Chico Taxpayers Association

Speaking of making housing more affordable – according to Realtor.com, property taxes and insurance coverage are out-pacing mortgage costs for new homeowners. “These ballooning expenses are rewriting the math of homeownership. In September, 32% of the average single-family mortgage payment went to property taxes and home insurance, the highest rate ever for data going back to 2014, according to Intercontinental Exchange”

Here’s a joke on us – Butte County and City of Chico get our property taxes, but they’ve deferred services over so many years to screw us into raising our own taxes, they’ve caused conditions that force up our insurance rates.

It’s not just home owners – if you rent, your landlord passes these costs into you.

Utility costs are another factor that needs to come up in discussions about affordable housing. PG&E, Cal Water, and Waste Management all raised their rates this past year. What does the city of Chico do about it? They could mount a legal objection before the CPUC, and this would have more weight in the discussion than our complaints. Instead, city of Chico adds an extra 5% “Utility Users Tax” to our power and water bills, and a franchise tax to power and trash bills.

It’s called “talking out of both sides of your mouth” – the city of Chico talks volumes about providing “affordable” housing, then seems to do everything completely the opposite. What city management really wants is more expensive housing, new housing, with builder fees and bigger property tax bills.

In other news, there’s one whopper of a pot hole developing on Vallombrosa just off Manzanita. I mean, it will void the warranty on your tires. The city took a swipe at it with some slobbers a few weeks ago but there it was again within a few days.

Vallombrosa is not only a heavily used corridor, it’s a historic road right next to the park. Some pretty pricey houses too, with big tax bills. It has never received proper treatment, even as new subdivisions have been allowed in people’s back yards all through that neighborhood, the traffic all siphoned toward Vallombrosa. The road floods in a heavy downpour because there is no drainage. Pedestrians and cyclists, you are taking your lives in your own hands. Meanwhile, the city admittedly used Measure H funds to resurface a county section of Stilson Canyon Road.

Last city council meeting they discussed implementing red light cameras. They say it’s for safety – oh Bullshit – some idiot consultant told them it would bring in a lot more revenues. Like the parking meters Downtown, red light cameras are instant, everything is done automatically, and most people probably just pay without question.

We’ve all heard stories about people beating red light camera tickets with their dashcams – yeah, they make mistakes that cost the driver not only a fine but higher insurance. But did you know red light cameras are also believed to cause more rear-end accidents? People are afraid to take a chance, so they jam on the breaks. This is something that can be documented and compared with past statistics. The same reports claim that the cameras also reduce “t-bone” accidents – I don’t know how they would know that – read drivers’ minds? “Wow, I’d normally pull out in front of a speeding car but I’m afraid I’ll get a ticket so I won’t…“

And here’s my final thought here – why does Chico always get on the ass-end of a fad? Years ago, bigger cities started putting in ice rinks for Christmas – so Chico finally gets in on that, and it’s lost an increasing amount of money every year. CARD took over and was able to show a profit? Well, remember that when they try to put another parcel tax on your house.

Paradise Rec District decided to fold their rink, after losing money every year since it opened.

A staff report by the Paradise Recreation and Park District shows the event lost at least $340,000 since it opened in 2013, excluding the 2018-2019 and the 2020-2021 seasons.

Let’s face it – they got Camp Fire funding in 2019, and they got COVID funding in 2020-21. When that dried up they were left with donations and sponsorships, and what they could get in dwindling admissions and skate rentals. The city of Chico used General Fund money to float their rink, and now CARD is using their General Fund money to run it, shifting the burden of this folly onto the taxpayers.

Same with red-light cameras. While Sacramento is ending their red light program because they are losing money on it, Chico jumps on the dogpile – how much will they spend, just “looking into it”?

https://www.kcra.com/article/sacramento-ends-red-light-camera-system-drivers-react/60206739

These dipshits continue to do everything they can to raise the cost of living. When they say they want to build more affordable housing, you can bet they mean just the opposite.

Right now you will find hundreds of houses and apartments for rent in Chico, hundreds more for sale – there is no “housing shortage” in Chico. The real issue is affordability, not availability, and building more houses has never brought down the price.

So, I believe, people who tell you there is a housing shortage in Chico, 1) have land they are trying to sell 2) have a political agenda they are trying to realize 3) have drank the Kool Aid handed out by either 1 or 2.

It is a fact that building new housing on the edges of your town creates Blight. While “suburbanization” and “sprawl” have long been agreed upon as causing Blight of interior parts of a town, we blame the people who buy the housing instead of the city that permits it, and then devotes more funding to maintaining newer neighborhoods than older established neighborhoods. Why? Because as houses age, they don’t generate as much property taxes as new neighborhoods, end of story. It doesn’t seem to matter that those residents have been paying, and paying, and paying, the employees Downtown demand more and more revenue to pay their exorbitant salaries and benefits. Fees for development projects, or even a simple hook-up to sewer, are based not on what they actually cost, but on as many salaries as can be allocated into them as possible. Here’s just one post I made about the allocation process, as explained by a consultant who was paid for by the taxpayers.

So, I was interested when I read a letter to the ER about infill. We used to hear a lot about infill housing, but it seemed to have dried up. I never felt it was done right – a bunch of houses, shoe-horned into a flag lot in somebody’s back yard – parking problems, drainage problems, and then on trash day so many cans on the street it’s actually dangerous. Poorly done sewer hook-ups with no proper street repair. A sidewalk that extends across the entrance to the new developement and then drops off 6 inches into a pit. Infill can be done better, and done so that it is a benefit to the neighborhood instead of a detraction.

So I wrote a letter about it. Let me know what you think.

I’d also like to hear more about infill, but not because I believe there is a housing shortage. I believe that before we build out into cattle pastures and flood plains, we should fix older, decaying neighborhoods. While new neighborhoods spring up in orchards and pastures on the edge of town, historic neighborhoods suffer from pitted streets, flooding, no sidewalks, old power lines hanging in overgrown trees, and 20th century phone and internet service.

I don’t think we need to “streamline” the permits process, we need to hold infill developments up to the standards the surrounding neighborhood was built with. We need to maintain traditional parking requirements so we don’t have streets so crowded with cars that traffic (including pedestrians, bikes and safety vehicles) is constricted. We should not let ourselves be talked into sub-par housing based on a perceived housing shortage. We should build for the market, not political agendas or profiteering investors.

There are things the city could do to motivate the type of small infill projects that should rejuvenate our older neighborhoods and provide good housing. For starters, lower the fees for sewer/drain hook-ups, sidewalks, lot splits, ground work and other basic permits needed to ready a lot for development/sale to a developer. These fees are currently based on allocations for bureaucratic costs that have nothing to do with development.

We could do better.