Tomorrow the Internal Affairs Committee will discuss a “$60-80 million” remodel of Downtown Chico. They plan to use American Rescue Plan money received after COVID, as well as Measure H revenues. The newspaper also reported the city will use part or all of the $24 million Camp Fire Settlement money. After they dig up the entire sewer system for replacement, they intend to completely redesign streets, eliminating still more parking for restaurant seating and new bike lanes. One plan shows elimination of car lanes.
Since I bought my house, Downtown has been “remodeled” several times, at a cost of millions each time. Seeking to increase parking, one plan turned parallel parking to lateral. After concerns were raised about accidents caused by cars backing out, a subsequent plan changed some streets back to parallel. Seeking to lower the speed at which cars traveled through Downtown, sidewalks were bulbed, putting the pedestrian out in the street as a “traffic calming measure.” At that time, they added a “Studebaker strip, the wheelchair, and high-heel accessible strip of flat walkway which lines the center of downtown crosswalks.” I don’t know if that even exists anymore, the streets are in pretty bad shape. Fancy, expensive concrete garbage bins were set at corners in the Downtown grid – they were so badly vandalized by the night people, they had to be removed. All their “experiments” were paid for by the taxpayers, at the expense of local infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the street in front of my house, annexed over 20 years ago, still needs extensive drainage, sidewalks, and resurfacing. There’s a puddle at the end of my driveway right now, created by years of garbage trucks grinding to a stop out front, that smells like an old fish pond. My tax bill is over $7,000 a year. We’ve had new subdivisions built into people’s back yards up and down my street, but promises of “street work” have never materialized. Many properties on my street, a block from Bidwell Park, are still on septic – the city wants 10’s of thousands to hook up to sewer, in addition to the work done on the owner’s property.
How’s the internet at your house, cause people in my neighborhood are still standing in their driveways to use their cell phones while their kids go to the library to do their homework. My internet providers have told me, there are too many trees in my neighborhood, that my house is too far from the street, and finally, they told us, we’re too far from the tower that is located over in college town? What? Hellooooo? Mark Orme, before he hit the road for sweeter pastures, told us we have no internet in whole sections of Chico. That conversation ended when he sidled out of town.
But Downtown gets a total remodel about every ten years. Hmmmm. I think it’s time to take out the trash.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Why have we some of the highest paid city staff in the state and some of the poorest performance, e.g. lack of street maintenance, lack of effective shelter crisis programs, and lack of a sufficient tree crew?
Thanks for asking – harken back to 2013 when they hired The Assassin to get rid of lower level staffers so they could raise remaining management salaries to crazy new levels. The city manager salary went from about $159,000 to about $199,000, while they let go of just about the entire public works staff and many other “worker bees”. And they went about beefing up the police department, because public safety really sells well at election time, and those police salaries fill up the campaign coffers.
You can read all about it here, just go back to 2013 in the archives there to the right.
Or just reread the post we chatted about earlier – there will be a quiz later.
you assume too much, accusations are no way to start a conversation.