Councilor Karl Ory is Chico’s latest “Chicken Little.” Maybe insolvency is the only recourse to bring expenses in line with the community’s reality. Fear tactics are the left’s weapon of choice. I listened and watched the June 23 council meeting as best I could, without closed captions for hearing impaired.
Frozen hiring and layoffs, for the left, is letting the lowest paid “true workers” go or eliminating “make believe” positions budgeted but not yet filled. That way, for the best effect on the public. For government, it’s cost plus all the way; reductions are really lessened increases – double speak.
You use “sunsetted in eight years” and “a permanent $18 million tax for police and roads” in the same letter. Which is it? Don’t threaten voters with an insolvency caused by your own actions – exorbitant salaries, excessive benefits and obedience to an immoral “California Rule.” Management must be the first to feel the pain, not the peons.
Lastly, I can prove yours and Mr. Orme and Constantin’s $18 million revenue stream is bogus, intended to feed outsized debt using roads and public safety as carrots. If the tax goes up, so should tips at restaurants go down! Accountability rests on your shoulders not ours. You gave away the store, we didn’t. You people tried three times on Tuesday – that’s a strike out in my book.
Joe Azzarito, Chico CA
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Good for Joe! And he’s right – as long as the city’s politicians refuse to even talk about reforming the pensions and OPEB, insolvency is the only recourse. All their tax hikes and debt will do is postpone the inevitable.
And good for Joe for pointing out the debt. People have no idea that Orme will talk the council into using the money from the tax increase to get us hundreds of millions more in debt. They will leave that part off the ballot measure and that is fraud. But what do you expect when criminals run your city? There is no way any competent voter would vote to use a tax increase to take on hundreds of millions of dollars of debt if he or she was informed of this and the city council and Orme know this.
I quit reading the ER because I’m sick of the mask debate! That’s all people want to talk about?
We’re in trouble Dave, time for you to write one of your kick-ass letters.