I have said many times before, DO NOT propose a sales tax increase, NOT NOW, NOT EVER. Our citizens can least afford this highly regressive tax increase so that you, city management and city staff can live the good life while we regular citizens suffer with no services that address our needs first. The proposal should never be an unrestricted simple majority tax to begin with. It makes possible uses unconscionable to all of us living day to day but most especially when thousands of local people are out of work, barely affording our housing costs and doing without many necessities. To mislead citizens that this sales tax is a panacea for what ails us is a blatant lie. You know full well that the proceeds from such an increase, quite possibly far less than you anticipate, will not be enough to even cover the revenue bond you hope to float – which by the way, no one talks about except Mark Orme and his toady Chris Constantin.

Trash the sales tax idea, and by the way, do not authorize another survey at gobs of money to satisfy yourselves that wee little people will go for it. Months ago at one of your “dog and pony” open council meetings, I asked Orme why 400 people who were 70% in favor of a tax represented 120,000 people. His answer: “Not everyone votes!”  But I do, and I will remember to vote down every one of your outlandish ideas that do not address real needs and not “make believe feel good ones”. As to your closed meetings, I am totally disgusted at not being able to attend.  How dare you do the crap you do without an audience. I respond to Chico Engaged, which should be changed to Chico Enraged. What is going on is nothing but pandering to a small minority and not at all essential business.

In summation, do not let Orme spend another $22,800 of our money on a survey that is nothing more than a marketing tool for a tax.  Instead, read about the California Rule, as if you did not know what that is, and find a way to cut back 50% or more on all of your salaries, perks, medical benefits and, most especially the tremendous UNFUNDED PENSION LIABILITY, that city workers should be paying for totally – since from that comes their pensions — their expense not mine. We would when have plenty of money to perform all of our collective needs, not just those of a chosen few.

Joe Azzarito

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Council still hiding behind COnVID – they have to work fast because they can’t spend taxpayer money on their sales tax measure after they hand it to the clerk (deadline July 7)

7 Jun

On April 8,  the Enterprise Record announced,  “car washes, tanning, landscape, pet care, and child care facilities” could start reopening, with simple guidelines like sanitizing heavily touched surfaces, social distancing and telling employees and customers who feel sick to stay home. Today, restaurants are open again for dining – did anybody really think handing somebody an alcoholic drink in a to-go cup through the window of their running car was a good idea?

So now that things are opening up again, why is Chico City Council still having closed meetings?

As local wag Rob Berry points out frequently on Chico Engaged, council announced back in March they would not have meetings for anything less than “essential business” and no more than one such “special” meeting per month. They’ve had a meeting a week since then, discussing everything  from weed abatement to weed retail shops, none of it particularly essential or timely.

They tell us there is no Brown Act violation because they’ve provided a website through which we are allowed to speak to council members. But let’s face it – if we were there in the room making our comments, they’d have to listen to us. With email they can read what they want and nobody’s the wiser – there’s no quiz after the reading period!

I’m not the only person who has opined they are running stuff under the wire while the public is shut out. For example, they have until July 7 to hand their sales tax increase measure to the county clerk, and they want to be able to work on it without the public underfoot. If you’ve looked at the remarks posted for this upcoming agenda on Chico Engaged, you’ll see, there has not been one comment or vote supporting the sales tax measure, just opposing remarks. While council members are not forced to read the comments, staff tallies and reports “oppose” vs “support” votes.

The main sentiment on Engaged is not “anti-tax” but a call for a 2/3’s measure instead of the simple 51% measure demanded by staff. City manager Mark Orme and ass city manager Chris Constantin have made it clear they do not want the money dedicated in any way. They want a general measure so they can use the proceeds to secure an unrestricted bond.

While nobody in the “Citizens for Safe Chico” camp seemed to be listening, Constantin made it clear in presentations made last year to the various boards and committees that the proceeds from a one-cent sales tax measure would not be nearly enough to fix the streets, manage the park, or hire more employees, certainly not pricey cops.  He predicts proceeds will only be enough to finance a bond. And then NO, the bond will NOT BE RESTRICTED to street maintenance or the park or any of that – it will go to the General Fund, where it will be available for hobo camps and pot shops, free syringes and self-cleaning bum toilets. If you are a methamphetamine-addicted transient who needs somewhere to shoot up and then a place to buy pot for the resulting hangover, this tax will be good for you.

Oh well, it’s fun to point the finger at the bum lovers, but most of all the proceeds of this tax would go to pay down the pension deficit.

You’ve heard of the California Rule – it says, before anything else, the pension deficit must be paid. And if you look at the city budget, you see, no matter what our situation, the Pension Stabilization payments get bigger by about a million dollars, every year, no matter what. That’s the California Rule.

People have posted very accusing and negative remarks about the attempt to shove a simple measure down our throats from closed meetings, even if they don’t understand how bad it really is.  Just imagine that kind of hubbub in the room. Staff doesn’t want council to be subjected to public pressure, so they continue to advise council to shut out the citizens.

Staff is  getting desperate.  See, they can’t spend any more city money on that turd after they hand it to the clerk, so what they plan to do at the Tuesday (6/9/20) meeting is “dedicate” another $22,800 to hire their consultant EMC to do another “survey”, while the spendin’ is good!

You must ask yourself – why do they need another survey? The survey we already paid for said that as many as 70% of the Chicoans polled (a group of 400 carefully chose individuals) said they would support the measure. So why run another survey?

As one woman noted on Chico Engaged, that survey was run before COVID. She doubted that people would support a tax increase in light of what the shut down has done to the economy.  She’s probably right, and that means, EMC needs to run another “survey” to convince us that we should tax ourselves.

Because that’s what surveys are really about – they’re very leading, sometimes not even so subtle. The first survey CARD ran told us our kids would become heroin addicts if we didn’t pay their tax. All they have to do is make a statement and put little bubbles with terms like “Agree” , “Strongly Agree”, “Disagree” , “Strongly Disagree” – you get it?

Survey or polls have been used since elections were invented to influence how people vote. The simple basis of this practice is “The Bandwagon Theory” – people want to belong to a group so they tend to behave as do others. “When in Rome, blah, blah, blah”. Here’s an interesting piece from 2012, The Huffington Post.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/understanding-how-polls-affect-voters_b_2009034

In October 2012, David Rothschild wrote, “There is a lot of concern in the media and political circles about the effects of poll results on voters.” Using polls run during the last months of the 2012 Romney/Obama campaigns as an example, he said, “To answer the burning question, researchers have long observed that people often conform to majority opinion (i.e. during every election, some people jump on the bandwagon and shift their preference to the leading candidate or the most popular policy).”

Speaking further about “The Bandwagon Effect,” Rothschild explains, “During elections, and major public policy events, much of the media coverage focuses on the “horse race,” or fluctuations in support for a candidate or policy. Reporting on public opinion not only affects support, but levels of engagement: donations, volunteering and turnout. These bandwagon effects can make polls self-fulfilling prophecies; the predictions of the polls come to pass because the polls not only measure public opinion but also influence public opinion and engagement.“

In this 2016 article, John Papadakis, CEO and Cofounder at Pollfish, 

https://sociable.co/web/polls-influence-votes-american-election/

not only warns us that polls are often inaccurate (citing the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” flub), but agrees, accurate or not, “Polls have the power to influence votes; even to change public policy.”

Papadakis explains, “Polls help the public to gauge election results, and it’s great to have that prediction. However, polls also play a larger role by actually influencing votes.”

He  says voters have two reactions to polls.  “Polls cause voters to follow the crowd. Voter behavior is affected by how they perceive the public will vote, especially when the media analyzes poll results. This happens by the means of the ‘Boomerang effect’ – where voters see a candidate is so far ahead in the polls, they feel their vote doesn’t matter and don’t vote at all – or the ‘Bandwagon effect’ – where essentially the opposite happens, and people want to vote with the crowds to support a candidate.”

Rothschild also makes some behavioral observations, concluding, “Confirming past studies, we find strong evidence of an overall bandwagon effect; people become more supportive of policies that have more general support. We further find that both social acceptance and social learning drive the bandwagon effect. However, the effect of social learning is significantly and substantially stronger than that of social acceptance.”

So, what I’m hearing is this: people are more influenced by real information than by the desire to run with the pack. That’s our job – yell louder than the liars Downtown. Tell people what this tax is really all about. It’s a pissing match folks, and it’s ON! 

It starts with writing an email to each member of council and telling them you will not support this tax. Tell them you are outraged by Orme’s suggestion to spend another $22,800 OF YOUR MONEY on a survey that is nothing more than a marketing tool for a tax.

 

There’s a whole lotta lootin’ goin’ on!

5 Jun

Thanks Dave, for sending me the following article from KCRW radio in Los Angeles:

https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/zocalos-connecting-california/joe-mathews-police-have-been-looting-for-years

This article makes a very important point that I never get around to making – public employees have become so expensive we can’t afford to hire enough of them to provide even the most essential services. Ever. 

Radio commentator Joe Mathews uses the police as an example, 

“The escalating police pensions, along with lucrative disability benefits and costly retiree health coverage, crushed city budgets. They also contribute to the ironies of the current crisis.

One irony is that today’s young protestors will spend decades paying the unaffordable retirements of the cops who are using tear gas and rubber bullets against them. Another irony is that massive increases in police budgets haven’t produced more police. Most cities have fewer sworn officers than they did in 2008. That’s why police departments are now struggling to muster personnel to protect property from vandalism and looting. “

but it’s not just the cops. Since 2012 Chico city management has pared away lower-paid staffers while raising management salaries all around. They’ve laid off maintenance workers and deferred maintenance in favor of  raising management salaries. In 2017, City Manager Mark Orme added a Fund 457 to his contract – a type of 401K for public workers. In addition to over 80% of his CalPERS pension costs, the city of Chico gives Orme $10,000 + 4.5% of his $207,000/year salary via this slush fund.  

Hey, did I ever tell you guys – your city council members receive salaries and health insurance benefits? The salary might not seem like much – only $600/month ($720 for mayor).  But that’s the catch – they only pay 2% of their salary toward benefit packages of their choosing.  According to publicpay.gov, in 2018, their benefits packages ranged from a low of about $7200 (one member) to a high of nearly $20,000 (most members chose packages over $15,000/year). Do the math – 2% of a $7200 council salary is $144 of a $20,000 package. Well, duh, of course they choose the $20,000 package.  The taxpayers pay the rest.  

Okay, just tell me to stop – the city of Chico also has a very common clause in the contracts, including those made with city council members, that if they have insurance from another job, they can choose between that package and the city’s package, and if they choose the package they get with their job, the city will give them cash in lieu of health insurance. 

And stop right there, I already know what you’re going to ask – yes, council sets the terms of their own salaries and benefits, and of course can give themselves raises. 

So when you are staring buggy-eyed at your tv, watching the world gone mad, you better wonder what’s going on at city hall.  

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Use Engaged Chico to let council know what you think of their sales tax increase

1 Jun

Tomorrow Chico City Council will discuss their tax measure. You can read that agenda item here, Item 5.2:

https://chico-ca.granicusideas.com/meetings/337-6-slash-2-slash-20-city-council-meeting/agenda_items?page=2

You can use Engaged to comment now, and those will be displayed to the public, including council members, who supposedly read all of them. The clerk will not read them at the meeting, but will tally “opposed”, etc. You can also comment directly to council members now, but if you contact them through the clerk you can save yourself some time. Ask her to make your email part of the public record. That’s debbie.presson@chicoca.gov

You can also use the “public comment” email during the meetings. Here’s the notice from the agenda, just in case I forgot anything.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION: This meeting is being conducted in accordance with Executive Order N-29-20.
The public may view the meeting on Comcast Channel 11 or http://chicoca.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=2, with remote public participation allowed in the following ways:
Public Participation During the Meeting – The Engaged Chico civic engagement program will be available
for citizen input on individual agenda items both prior to and during the meeting and that program can be
accessed through the City’s website at the link listed at: https://chico-ca.granicusideas.com/meetings.
Public comment will also be accepted by email with the subject line PUBLIC COMMENT ITEM ____, and can
be sent to publiccomments@chicoca.gov during the meeting, prior to the close of public comment on an
item. The public is encouraged not to send more than one email per item and not to comment on numerous
items in one email.

Go ahead and have your fun on Engaged! But ask yourself this – why are we putting up with these closed meetings? I’ve been out and about throughout the COVID crisis, cause you know what – MY life is ESSENTIAL. Here’s the report – two weeks ago, town was dead. I live a block from Bidwell Park, midtown, and I’ll tell you what – the lack of activity was disturbing. The streets were empty, we didn’t even see the usual dog walkers passing our house.  Grocery shopping was absolutely WEIRD. Then came Memorial Day weekend, and wham – the conga line of cars headed out of town was unbelievable. As of Tuesday, people are out and about around Chico again, retail centers are busy, groups are milling on the streets, Bidwell Park is busy.  Things are looking almost NORMAL again.  But the meetings are still closed? 

What?!

 

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