County wants to add another cent to every dollar you spend – for what?

Yeah, I know – the county has put a sales tax measure on the ballot – again, Measure H, a one cent sales tax. This of course means 2 cents on every dollar for Chico.

This comes as Chico’s retail sector is taking a dump, Downtown is about to undergo a total sewer revamp, and crime is ever on the rise. Oroville is also suffering daily reports of violent crime.

The other day my husband and I made a final decision – we’re not shopping at Safeway anymore, at all. For years we enjoyed the Safeway on Mangrove, walking or biking down to pick up household needs almost every day. But as we’ve watched prices go up, we’ve watched the Safeway near our house fall into decay. We’ve seen shoplifters, even intoxicated people actually opening and drinking liquor inside the store. We’ve watched management escort these people into the parking lot and leave them – leaving customers to deal with them? One guy, two bottles in hand, just walked over to Kwando, laid down on the sidewalk, drank himself sick, and passed out. For the past few years we’ve been reading one story after another about how Safeway management refuse to press charges for increasingly violent shoplifters. We notice there has to be another victim involved before the perpetrator is arrested, and it usually has to be bad.

Wow, when I think, my grandma used to shop at the Safeway on Nord, I get the shivvers. What a dump that place has become, it’s scary, I wouldn’t pull over there to make a 9-1-1 call.

Downtown is starting to look very bad. On that note, Tom Van Overbeek has called for a discussion at next week’s council meeting about abandoned, neglected, and unmaintained buildings – he doesn’t specify a particular part of town but you know he means Downtown and that’s where the focus will be.

There’s another meeting of the Ad Hoc development committee chaired by Van Overbeek and Addison Winslow – 2:30 Tuesday Sept 17. We’ll see what they have to say.