Chico Taxpayers Association

A shooting death at the “alternative” camp site – over dogs. A late-night attempted robbery at the pick up window of a local restaurant. A car crash and related fight and shooting at the Chico skate park. What the hell?

https://krcrtv.com/news/local/chico-man-not-charged-with-homicide-in-campground-shooting-claims-self-defense

There are too many things wrong with the above story to point out – but I will ask, why are these people allowed to have dogs, and guns? The story provided on Butte County Fires and Crimes describes a situation that shouldn’t even exist – an outdoor insane asylum, “sanctioned” by city of Chico “management“.

Also on Butte County Fires and Crimes Facebook, a man provided a video of an attempted robbery –

https://www.facebook.com/groups/butte.county.fires.accidents.crimes/

Chico crime is getting out of control. I was parked waiting for my food at Los Bestos Mexican Grill on Mangrove tonight when two men wearing ski mask came up to my car they kept saying to open my door possibly robbery luckily I was able to drive off.

Please watch out everyone this was on Mangrove Chico.

I’d say, just don’t go out at night, but it’s not just nighttime. The skateboard park on Humboldt is becoming a regular crime scene at any hour. A couple of bad guys who didn’t like each other turned what is supposed to be a kids’ playground into a meeting place for druggies and criminals – at 11 o’clock in the morning. The new park proposed for Marsh Junior is their admission that the old park is a failure. Well get rid of it!

Actually, I can think of two other things we need to get rid of – City Manager Mark Sorensen and his fist puppet Billy Aldridge. This is mismanagement. Can you believe we pay some these fellas over $200,000/year EACH in salary to “manage” our town? Plus benefits, and that is another problem.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/california-might-stop-making-necessary-debt-payments-2-years

Thanks to The Dude for this article from Zero Hedge – we’ve talked about OPEB before – Other Post Employment Benefits. This is the debt created by both employer and employees paying completely unrealistic shares toward very, very generous post-retirement medical benefits, leaving the rest to ride the market with CalPERS, and then left in a bag to be picked up by the taxpayers. Well, Newsom, up to his pointy ears in his own debt, has decided we should just stop paying it.

That’s so funny – hey, let’s all stop paying our mortgage, our car payments, our credit card bills, and see how fast we end up at the “Alternative Camp Site”.

When I voted for Trump, I knew he couldn’t do anything for California. It’s up to California voters. It’s up to Chico voters.

Oh, Jesus.

Summer heat has set in and the fruit stands are up and running. Today my husband and I picked 12 pounds of peaches at one farm and grabbed a really nice melon at another. Melon is just starting, peaches will be over soon, so we go out regularly to stock up so I can freeze enough to get through winter.

It’s nice to live within proximity to farms, they don’t have this kind of produce in stores. We need to protect our farmlands, once they are developed for housing, they’re out of food production. It is backwards thinking to pave over land you can grow food on for housing to bring more people and more demand for food to your area. Water matters too, and the south east foothills are our watershed.

I live in what’s considered an old neighborhood in Chico, my house was built in the 1960’s. But in the 1950’s, the land was an almond orchard – there were still almond trees around the property when we bought it. There are/were properties around us of an acre or more, “ranchettes” subdivided out of the farm on which our house sits, but over the last 20 years, several of those have been developed into tiny housing subdivisions. This is “infill”. It makes sense since the neighborhood is no longer suitable for agriculture, and there are already streets, electric lines, and sewer lines present. Makes more sense than developing land that is not connected by infrastructure, like the proposed development known as “Valley’s Edge”. Valley’s Edge is the very definition of “sprawl”.

The sprawl vs infill argument is being led by developers, and shills such as Bill Brouhard and Tom VanOverbeek, as has been the entire development discussion, for years. Developers have a variety of reasons why they don’t want to build infill, but here’s the main reason – they can get sprawl land cheaper. They don’t want to pay people reasonable prices for their infill lots. And they don’t want to deal with the neighbors, because that might mean less money.

In our neighborhood, a developer paid a woman less than $200,000 for 1.9 acres of land, on which he built a seven house subdivision. Within four years, he sold the first house for over $650,000. That developer had been granted variances to the building code that would have allowed him to shove in ten huge houses rather than the five that would have been compatible with the neighborhood, at a higher density. The two story houses came right up to the back fences of their existing neighbors.

The neighbors protested and the subdivision was cut to seven houses, still incompatible with the neighborhood. They are shoved in so tight there’s no parking except garages (full of crap) and driveways (huge boats in front of two houses. So their extra cars and various visitors spill out onto the street in front of other peoples’ homes, putting a kink not only in neighborliness, but pedestrian and bicycle safety.

So I like infill, I really do, but it has to be done within the code and legal density of the existing neighborhood. And hey, how about a little fucking respect, okay? The developer instead went around our neighborhood taking pictures of our years old homes, pictures of “code violations” like an unmowed lawn, a taller than average milk weed growing next to somebody’s mail box, a guy’s trophy car on blocks in his driveway. They attacked us, for trying to get the city of Chico to respect the law and the city code, as well as neighbors who had been paying property taxes for nothing for years. That’s why people don’t like developers, they aren’t very nice, they seem to be set on taking advantage of other people to fatten their bottom line.

Given new state mandates for MORE HOUSING, people are no longer allowed to protest badly planned subdivisions in their town. Valley’s Edge is GO. So, I can only say, get your peaches while you have the chance, enjoy your lawn and shady trees and maybe that tiny tomato patch while you can.

Last year we talked about a shigella outbreak that had been confirmed by Butte County Health Dept.

A friend of ours had reported his own illness, and then we started hearing about other cases. The city admitted an outbreak at a “sanctioned” camp, but denied it was a public health problem. The county reported 44 cases by August, and it became apparent that this illness was making it’s way up the state by way of “unhoused individuals”. But the city of Chico still denied any problem and refused to do anything about it.

From the Safe Drinking Water Foundation –

Shigellae may be more prevalent in surface waters, such as rivers, lakes and shallow wells, than in groundwater sources. Surface waters can be easily contaminated by sewage. Water treatment plants can remove Shigellae with the use of chlorine, so the bacteria are more prevalent in raw, untreated water. Shigellosis occurs more in the summer than in the winter. Communities that effectively treat sewage and keep water supplies safe drastically reduce the number of cases of shigellosis.

One Mile Pool should have been closed. As you read above, “shigellae” are hard to detect in surface water like creeks, and how would they treat the creek?

By October the city was still assuring the public that One Mile was being tested and cleaned regularly.

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/shigella-concerns-grow-at-sycamore-pool/article_a24b6442-56a6-11ef-b747-4300126e02a8.html

This year the city finally had to admit there’s a problem and close the pool after several children ended up at UC Davis hospital in Sacramento.

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/community-concerns-growing-over-safety-of-the-water-at-sycamore-pool-in-chico-due-to/article_1a41bc0c-7a81-43a0-ae14-6ec647f3a482.html

Now it’s e coli. These kids are in serious condition, with what could very well amount to life-long problems, for a swim in the park? But the city was still denying the situation could be linked to a bacteria problem at One Mile as of a week ago. Now they’ve posted a “no swimming advisory”, which I believe is all they need to do legally to keep from being sued any further. But I think it’s too late, I think these kids will have a conga-line of lawyers at their door.

https://marlerclark.com/news_events/chico-advises-no-swimming-at-sycamore-pool-high-bacteria-levels-reported

The city won’t admit that their laissez-faire camping policies have turned One Mile into a cesspool – ” container for the temporary storage of liquid waste and sewage.” It’s against the law, and always has been, to defecate or urinate within proximity of a stream or waterway. I remember when the police used to hand out tickets to Chico State students for public urination – now this?

Folks, you get what you’ll accept.