Last night’s city council meeting was the usual – they came with their minds made up. A lot of people complain council doesn’t listen to the public and I’ll agree. But sometimes it doesn’t matter – many citizens make up their minds based on hearsay and their own “beliefs”, without doing the research.
Last night council swore in the new chief, at a salary about $21,000. higher than the old chief’s salary. I made this comment on Chico Engaged.
In 2019 the salary for this position was $149,717 with regular “pay range” at $160,000 This new contract sets base pay at $170,000. The employee retirement contribution is only 9% of cost. Staff reported a pension deficit (UAL) of $128 million 9/19. This July $9,551,935 went to the UAL ($4,761,307 Miscellaneous plus $4,790,628 Safety) Raising the chief’s salary by $30,000 while only requiring him to pay 9% of his pension cost is going to drive up the UAL No new taxes, write better contracts
As soon as I hit the ‘submit’ button I realized I’d made a math error – here I said they raised the chief’s salary by $30,000 – it’s only $21,000.
“Only” $21,000 – do you realize, there are working people in this town that live on less than $25,000? The median income in Chico, despite the crazy public salaries, is still only about $43,000/year.
But, the rest of that comment is all true. Chief only pays 9% of his pension costs, contributing to (old figure) $128 million pension deficit. And then they take money from every department and make an annual “extra” payment toward the UAL – this year $9.5 million, just over half of that for “public safety workers” . Most of the public safety UAL is management pensions.
I have to laugh at the following comment I found posted after mine – has this person lived here more than a month?
“100% this contract. His organization is understaffed. The $ is there and by God the crime is there.“
“The $ is there” ? I’m sorry to tell you Ma’am, but the $ is not there. Where were you just last March when Mark Orme and Chris Constantin made their emotional pleas for a sales tax increase?
And then this remark.
“People don’t realize how stressful of a job this is. The chief deserves this “raise”. Not to mention if we want someone who will do a good job in this position (I believe they have found someone) we need to pay for them! I support this 100%”
“deserves”? That’s not the question – can we afford it? No. But here’s the part of this remark that is really distressing, and I also heard it from my district representative when I questioned her about this position – “ if we want someone who will do a good job in this position… we need to pay for them!”
Really? Because if we don’t pay them well, they will deliberately do a bad job?
I’m going to guess this person felt Nancy Pelosi “deserved” the hair do she had in a closed Sacramento salon recently.
What I heard from my district rep is that Chico salaries are not on par with other cities. Yes, the Sacramento chief gets about $228,000/year. All you have to do to get that is watch the Sacramento News.
Does this look like Downtown Chico to you?
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article243168821.html
Furthermore, Chico’s “new” chief has 23 years on the job already – just another spiker on his way to a fat pension. I’ll give him less than 5 years before he’s off to retirement.
So, I’m more disappointed in the public than council over this one. People don’t do research, they don’t read reports, they don’t look at the documents. Lazy, and that makes a person stupid.
As long as you people continue to be so stupid, you get what you deserve.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
You are right Juanita Chicoans voted the council into office and they get the leadership they voted for.
Your call for studying the issues is spot on. Scott R.
On Wed, Sep 2, 2020 at 5:46 AM Chico Taxpayers Association wrote:
> Juanita Sumner posted: “Last night’s city council meeting was the usual – > they came with their minds made up. A lot of people complain council > doesn’t listen to the public and I’ll agree. But sometimes it doesn’t > matter – many citizens make up their minds based on hearsay and th” >
Thanks Scott. I am very frustrated that so many people just want to complain, they don’t want to put the time into really delving into these issues.
I’ll blame our education system for dumbing people down, and then there’s television.
Goodness gracious I would expect this position to pay exactly what it is paying. Like your little snide comment about Nancy Pelosi I guess you get really upset when a Nazi supporter gets arrested that just shot 2 innocent civilians for Trump.
I think we’ve heard enough from your racist kind already. Get over it your president sat in the bathroom and tweeted for four years and didn’t do anything . What a hero for you to subscribe to. Hey, I got an idea , let’s get into your finances, why don’t you share it out for us so we can judge you.?
Remember you have to be free of sin throw the first stone.
What the hell are you babbling about Chris?
BTW, love those Friday movies.
I would say the same about your stupid endorsement of Stone! You will get what you deserve for this endorsement. As I understand things, Coolidge was trying to compromise on one particular issue that you didn’t agree with. Stone and his wife make bank on the public dollar. She gets buyback on health insurance, PERS, and a lot of other perks due to Stone’s political position.
God Yvonne, when did you turn into such a bitch?
Get what I deserve? What? Are you threatening me Honey? This is why I can’t support Coolidge – he’s a bully, like you Yvonne. You don’t know what you’re talking about – “as I understand….” Well, you don’t understand shit, you just parrot what you read on various social media websites, with your Facebook bully friends.
Well, you might have noticed, if you read the blog lately, I took the endorsements down. Why don’t you do a little research before you open your big fat mouth.