Archive | August, 2023

Bill seeks to raise threshold for tax protection measures that seek to raise the threshold “they impose on others”? What?

30 Aug

The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act has made the ballot. This measure will require a 2/3’s vote for any new taxes, and even better – it will overturn measures that have been passed with less than 2/3’s approval, like Chico sales tax increase Measure H. Read more about it at https://taxpayerprotection.com/

But there is a group of California legislators who are determined to make it easier to raise taxes than stop them – (Assembly Members Aguiar-Curry, Berman, and Lee), (Coauthors: Assembly Members Robert Rivas, Ortega, and Rendon),(Coauthors: Senators Durazo and Wiener). These people have participated in legislation to lower the voter threshold for everything from sales tax measures to new housing taxes. They have also made determined attacks on Proposition 13.

Now they’ve authored an amendment to the state constitution that would require two-thirds voter approval for measures that increase the voter threshold. What? Yes, they’ve made it possible for tax measures to pass with a 50+1 simple majority, but the want require the taxpayers to come up with 2/3 majority to protect themselves – “the Majority Vote Protection Act”.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240ACA13

This measure would further provide that an initiative measure that includes one or more provisions that would amend the Constitution to increase the voter approval requirement to adopt any state or local measure would be approved by the voters only if the proportion of votes cast in favor of the initiative measure is equal to or greater than the highest voter approval requirement that the initiative measure would impose.

These people are desperate for taxes to save a failing state economy, and their jobs and fat benefits. They are tax junkies, and they’re hooked bad on the stuff. The measure passed a hearing of the Assembly Elections Committee August 23 on a 5-2 vote. Here’s a pro-piece from the California Special Districts Association, aka, Tax Hungry Motherfuckers

https://www.csda.net/blogs/vanessa-gonzales/2023/08/25/aca-13-majority-vote-protection-act-clears-first-h

“The CSDA-supported measure would require initiatives seeking to raise voter thresholds to meet the same threshold they seek to impose on others.” Wow, we’re “imposing” our constitutional rights on our government – that’s how they look at it. We’re the enemy as far as our government is concerned, and they are most certainly out to strip our rights to protect ourselves.

Do what you can to support the TPGAA – tell your friends, and explain it to them. If they don’t like to talk politics, maybe you should get some other friends.

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The city of Chico is the worst slumlord in town

29 Aug

I had a very discouraging conversation with a city council member over the condition of some of our neighborhood streets. You know, I was complaining about the area we’ve always affectionately referred to as “the college ghetto,” but I live across town, in a neighborhood full of property tax paying homeowners, and the same could be said about the streets, sewer, and drainage in my neighborhood. In fact, the houses across the street from me are in a designated flood zone, and those with mortgages are required to buy flood insurance, simply because the city has never installed drains along that section of our street. We were annexed in the early 1990’s, with promises of “services,” but only the new subdivision down the street has drains.

Oh yeah, and my neighbor Phil’s house, because he complained about flooding caused by a nearby new subdivision. And because he was a drinking buddy of the late Tom Nickel. Tom literally made that happen – don’t call me a liar, just drive over and look at it – they came over and put sidewalks and drains just in front of Phil’s property. I love Phil, and God bless Tom – of course that drainage was necessary – but just that section?

That’s how stuff works in the City of Chico, as you’ve seen with the new paving program – the squeaky wheel that knows who to squeak to gets the pavement. You read the news stories – at first they were going to “repave” in newer, high-end neighborhoods, but somebody pitched a howl, so they started looking for poor-people neighborhoods to slop their slurry. It’s all just bullshit anyway, they are not doing the type of work that is needed, just band-aid repairs on streets that haven’t been maintained properly or updated since people were still using horses and buggies.

I know at least one council member who has done a lot of tongue wagging on the subject of providing housing for low-income residents, but when I pointed out the fact that we have square miles of low-income housing that is in third world condition, his response was very discouraging. I’m not really blaming this person, I’m just saying, this is discouraging.

“The City definitely doesn’t do any inspections and is pretty hands off. We are updating our nuisance code with the goal of improving the look of downtown buildings, but there isn’t the political or administrative will to target slumlords.”

There it is, what I’ve said for years – Downtown gets a disproportionate amount of attention. How can they justify that when Downtown businesses don’t generate a fraction of the total city sales tax receipts? They used American Rescue Plan funding for parklets for Downtown bars – our city council has been hitting the bottle.

And of course, the new subdivisions going in around the outskirts of town are all getting new streets, while the center of town is sinking faster than Mexico City.

“the will to target slumlords…” This council member is quick to blame landlords. The worst slumlord around here is the city of Chico. The streets, sewers, sidewalks, street lights (or total lack thereof) and street trees are all the responsibility of the city of Chico.

So it’s time to go after Measure H. That was a total scam, and we all know it now. The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, which has made the 2024 ballot, will overturn Measure H. You know that’s true, because a group of legislators has mounted a campaign to require measures like the TPGAA to get 2/3’s of the vote. That means they’re scared, and they better be. More next time, on This Old Lady Needs a Better Bra to Drive the Streets of Chico.

UPDATE: Since this post is getting hit again, I’m going to ID the council member – Addison Winslow. Winslow has been a big disappointment so far .

A little bit of Stockton right here in Chico

23 Aug

Today I saw something I’m going to describe as “Stockton”, right here in Chico.

You probably saw the man on the viral video, threatening the owner/operator of a mini-mart as he rifled cigarettes into a borrowed trash can. He was either on something or giving an Oscar worthy performance of a drug addict. An employee came out of a back room and subdued the man, took him down to the floor, and held his arms as the owner came out from behind his counter with a broom stick and started whipping the man around his legs and feet.

I know a lot of people cheered that store owner as he had what amounted to a mental breakdown. I believe he had put up with so much of that kind of abuse at his job, that he just snapped.

As I watched that video, I wondered, what would I do, if I’d been in that store? Would I have stood by and taped it? Would I have encouraged the owner to step back and call the police later (knowing they wouldn’t do anything)? Would I just tell the owner to put in a claim on his insurance (the rates for which are already obscene)? Would I have tried to stop the thief, who was threatening the owner with a knife? He tried to produce the knife but his pants started to fall off.

Here’s what I know I would do – I would never go near that store again.

I’ve said it again and again, I’m not going to be the victim of a crime just to shore up Chico’s sagging retail and public finances. It’s business, not charity. So, here’s why I’m not buying gas in Chico anymore.

Just this morning, Dude sent me this story from Action News –

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/chico-police-looking-for-suspect-accused-of-carjacking-at-the-safeway-gas-station-on-mangrove/article_8fe88a8c-3df7-11ee-8b53-a7643714d158.html

I’d heard this story and it made me sad for Chico. A person carjacked as he gassed his car at the Mangrove Safeway. My family used to live in a house just down Palmetto from that shopping center, we knew the employees and they knew us because we rode our bikes down there almost every day to pick up groceries and snacks. We used the gas station there almost exclusively because it was so close to our house, a nice lady we know still works there. We used several other businesses in that shopping center for years.

We moved a few blocks away about 6 years ago, and I’ve noticed a distinct change in the old neighborhood, namely, more transients and druggies. As I’ve reported here before, the Mangrove Safeway parking lot started getting so dicey, I started staying in the truck to watch our tools while my husband would go into the store. I’d see transients circling the parking lot, either on foot, or on bikes, and very deliberately look in car windows. I even spotted people jiggling car door handles.

Finally a friend tipped us to Winco, where the prices are lower. We started gassing up at a gas station nearby. I’ve watched that station go downhill since new ownership, it doesn’t look as tidy as it used to. Today as my husband filled up our tank, I noticed a guy come out of the attached store, and walk directly to the trash bins. I knew he was going to go through the trash, sure, looking for half a cigarette, or maybe some aluminum cans. I wasn’t quite surprised – I’ve seen it before – when he pulled two empty drink cups out of the bottom of the can, turned and walked back into the store. I watched him disappear toward the drink dispensers, and I realized, he’s getting a free refill. I wondered why the store would put up with that, free drinks?

Then I witnessed something I’d only seen in viral videos and news stories. The man took his full cups and approached the door, opening it partially. But he turned and went back inside, approaching the cashier. I could see him become angry, and suddenly he tossed the contents of the cups over the counter at the cashier.

I guess the cashier had told the man he needed to pay for the drinks, and that was the man’s response. And then here’s what really surprised me – the cashier came right out from behind the counter and engaged the man, shoving him toward the door. The man grabbed the cashier and the struggling pair meandered across the room and out of my sight.

Meanwhile my husband, with his back to the action, was busily filling our car. When I saw the man throw the drinks, I yelled out loud, “Honey, oh my god, call 9-1-1!” He turned to see what was going on, reminding me that I was holding his phone. My hands were shaking so badly I smashed at the icons on the phone. I couldn’t remember the number.

As I smashed at the keys, I looked up to see the cashier ejecting the man from the store. The man was making threats, but he was walking away. I knew the cops wouldn’t do anything, so I closed the phone. The cashier glared at me as I stared open mouthed at him. I didn’t know what to say. My husband had paid for the gas, and we saw there was nothing more we could do, so we left.

So there it is, I wondered when it would happen – I just witnessed a crime in broad daylight in my own town. These criminals are emboldened by law enforcement policy not to press charges for less than $900 worth of theft/damage, just “counsel and move along”.

Until this policy changes, I won’t shop in crime prone areas, and that’s becoming most of Chico. I’m not going to risk my safety and I’m not going to risk being charged with a crime for protecting myself. I do most of my shopping online these days, or out of town.

I do know of a gas station in a nice, clean, safe, not-so-far away town, it’s worth the drive.

POST SCRIPT: This post was picked up by NewsBreak, and a man offered this advice:

Edward Phillips, 7h ago, Don’t stop giving your business to Chico stores. Just make yourself more aware of your surroundings. Keep your eyes open and don’t let yourself be a victim. When you let them push you out, they win….

Ed did not get the point, let me make myself more clear. Ed, the problem is not actually the criminal element, it’s the City of Chico and Chico PD that are causing and allowing this mess to pile up. The city declared the Shelter Crisis Designation, for which they received over $4 million to spend on the “homeless crisis”. Where that money went is your guess. You see we still have an out-of-control criminal population – many of them felons from other states – living in the streets and parks of our town. The police roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders. They will take a report, if you insist, but they won’t arrest anybody, even if you point out the perp laying in the bushes across the street. The local DA will not investigate or prosecute for crimes under $1,000, so these people are let loose on the streets of our town, our retail areas, and our neighborhoods.

The city of Chico has had the nerve to institute a one-cent sales tax measure, with a simple majority vote of 50+1. I’m guessing Ed has already stopped listening. The city used “safety” as a carrot for that tax, said they would clean up the streets, hire more cops to deal with the ever-increasing number of criminals attracted to our town by services offered by the county and state.

Ed, it’s time to reach into your pants and find your gonads. I found mine, and I’m not giving any more money to this town in the form of sales tax. I still buy groceries in town but we’ll see what happens next.

Local housing advocates want to build tiny house villages – why not fix the housing we already have? I believe this is a central component of getting people off the street and into healthy lifestyles.

21 Aug

Since we left our struggling friend, I’m glad to report he’s been sober for two weeks and housed for almost a month. Today we spotted him walking home from the grocery store with bags brimming full of healthy food choices.

He declared that he felt a lot better since he stopped spare-changing for booze and started eating every day. But he needs laundry soap – I’m conflicted, I’m trying to hang tough and not offer charity, but I do have plenty of laundry soap, and maybe an extra bottle of shampoo… but should I? Luckily the conversation turned to his housing situation.

His latest anxiety is that he and his roommate have to come up with rent within a week and a half, and they have no money. He asked if we had any work for him, but given his physical state, he couldn’t work more than a couple of hours before he’d need to quit for the day. In fact, the last time he worked for us, he looked like a plate of baked crap at the end of the day, and he didn’t call us again for over a week. That bought him another two weeks of grace with his landlord, and now he’s back at square one. I was shocked – for one bedroom in a totally run-down crappy apartment building he is charged $400/month.

He did succeed in getting an EBT card, and that qualifies a person for other programs, like rental assistance. He is also eligible for a free cell phone.

One strong observation I’ve made from this experience is that while financial services are necessary, people in crisis also need safe housing options and persistent coaching and counseling. Firm but caring. When we started this journey our friend was incoherent, rambling, paranoid, having hallucinations, alternately thanking us, cursing us, and begging for forgiveness. Today he was anxious, but he was coherent. He looked like he’d gained weight, and walked with a solid stride. He seemed to be on the verge of tears a few times but at one point, as he described his fear of eviction, he stopped himself, saying, “I shouldn’t think about it like that, I should try to think positive.” So we told him to get ahold of the welfare department, using the account he’d already set up for his EBT, to check into getting rental assistance. That seemed to make him feel better, he walked away with his grocery bags to make lunch for himself and his roommate.

As I stood there, I also saw that the area surrounding Chico State and the neighborhoods to the west of town are sub-code and unsafe. I realized it’s one of the oldest parts of town. The streets are completely crapped, I’m guessing the sewer and water lines must be nearly 100 years old. Huge old trees sagging into power lines right outside second story windows.

Some of the old apartment complexes look well-maintained, others are in absolutely – okay, here’s a chance to use a grown-up word – deplorable condition, look like they can’t even be saved, but they’re full of low-income families and single people living 4 – 6 in one apartment.

Instead of permitting new sprawl development in every direction, why isn’t the city upholding the code on longtime commercial housing? As they build out in every direction, the central, older parts of town are just about literally sinking into the sewer.

That is creating blight. Blight is not healthy for anybody. The state of the lower income housing in our city is preventing people from making their lives any better. If you have to work at the lesser paying jobs, you are relegated to Crap Town. It seems like the city just doesn’t care about your quality of life if you don’t make at least $80,000/year.

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Letter to Editor: Do red light cameras stop accidents? Do parking kiosks really make parking Downtown more convenient?

19 Aug

I read a sincere letter in the Enterprise Record last week, a person who had been permanently injured by a red light runner. The writer opined that a red light camera would have prevented the accident. I don’t agree – the statistics don’t support that claim. I don’t believe the city of Chico believes that either, I think they just want the money from the tickets these cameras will generate. These cameras are a sure thing. Despite flaws, such as ticketing drivers for crawling ahead to look for oncoming traffic, they are very difficult to dispute.

Same with the Downtown parking kiosks – these aren’t making anybody’s life easier, but they will probably pay for themselves very quickly. I looked at budget reports dating back to 2018, pre-COVID, and I saw figures indicating, in past, the city made more in parking FINES than meter proceeds. That was with human meter-readers, who obviously can’t be everywhere. These new meters issue a ticket immediately, as soon as your time is up. And one man reported that he was issued a ticket even after he’d re-upped his time using the app. The ironic note there – he had gone Downtown to attend a city meeting. I wish him good luck in disputing that, even though he reportedly had a receipt.

Ever wonder – why do we have to pay to park Downtown? Just Downtown? Those are public streets, like streets all over town. We park for free in any other part of town, commercial or residential – what gives the city of Chico the right to charge us to park Downtown?

And here’s something that we should all wonder about – they are collecting private information. At one meeting, former city manager Mark Orme reported that this app would allow the user to be tracked via their cell phone – “we’ll know how far they had to walk to spend money…” As well as where they shopped/dined/drank, how much they spent, on what? For marketing purposes – will it be sold? How safe is our private information? Public agencies are not immune to cyber security breaches.

https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/newsroom/calpers-news/2023/calpers-responds-to-third-party-breach-of-retiree-information

Here’s my petty gripe – my phone is constantly notifying me that I need to dump apps, that they interfere with the function of my phone. I frankly don’t feel like adding another app. Like my husband asks, how much time does this add to a quick run into Tin Roof for a loaf of bread?

I think these measures are just for the revenues, and the kiosks are just another bullet in the foot for the city of Chico. So I wrote a letter about it.

Can red light cameras stop accidents? The evidence indicates otherwise. Sacramento, for example, has had red light cameras for years but reports, “Over 4000 collisions occur on the streets of Sacramento annually… more than 50 percent occur at traffic signals. Half of those collisions result in injuries.” The CDC reported an “overall” increase in accidents due to rear-end and side-swipe collisions at intersections.

I believe the cameras will be a very effective revenue mechanism for the city of Chico. It’s an instant ticket, with an admitted margin for error, and the burden of proof is on the driver, who typically has no camera.

Likewise for the parking kiosks, which are faster than a parking attendant but also have an admitted margin for error. They will make a great revenue source. Look at budget reports – before COVID, the city showed more revenues from parking tickets than parking meters. Just watch how fast these meters rack up the fines.

Red light cameras will not stop car accidents. The kiosks frustrate daytime shoppers while nighttime restaurant and bar patrons park for free. Neither measure makes sense, but both are sure to make plenty of money to pay for the skating rink and other boondoggles.

Juanita “I’ll be looking both ways and shopping online” Sumner, Chico CA

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Over two weeks of rain predicted for 2023-24 ice rink

17 Aug

Fourteen more days of August, hang in there.

City meetings are largely cancelled – the notice from the June 28 Finance Committee agenda says the next meeting isn’t until September 27. And minutes are months behind – they haven’t posted any minutes for 2023 monthly meetings.

We do know that council has approved funding for another year of the Downtown ice rink despite heavy and increasing financial losses. That based on a slick, pages long “report” produced by $taff at taxpayer expense.

https://chico.ca.us/sites/main/files/file-attachments/6.28.23_fc_agenda_packet.pdf?1687390810

Staff blames losses on rain. Wow, in Winter? Really? Well, I don’t know if Staff has done this, but I looked ahead at various weather sites, even Farmer’s Almanac, and there are nine days between Dec 15 and 31 with more than a 49% chance of rain. Yep, nine days in two weeks, that’s a deal breaker as far as I’m concerned, but council went ahead and approved another year’s funding.

So I’m going back to look at January – six days with more than a 40% chance of rain predicted in the first two weeks. Look it up yourselves, tell me what you find.

A week ago my husband and I realized we can’t afford to run our air conditioner all night in our stuffy apartment so we set our air mattress up and the battery tv outside, under our old E-Z UP. That was about a week ago – it’s rained twice since. Last night about 11 pm, woke up in the middle of X Files to feel rain. I saw one video from North Chico that looked more like January. Anybody see that coming? Weatherman did, and I’m going to trust him from now on.

Chico City Council continues to play their little fiddle while the town collapses into anarchy all around them. They have approved a quarter of a million dollars for a guaranteed flop.

Meanwhile, I just did almost all my Christmas shopping on Amazon Prime day. I’ll do the rest on a quick trip to Oregon. When my 5 year old coffee maker took a crap recently I sat down at my laptop and ordered a new one. When we needed to add more security lights at our rentals, my husband went to Amazon “order again” and within a week we had new security lights posted all over our property.

I like to buy clothes online – there’s free returns if it doesn’t fit. Socks and underwear are just a matter of “order again”. Why would I want to wait while the staffer gets the key to the underwear display, or worse – expose myself to the risk of being run over or pepper-sprayed by an escaping shop lifter?

Oh, by the way, Thanks Lowe’s, for FINALLY ejecting campers from your parking lot after I witnessed a contractor catching a guy going through the back of his truck. I rarely go into the stores these days, I sit and watch the truck while my husband does the shopping. Or we drive to Oregon, only 4 hours to the Medford Lowe’s.

This is Chico, just keepin’ it real. Thanks Dude!

The atmosphere of lawlessness we are now living in will only perpetuate itself – it makes people fucking crazy

12 Aug

My husband and I have been helping an “unhoused” friend. It’s been an eye-opener.

Our first task was to get this person to medical treatment. Drugs, booze and living outside – well duh, that makes a person sick, mentally and physically. Our friend was acting psychotic, and it’s really scary having a person like that in a moving car. When we were trying to get another friend to the hospital one evening he jumped out of the car at a stoplight, jogged off and leapt over somebody’s back fence, disappearing from our sight. We were eventually able to help that person into a happy lifestyle, so we decided to give this friend a chance.

We knew he would not be welcome at Enloe so we went to Ampla. Ampla doctors will see people who don’t have any address, don’t have insurance, and don’t have money. They sat our friend down, signed him up for MediCal and assigned him to a doctor. Things moved along smoothly, and he was in the doctor’s office within 45 minutes. After a brief chat, the doctor gave him a prescription to counteract the effects of coming down from booze and narcotics and told him to come back in within a few days.

And then we were on our own with this guy, who was rational one minute and hysterical the next. We were worried about the medication – we read online that the medication itself was habit forming, but we also noticed the effect it had on our friend. Within 24 hours – two doses of medication – he became himself again, a person we had not seen for about a year.

So we took him to our home for the weekend. We live in a very tiny house. We put him in our bed, because he was starved and sick, and we took turns sleeping on a cot and a pair of those self-inflating camp pads. I’ll say, the medication was like a miracle. For months, this guy had only been sleeping in snatches, drinking booze right out of the bottle to calm his nerves, and then doing drugs with people he didn’t even know. He was filthy and refused to take a shower – he said he was afraid of the shower.

But after one day on the medication, he slept soundly a full eight hours, woke up refreshed and cognizant, and wow – asked if he could borrow a towel. His hair had been unwashed for so long it fell out all over the bathroom floor.

We spent a pleasant couple of days having meals together and talking about the future. We helped him replace his driver’s license and sign up for Cal Fresh – basically, we just drove him to the assigned locations, which are spread out all over town. He was in the process of applying for General Assistance so he could get into a sober living arrangement with some friends who were also trying to get their lives back together.

Here’s the two mistakes we made: we let him talk to his user friends, and we let him supervise his own medication. I really don’t know what else we could do – you’re not allowed to hold a person against their will. We felt he’d stay with us longer if we trusted him, but that was short lived. His girlfriend, who said she was trying to help him, was still using, and as soon as he was out of our sight he was using again. We realized the woman had an interest in keeping him high so she could control him. She took and sold his medication immediately, telling us it was making him “crazy”.

So we finally had to do what all the experts say to do – we cut him off. We told him that as long as he was associating with his druggie friends, we didn’t want anything to do with him. God that was hard, I woke up at night wondering where he was, if we’d ever see him again – would we get another call from jail?

Here’s the surprise – he called us about a week later, we could hear his girlfriend swearing at him from the other end of the line. I’ve dealt with people on coke – I’d bet my last $5 she was on coke. He was sober, and he was asking us for a ride to a friend’s house, to help him move what possessions he had to his new sober living arrangement.

We were still kind of mad at this guy, wondering why we should get involved. He promised us he’d quit the drinking and drugs, and then bailed out acting as though it was all our idea.Then another surprise – my husband said, “Why not…” And I realized, this was no time to be proud or petty. This was our chance to get our friend back, and let me tell you, in times like this, friends are Gold.

So, we got him to the new digs, we talked to his also-struggling new roommates, we looked around at the dump he was moving into, and we pasted big plastic smiles on our faces and shook his hand. No, he’s not out of the woods yet. He has no job, he has food stamps and an ID, but his new roomies are expecting him to come up with $400 a month for rent. We don’t know how this story will end. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s what I learned – neither the city, nor the county, with their huge budgets, will do anything for these people. The director of Butte County Behavioral Health refuses to admit that stable housing is the center of drug/alcohol and mental health treatment. Ya got ta have FRIENDS – you need supervision, you need a clean bed and you need three squares a day.

I don’t see Patrick Newman, or Charles Withuhn, or any of those preachy motherfuckers taking anybody into their homes, giving up their beds, or nurse-maiding a person detoxing off booze and/or drugs. If they’ve done that, they need to talk about it, because that’s the solution. It takes more than handing out food and offering an occasional shower to get people off drugs and into stable permanent housing. It takes a lot more than where you got arrested to make you a productive and positive member of the community.

So, that’s my experience, and here’s what I’ve drawn from it, and past similar experiences. The county and HUD need to step up to provide supervised housing for drug addicts and mentally ill people. When these people commit crimes they need to be committed to these facilities before they are sent to jail. And yeah, they need to be sent to jail – the atmosphere of lawlessness we are now living in will only perpetuate itself – it makes people fucking crazy.

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Stephen Greenhut: Perhaps we can have two important things at once: Greater public trust of police officers and more people willing to take police jobs. Instead of complaining about a public that doesn’t appreciate them, police officials ought to spend more time assuring their departments always are worthy of the appreciation

7 Aug
Better policing might solve the national police-recruiting crisis
This article by Stephen Greenhut might shed some light on Chico’s police crisis.

Chico is in crisis and part of that is the police department. I’ve written here about the salaries and benefits and the amount of the budget that is dedicated to the police department. I’ve bitched about the influence they have over our local elections. Other people are raising concerns over excessive use of force and purchases of military style equipment, not to mention the lawsuits directed at the department.

We’re not alone, cities all over the country are having the same conversations about their police departments. One common retort from city officials is that they are having trouble recruiting cops.

According to Greenhut, “Police spokespeople and high-profile sheriffs and chiefs complain they can’t recruit enough officers largely because the public has grown hostile to officers. They point to efforts to “defund the police.” That’s partially true, but not the entire story.” A southern California police chief uses the word “demonized”.

But Greenhut continues, citing an International Association of Chiefs of Police study from 2019 – “well before the Floyd incident – that detailed far-more mundane reasons that many young people don’t want to be cops. These include the desire for more flexible work hours and the long and difficult application and training process. Such issues have been the subject of police conferences for years.“

I believe overtime is not only a financial but a morale problem. Who can be on their best after 8 hours at an oftentimes very stressful job? Why would anybody want a cop to work overtime? It’s about the money. I believe overtime is part of the culture of our police department, whether you want it or not you take it and shut up.

In Chico, I’ve seen many officers’ annual take-home pay raised by 10’s of thousands of dollars over their base salary with overtime. They have a very generous overtime policy if you ask me, rounding up so many minutes “over shift” into hours of overtime. Their union, the CPOA, also has “mandatory overtime” written into the contracts – and a very complex formula by which they turn unused overtime into “time-off” and unused “time-off” into compensation.

Take a cup of OT and add a cup and a half of CTO, pour in some STO, and you get an IOU

Greenhut also cites our generous pension system as part of the problem – “California’s pension benefits are so generous for officers – allowing them to retire in many departments at age 50 with 90 percent of their final pay – that there’s no incentive to stick around.”

Cops are certainly not underpaid in California. “Many analyses about the shortfalls make reference to low pay, but that’s simply not the case in California. In Orange County, for instance, deputy sheriffs were making around $150,000 a year as early as 2008.” Chico cops take home a minimum of $100,000/year, with overtime and “other pay”, plus their generous benefits packages, police compensation in Chico is closer to $200,000/year. They only pay 15% of their pension and benefits cost, making them the biggest driver of our pension deficit. Chico PD gets well over half the city budget.

Greenhut continues, “It’s worth debunking a few of the other common police-union myths. For starters, police agencies were not defunded. ABC News analyzed police budgets in 109 agencies across the country and found they mostly have increased, with 91 having upped their budgets by at least 2 percent. In 49 agencies, police funding has soared by 10 percent or more. Police spending is soaring.“

This article is a must read for those of us concerned about the direction our police department is taking. Some takeaways –

Police staffing and spending are not directly tied to crime rates. Policing is one part of the equation, but myriad demographic factors arguably play a more significant role.

Militarization of police forces – I’ve covered troubling police use-of-force incidents and found that union protections and circle-the-wagons attitude often thwart accountability… Americans have every right to demand that officers with life-and-death powers are held to the highest standards. Unfortunately, union protections make it difficult to rid departments of overly aggressive officers. Chiefs and sheriffs ought to blame themselves for having insufficiently rooted out the few bad apples in their midst. That’s the real source of public mistrust.

Furthermore, the violent police culture is perpetuated during training – “Community-oriented policing strategies might help departments lure more workers. This is also from that chiefs’ study: “Fast-paced images of officers making forced entries into buildings, rappelling down walls, firing high-powered weapons on the range … were common in recruiting materials. … (T)hose images do not resonate with wide swaths of the population entering the labor market. They said that agencies will be more successful in attracting candidates if they emphasize the service aspect of policing.”

My R Street colleague, retired New York Police Department officer Jillian Snider, notes that ‘even in the most contentious of times, the number of full-time sworn officers has not substantially decreased.’ She points to the need to ‘balance the demands of community members with smart, effective, research-based policing’ and to ‘establish new recruitment strategies, create incentives to attract high-quality candidates, and promote a more positive culture within departments.’”

Greenhut concludes, “Perhaps we can have two important things at once: Greater public trust of police officers and more people willing to take police jobs. Instead of complaining about a public that doesn’t appreciate them, police officials ought to spend more time assuring their departments always are worthy of the appreciation.“

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

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Public works staff wants to continue pouring a quarter of a million/year in taxpayer money for an “experience” that “sets the stage for people to enjoy downtown and come downtown on a more frequent basis” – hey, what about the rest of us?

1 Aug

Tonight Chico City Council will consider another year of funding for the skating rink – staff is asking for a budget allocation of about a quarter million in “start-up” costs. The last two years have cost the taxpayers over a quarter million in “expenses over revenues“.

According to Staff’s report, “In 2021, the program had a negative project cost of $142,557.76, and in 2022, a negative project cost of $188,779.43.”

In previous discussions Public Works staff blamed rain. Oh gee, like that’s a shocker, a rainy winter in Chico. Here’s his new excuse for running a bottom-out waste of taxpayer money.

“Like parks, it is a community feature that provides an experience, which does not necessarily function as a successful business venture. Rather it sets the stage for people to enjoy downtown and come downtown on a more frequent basis. By nature of that, it offers more opportunities for foot traffic and sales of goods.“

Measure H proponents included members of the public works department who were caught going door to door in their city provided uniforms to hand out ‘Yes on H” signs – both workers and signs paid for by the taxpayers. Proponents, including the contractors who get all the city contracts, told us we needed the money sooooo bad, as well as city management staff who admitted that the streets have been neglected for 20 or 30 years and needed hundreds of millions worth of repairs. Now they tell us, it’s okay to flush a quarter of a million a year on “an experience”, for one part of town

Furthermore, the public works manager admits in his report – it’s all about Downtown. Wow, if I owned a business in any other part of Chico I’d be talking to an attorney right now. Actually, I am a landlady, and I feel my neighborhood is on the bottom of the dog heap when it comes to any type of services.

Business owners and residents who do not live in the Blessed District should be outraged – Downtown already takes an undue amount of police attention, that area has always been a distraction for law enforcement. Now our $180,000/year public works director wants a quarter of a million a year for “an experience” for less than 1% of the population – the people who can afford to shop Downtown.

The whole skating rink bamboozle has just been a ploy to get the bums out of Plaza during Christmas shopping season because Downtown sales tax revenues have been going down with every boarded storefront – you can find that in the finance reports filed on the city website. The parking kiosks were just insulting, everybody knows the real problem is the transients/drug addicts/mentally ill, the crime, the daily depredation. But council, at the recommendation of Staff, continues to sign on to the Shelter Crisis Designation that makes Chico just another link in the Homeless Industrial Complex. They continue to play the Whack-a-mole game with Judge England while Chico goes right down the toilet.

And just as many people have predicted, the routing of the camps only produces tiny camplets all over town, that can’t be cleared, without 14 days notice. Gee, why aren’t there any campers at city hall, or Downtown Plaza anymore?

Maybe it’s time for the rest of us to talk to our own lawyer.

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