Thanks Dude, for a couple of articles regarding the relationship between nationwide financial distress and the pension deficit.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-12-05-us-pension-systems-verge-of-debt-collapse.html
Just like Chico, “‘Pension systems throughout the U.S. are falling deeper into what experts term “pension debt paralysis,’ even in the face of record-setting contributions from state and local governments.“
Chico has fallen into “pension debt paralysis” – as predicted years ago, our city is spending so much money on the pensions, there is no more money left in the General Fund to provide the kind of services you would naturally expect in return for your tax dollars, like street and sewer maintenance, cops and fire. Yes, they’ve made record-setting contributions, increasing every year by millions, but our pension debt just keeps going up, up, up.
California as a state is in the same boat. “Equable.org reported that the Illinois pension system was underfunded by more than $210 billion as of last June; California is the only state that had a bigger shortfall. ”
As states all around the union find themselves with the same shortfall,
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-12-06-report-finds-half-us-states-going-bankrupt.html
they’re seeing the same effects we live with every day in Chico – “The biggest factor contributing to state debt is unfunded retirement liabilities, reports indicate… Oliver Giesecke from Stanford University warns that they are a costly form of debt that diverts funding away from public projects and infrastructure… The short of it is that the more time that passes, the worse things are going to get for everyday Americans who will have to pay increasingly more for increasingly less.”
The following piece from CNBC explains how COVID funding artificially inflated state and local budgets with free money that was spent for questionable purposes, and how this extra money actually exacerbated debt for many public agencies across the country.
In Chico we also had emergency funding from various wild fires and then the PG&E settlement. Fucking MILLIONS. I’ve explained here where much of that money went, for stuff like outdoor dining for restaurants and bars, new staff positions with salaries over $100,000/year, and raises – our city manager’s salary, just for example, went up over $20,000 in the last couple of years.
New positions and salary increases are not the best way to handle your pension deficit. That’s like putting more money on your credit card when they raise the interest rate. It’s time for the taxpayers to question the way our public officials run our city. If you ran your house the way Sorensen runs the city of Chico, you’d be calling Laurel, today.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Incredible ! CharlesDo unto others as you would have them do unto you.
in Chico it just seems to be “do unto others…”
or another uncomfortable thruth Juanita:
The real “Golden Rule” in Butte County in general and in Chico specifically: “Those who have the gold, (think good ole boys), make the rules.”
Thanks Scott!
Bidwell Mansion burns to the ground. Very Very sad. I would be hugely surprised if there was any money to rebuild it. Gone forever.
As for the cause of the fire, I will not speculate publicly, nor should anyone else. Ill keep those thoughts to myself for the moment.
Growing up, Bidwell Mansion was one of the things that made Chico unique. Over the years, my mom raised a lot of money to keep the Mansion vibrant. I glad she’s not around to see this.
I can’t comment I’m too angry
Well, BCFAC reported that “someone” called in a “warming” fire on the mansion grounds, but no report whether there was any response to that.
Same with the Park Fire – people called the cops during Ronnie Dean Stout’s little rampage, which reportedly went on for at least an hour with no response from law enforcement.
We got a case of mutiny on the Bounty here – a bunch of overpaid employees who just flat refuse to do their fucking jobs. And we got a council who is not qualified to run a town, with a city manager who is obviously more concerned with his own bottom line than the welfare of the citizens. The people that run our town have no accountability, and they’re very well insulated from what the rest of us are dealing with.
You should drive by Sorensen’s house over there on Manzanita, it’s a regular compound. And at some point, he had the little parking area there next to his house, where we used to park and run our dogs in the channel, closed. As far as I’m concerned, he’s taking public land – I’d like to hear what a surveyor has to say about that concrete wall of his, sticking out into public land.
My district rep lives right around the corner from my house – her street has fresh asphalt, my street has potholes you could lose a mini-van in. And you better believe, when she calls the cops, they come. Did you see what happened when her business door was smashed – fire and cops all over the place, cleaning it up.
One of my neighbors was attacked in his shower when a transient came through a locked door and attacked him with a pair of scissors stolen from a nearby neighbor. When the victim tried to fight off his attacker, the transient smashed his head in with the lid off the man’s own toilet tank. This is the atmosphere we’re living in because of one half-assed decision after another, all based on how they can get more money to pay the pensions.
They got $4 million + to sign the first Shelter Crisis Designation – we haven’t heard anything about the money since then. They’ve signed in again, a few times, and next Tuesday they’re hearing a report about the Shelter Crisis – a verbal report from Sorensen. If you want to know what’s going on, you can watch the meeting on your computer. I don’t go out after dark anymore.