Chico Taxpayers Association

My husband and I had an experience yesterday that reminded us why we don’t shop in Chico. Having already made a decision to stop shopping at Raleys because of a shoplifting incident, we found that Target has significantly degenerated since the last time we’d shopped there.

We ran out of toothpaste. We simply forgot to buy it in our last online order. It’s one of those items that is so much cheaper to buy online that the combined Chico/Butte sales tax does not make a difference. We knew it would be more expensive in Chico, but we needed a couple of other items. We’re done with Walmart because we felt they were also folding to shoplifters, raising prices and putting a lot of everyday merchandise into locking cabinets that require assistance (another increase in prices). So we headed for Target. We hadn’t been there for at least 10 years, and we were shocked at what we found.

For one thing, the entire mall is getting crappy. Just crappy. When we were kids my grandmother tried to get us to stop using that word all the time, but when she heard us saying “shitty” she told us, “just go back to crappy.” Here’s what I mean – get some sweepers in that parking lot, get rid of panhandlers, clean your storefront! If you’re going to have planters at least maintain them. And then we went inside. The biggest shock was not the dingy appearance, but the empty shelves. Some sections of the store looked as though there had been some sort of mob event.

While we were able to make a few purchases, we were not able to get all the everyday items on our list. Their grocery section was really sad. There were bare shelves in the dairy case, and the produce was high-priced and shoddy looking.

So I came home, put away my scanty purchases, and went about investigating. Yes, the tariffs have impacted those businesses, like Target, Costco and Walmart, that do a high volume of business with China. Apparently, those three businesses actually tried to negotiate with China, asking their Chinese partners to absorb more of the tariffs. The latest news is that Trump has made some gains, and tariffs are going down. We’ll see if Target recovers.

What I would like to see is American shoppers and retailers walking away from Chinese goods. If you want imported goods, you should get ready to pay. It’s not that hard to buy US made goods – the only thing we bought yesterday that was not made in the USA was bananas.

You can ask Google if your brand is made in the USA. I just found out an item I use all the time is made in Canada. And three of my favorite TV shows. I’ll have to work on that. You’re next Canada.

You may have heard – the City of Chicago pays 80% of their property taxes to their pension deficit. Of course that leaves very little money to do any actual work, but that seems to be the standard these days, in cities all the way to Chico, California.

In February, Illinois Policy reported, “More than 80% of Chicago’s property tax levy – including all of the automatic annual increase – goes to pensions..”

Furthermore, “the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, which has an additional $14 billion in unfunded pension liabilities that are not included in the city’s financials, has its own property tax levy specifically…” I get an instant visual of an old sow with sagging teats, trying to outrun a pack of snarling piglets.

In 2024, IP warned that “Pension costs used to consume 41% of the city’s property tax levy, but now take 80% of it. Even worse, on net, every new property tax dollar...”

We’ve watched this disaster unfolding in Chico for the last 13 years. We’re headed for Chicago. Baby, I don’t want to go.

Here’s one thing we shouldn’t do – allow unions to make campaign contributions. In Chicago, the mayor is leading the charge to raise taxes.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-26/chicago-mayor-struggles-to-find-revenue-fix-for-debt-ridden-city

Mr. Johnson is a union shill. His campaign was over half-funded by the unions – well, duh. Of course they want a man in charge who will guarantee they will get their 70-90% pensions without paying rational contributions. In a clip from Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson, Johnson declared, very enthusiastically, “Chicago is a union town!” You have to ask yourself, what does that mean to the rest of us?

In Chico and Butte County we have staffers on automatic pay schedules, thousands of dollars in salary increases per person, per year. City management has created new positions at salaries over $100,000. Employee contributions remain at less than 25%, some less than 10%. For pensions of 70-90% of their highest year’s salary, with annual increases.

This might be okay if CalPERS was solvent, but they aren’t. They make poor investments, based on personal interest and personal gain, they demand more money from Chico every year, as city management pours millions more into the deficit every year. It’s like a broken toilet.

Speaking of a broken toilet, the city of Chico is facing the awesome failure of past administrations to deal with the failing sewer system. The pipes Downtown are over 100 years old in sections. They’ve been failing for years and the city has known it, but just “kicked the can down the road…” (Mark Orme used exactly these words pitching Measure H) Now it’s time for the taxpayers to fix it!

Just like Chicago.

Remember, a couple of years ago, Chico used a mailed ballot scam to pass what amounts to a sewer tax – they changed to “consumption based” sewer charges. The difference between a “volume based charge” and a “consumption based charge” is being charged for what you actually flush down your drains to the sewer system, or being charged in addition for the water you use on your lawns and gardens that never goes to the sewer. Meaning, with consumption based, you pay twice for the water you bought from Cal Water. They used mailed ballots because they knew people didn’t understand their rights and it would pass without a whimper. Read here.

See how these people are? Our city clerk, who has a legal responsibility to protect the voters, presided over that charade, because she, along with the city manager, was offered automatic raises over the next two years. They will retire at over $200,000 within the next three years, and you’ll be paying for it.

Here’s another prediction: the city will pursue a new tax measure for the sewer within the next two years. Put your money in the hat, I’ll bet my last $5.

The latest news that MediCal is waaaaay over budget because there are too many illegal aliens on the program reminded me of being cut off Cal Covered because my husband and I don’t make enough money. But non-citizens get Medi-Cal? To the tune of $2.7 BILLION?

“The administration acknowledged that more people are enrolled in the program than the state anticipated, and that the state is spending $2.7 billion more than it planned on coverage expansions for immigrants without legal status.“

Today I read that Newsom has acknowledged that he lobbied hard for those non-citizens to be given aid that is now being denied to citizens.  

My situation is unrelated, I’m not sure if illegal aliens have been allowed to enroll in California Covered. I just know my husband and I were very abruptly un-enrolled because our income was not keeping up with the increasing minimum income required for California Covered. See, Cal Covered is NOT about providing people with affordable insurance, it’s about making sure you can pay the deductible portion of your hospital bill.

Our alternative is MediCal, but I got Butte County Social Services to admit that if we enrolled in MediCal we would be agreeing to turn over our family home at our death to pay for services rendered. The county/state would determine how much we owed them, and then our kids would be left with the pickings, if anything. It is not uncommon for Californians to sue the State Recovery Program for keeping their parents’ entire estate, without providing records of money actually owed.

At 65 we can get Medicare, but it doesn’t cover everything, and patients can be left with deductibles. Doctors and hospitals can also choose not to accept Medicare, except under certain emergency conditions.

This is nuts, and we can thank the Governor and the Democratic-run legislature. They’ve lobbied for people who enter our country illegally to get benefits we pay for but are denied access to. I’d like to ask Gavin Newsom, personally, but wasn’t asked over to University Farms for his little get-together – “are you at war with the citizens of California? Is it because more people voted for Trump than ever before?”

When our house was burned, he and Kamala Harris told us we had voted for the wrong people. Is that what this is about?

And now he wants to run for president – how’s he planning to treat whole states that voted for Trump?

Uh-oh.

I have tried to follow the discussion regarding housing, I get the gist of it – it’s another “infill” vs “sprawl” argument. Again. We’ve been here so many times I think I should start making hash marks.

Infill makes sense for my neighborhood. We have big lots of an acre or more that would accommodate more houses. We are in the central part of town and we have many traffic arteries. We have sewer and water. And it would be good for the neighborhood, providing that the city provide street maintenance, sidewalks, drainage, and other amenities promised when we were annexed over 20 years ago.

But, in past, infill has been controversial, because it wasn’t done right. When we had a liberal council, infill was a shoehorn deal – New Urban – shove as many houses as possible in somebody’s back acre. The city adopted the Planned Use Development ordinance, by which developers were given variances to just about everything in the code – things like density, set-back, parking requirements, and other land use restrictions that the “big” developers are held to. These “flag-lot” developments were usually serviced by one tiny driveway sandwiched in between two existing houses. One minute it’s your neighbor’s two-car driveway and garage, the next minute it’s a road with cars cruising in and out at all hours of the day and night. Street lights on your bedroom windows – great!

Infill is a problem when it’s not compatible with the neighborhood. Another problem is when the existing neighborhood gets absolutely no benefit. In Chico, neighbors oftentimes protested these developments because they created traffic and parking problems, and encroached on neighboring properties. Suddenly your quiet street was super busy and there was a second story window staring down four feet off your fence. But there was no “upside” – the city didn’t make street improvements, in fact, the sewer hook-ups resulted in shitty patch jobs that became serial pot-holes.

After a few successful protests from neighborhood groups, it seems like infill went out of fashion. Like if they had to take the neighbors into consideration, they just didn’t want to do it.

That’s the city of Chico’s fault. I believe infill could work, and be accepted by the neighbors. It’s the city who has a poor attitude toward infill because it doesn’t generate as much in property taxes as the big subdivisions. They don’t encourage infill developers and they provide no assistance to property owners who want to make their property more development ready.

In my neighborhood we have 1.5 to 2 acre properties with a house in front. If these owners want to split their home off and divide the rest into simple lots for development, they are on the hook to pay all the fees – according to the state board of realtors, anywhere from $50 – 80,000. Just to split the property into lots for sale. On the city of Chico website it says that just the application fee is over $4,000. Just to have them tell you whether they’ll let you do it or not.

So we go on the sprawl, while the center of town and what used to be grand old neighborhoods fall into the usual abyss of neglect and abandon.

Wow, I been AWOL – missed all of April? Even April Fool’s Day Chico City Council meeting? Yep, I been busy, I got pots on the stove and irons in the fire.

I still look at the agendas when I get a chance to sit down (I have a timer going off right now, for two different chores) – looking over a Finance Committee report from February, I found a $12,846,466.00 payment to CalPERS.

Let me spell that out – twelve MILLION, eight hundred, forty six thousand, four hundred and sixty-six dollars. Now read it out loud. Repeat it to a friend, see if their eyeballs pop out. Cause if they don’t, you need to throw a bucket of cold water on their lobster tail and read it again. That’s a lot of fucking money folks, and we’re paying it.

See the agenda item below, for the CalPERS Unfunded Liability Reserve, created by employees to pay their own CalPERS deficit. Were you asked about this? No. They take the money from the General Fund, as of last June they had taken over $8 million. They took another $14 million+ over the last quarter, made the $12 million+ payment, and were left with over $9 million toward next year. Part of that money was Measure H. Here’s the agenda item from that Finance Committee meeting report.

903 CalPERS Unfunded Liability Reserve 6/30/24; (Actuarial) available balance 8,476,829; revenues 14,131,113 ; expenditures 12,846,466; xfers in/out 0 available balance 2/28/25 9,761,476. (includes the modified adopted figures from the report).

In the same report, there is another fund, 904, the Pension Stabilization Trust, through which they transfer the money from the General Fund. It’s like a laundering scheme. You really have to watch those walnut shells to see where that pea is going.

904 Pension Stabilization Trust 5/30/24 available balance 7,378,750 revenues 147,225 expenditures 11,406 xfers in/out 0 available balance 7,514,569 Modified adopted budget Revenues 0 expenditures 0 xfers in/out 764,035 available balance 8,142,785

Next year they intend to pay more than $18 million. That payment is in addition to their salaries and the payroll payments we make to CalPERS. These are the “catch up payments” that go to the deficit left by the completely ridiculous shares they pay toward their own retirement.

So think about this – we are paying these fuckers TWICE, once while they are “working”, and again while they go off to a plush retirement. And many of them take a “retirement job,” usually in the public sector, that adds to their pension, driving up the cost, for which they pay NOTHING.

If you’re not pissed off yet, you need to stick a fucking pin in your ass, just to see if you’re still alive.

Here’s one for you Scott – thanks for keeping me on my toes, Old Buddy. Chico PD and Fire Department are the biggest piggies in the trough. They generate over half the pension deficit. They need to pay a more rational and practical share of their own benefits, NOW. The cops need to write “mandatory overtime” out of the contracts. They need to “doff and don” on their own dimes. Etc. Read the cop contracts – they will complain loudly about the fire department “sleeping and playing video games” on the clock, but you should see the kind of crap their union demands in their contracts. The contracts are available on the city website, let me know if you have trouble finding them.

But yeah, we need a major overhaul of the city fire department, especially after the Park Fire. They sleep on the job because they are scheduled to work whole days on, instead of being given an 8 hour shift. Things need to be said Folks. And I’m sayin’ ’em. Scuse my French.