Archive | August, 2025

With revenues remaining ‘flat,’ Chico just sent over $14 million to CalPERS in “catch-up” payments – that’s where the Measure H revenues are going, just follow the bouncing dollar sign.

29 Aug

My husband and I recently took a “working” vacation – workation? We needed a new toilet for our rental, and finding the prices at Chico home improvement stores to be prohibitive, we went to Oregon to find a better deal. With school in and Summer slowly giving over to Fall, our usual motel had a cheap room for us. We got more savings at local grocery stores and produce stands. We stocked up on household stuff at Walmart, including all the type of over the counter medicines that are taxable in Chico. Shoes on SALE! at Big 5, we bought two pairs. We saved money that offset the price of the motel even further.

I’ll say, you need to do stuff for your mental health too. Every now and then, we need to get out of town, see how other people are doing things. As a Chico resident, I can tell you first hand – Chico has become an unpleasant place to shop, financially, morally, and aesthetically.

Medford, for example, has a vibrant retail sector. The stores are clean and well-run, and you can find what you need, no empty shelves. Their Winco is bigger and has a wider brand selection of various products. There are two really nice natural foods stores, with super fresh local produce. We couldn’t do the U-Pick farms this year, but we found really good apples and pears at the grocery store, for $2.50/lb.

Free parking everywhere, no kiosks, no hassle getting where you want to go.

Here’s the funny thing – while Chico is reporting flat revenues, even after a full one-cent sales tax increase, Medford reports their revenues have been on the up, up, up since COVID ended. With no state or local sales tax.

Chico made the same mistake that a Redding City Council member has called out – basing budget projections on one-time money, and then crying poormouth when the funds dry up. Specifically, American Rescue Funds. Those funds – millions – were horribly miss-spent by the city of Chico, and furthermore, included in budget projections for the future, even though they were one-time grants.

Having spent those funds like a pack of drunken sailors instead of dedicating them to needed infrastructure projects, they had some nerve to put the bite on voters to approve that one-cent sales tax. Of course they put up a simple majority measure that guaranteed the money would go into the General Fund, with no restrictions on spending.

“The ending of federal funds, like the American Rescue Plan, and a drying up of city grant money ($5.2 million) are creating a gap that could lead to dipping into the general fund for programs, including those for the homeless.”

“programs” – yeah sure! As usual, employee expenses continue to grow. According to city finance manager Barbara Martin, “On the expense side, personnel costs remain the leading driver. Unfunded pension liability continues to loom large, with the city’s payment for the upcoming year exceeding $14 million.”

Yep.

Meanwhile, “City of Medford revenues are not flat; recent trends and future projections indicate growth, though the rate has varied. While growth slowed slightly during the COVID-19 pandemic, city reports and budget adoptions show upward trends, with a significant increase projected for the upcoming 2025–2027 budget cycle…”

Medford voters will be asked to approve a Transient Occupancy Tax increase. My husband tells me Oregon’s overall TOT is higher than California. But who cares – it’s a percentage of the total room price, and the places we stay in Oregon are so much cheaper than their counterparts in California, TOT is more like a charitable donation to keep the town you’re visiting ahead of the extra infrastructural strains of tourism. I’ll say, the big, busy streets and intersections around our hotel and the retail areas we patronize are well planned, well maintained, and pedestrian friendly.

UPDATE: I looked it up – Medford has a 10.5% TOT, 9% of which goes to the city of Medford to help provide the amenities that tourists enjoy while remediating the strains of tourism, like extra traffic. Meanwhile, Chico charges 12% TOT, 10% goes to the GENERAL FUND. As you will recall, the General Fund is a grab bag with no restrictions. Again, the General Fund is looted every year for millions (this year over $14 million) to pay the unfunded liability left by the completely unrealistic shares that city employees pay for their overly generous benefits.

When we shop in Chico, I oftentimes have to sit in our truck while my husband goes into a store to safeguard tools we have to carry in the back of the truck. We’d never think of walking to do any shopping in Chico, even small grocery purchases, and we never ride our bikes in Chico anymore. People who have moved here within the last 20 years just wouldn’t get it – Chico was better than this when my husband and I were raising our family here. Now it’s gone past the pale, and I don’t know if there’s any coming back.

My prediction – they are going to try to float a bond for the sewer.

City of Chico fumbles through Warren settlement – how much is this Whack A Mole game costing us? Meanwhile, Van Overbeek says we’ll be needing more money for the massive sewer job Downtown. Sales tax revenues are flat. Where will the money come from?

19 Aug

I’ve been reading an obscure book I picked up from a cousin. The author describes the pitfalls of Democracy. He opines that a decision made by simple majority – only 50%+1 of the voters – is tyranny.

I’ll agree, but what are you going to do about tyranny when you live in tyranny? Over the last 10 years, our liberal state government has quickly and decisively chipped away at our voters’ rights, allowing simple majority decisions on tax measures. When California voters put a measure on the ballot seeking to restore the 2/3’s requirement for tax measures, our governor and his friends in the legislature went to un-precedented lengths to make sure that the voters could not stop tax increases, declaring our citizen’s initiative to be illegal and taking it off the ballot before we were allowed to vote on it.

So here we are in Tyranny, what to do, what to do. People are leaving – to those people, I say, thanks for nothing, you cowards. If all I can do is mau-mau the flak catchers, well, that’s what I’m going to do. Let’s start with the bi-weekly idiot show known as Chico City Council. The problem with Democracy, is who runs it.

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/city-of-chico-seeking-relief-from-some-of-the-rules-in-the-warren-v-chico/article_d87c143f-6805-4c8d-8647-511ee41f723d.html

The public has been kept out of this conversation for years. Just now we’re hearing that our city legal advisors have been incompetent. The incompetent leading the stupid (council). Just now they’re asking themselves questions like, was the settlement about the eight people named in the suit, or is every unhoused individual that shows up in town part of the “protected class” of litigants? They never asked that question in the beginning? Our $200,000+/year attorneys never asked that question?

We’ve been stuck in this mire since 2018, when Andrew Coolidge went with the liberals on council to sign the Shelter Crisis Designation. That agreement came with over $4 million, but it set us on a path that has led to millions more lost down the rabbit hole. Or let’s say, the mole hole. Council, including Coolidge and current mayor Kasey Reynolds, hired the attorneys who have misled them, and then none of them thought the logical thought – “shouldn’t I check with my own attorney to see if any of this shit is legal or makes sense? What is a ‘class’, anyway?” Even if any of them have had doubts about what any of our city attorney’s have told them, they didn’t have the balls to check into it, or even express their doubt.

The last person on council who asked the pointy questions was Kami Denlay.

Nowadays, it’s common for people to ignore court orders, even defy the orders of the President of the United States. Why didn’t our council refuse to go along with Judge England’s insanity? Because they were afraid, afraid in their little panties – Sean Morgan admitted that on his radio show. Afraid what the consequences would be for them personally. They didn’t give a shit what happened to our town.

While they diddled millions away on the lawsuit, and the not-so-clever game of Whack A Mole they’ve engaged in, they’ve left our streets and other infrastructure to go to rot. They’ve approved subdivisions in every directions, failing to address major infrastructural issues around the existing parts of town. Like the 150 year old sewer lines running under Downtown Chico, into the surrounding neighborhoods, and in one case, directly into Little Chico Creek.

Yes, the sewer line from Tin Roof Bakery was found to be dumping human waste into Little Chico Creek. That story came out because the breach was found by a Chico State class on a field trip. The city has known the sewer lines were a disaster for over 50 years, but nobody has had the guts to do anything about it. They went along spending money on jolly projects Downtown: a $4 million-plus plaza remodel that nobody wanted; lateral parking/no let’s make it parallel again/no let’s make it lateral again; Studebaker strips on the sidewalks, then tore them out to bulb the corners; most recently, “parklet” seating for bars and restaurants, along the very streets that will have to be torn completely out over the next 10 years. All paid for by the taxpayers, many of whom are still waiting for sidewalks, drainage and new sewer lines in their neighborhoods.

Why has the sewer job taken so long? Because instead of directly addressing the problem and applying for state and federal funding to help with the cost, city “stakeholders” have been engaging in a circular argument about turning the sewer job into a total remodel of Downtown Chico. Here, just a year ago, Addison Winslow addresses his happy-wanderer fantasy for a Downtown remodel.

People Always Ask Me, "How Is It Being on the Chico City Council?"
byu/addisonforchico inChicoCA

Meanwhile, city revenues are flat, two years into a full cent sales tax increase that was supposed to be the end-all of our problems. We’ve heard about businesses closing Downtown – look around the rest of town. Look at the city reports – sales tax revenues are DOWN, not up. How do sales tax revenues go down after a full cent increase?

City policies are driving shoppers away, that’s how. They keep telling us we don’t pay enough to have the kind of services that used to be what cities exist to do. How has this happened? Ask yourself – how have you voted? Have you voted?

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Thank you Doug LaMalfa, Hang In There Baby!

11 Aug

I watched the live-stream of the Doug LaMalfa “town hall” this morning while I was doing chores. I think I been traumatized. It was completely fucking nuts. These people have no interest in our community, they are more interested in tearing it down.

I’ll give it to LaMalfa, he was really hanging in there, answering questions, over a screaming mob of people that looked like extras from the filming of “Night of the Living Dead”. He plodded on, answering a question about The Big Beautiful Bill – not a question really, but an attempt to further the same misinformation coming out of the liberal media and the Democratic party. It’s like Groucho Marx asking you when you stopped beating your wife. When he was done he patiently asked for the next question. A woman stepped up to the podium, she seemed rational, but she just wasted her time with a snarky, self-serving diatribe about Donald Trump.

They don’t even think for themselves, they have to be fed by groups like ReSisters, a hate group based in Connecticut, on the writings of a very hateful and divisive man named Howard Zinn.

https://resistersct.org/take-action/power-of-one/

ReSisters promotes hatefulness and divisive behavior, for people who have no real stake in your community, just a jealous and zealous desire to destroy anything they can’t have for themselves.

I would have liked to hear more about forest clearance and fire prevention, improvements to the electrical grid and roads, and internet for rural areas. Unfortunately nobody asked rational questions. The meeting wore on, I finished my chores and turned off the phone. I’ll give Doug a 5 out of 10 for hanging in there, but I felt like the meeting was stolen by a bunch of outside agitators and people who have no real stake in our community. I don’t know what LaMalfa could have done to prevent that, but I hope he just keeps doing it. Somebody has to push back against the haters. That’s why I voted for him, and he’s doing the job I wanted him to do.

Where is the city getting the surplus funding to take the UAL down from $150 million to $92 million?

2 Aug

I hear people bitching about tariffs raising the cost of living. No, it’s the cost of government that is raising the cost of living, especially in California.

It’s tough keeping anything affordable in California, Chico is a particularly egregious example. If you shop in Chico, you are paying for bad management and self-service Downtown, and that’s getting expensive. According to the latest reports from City Mangler Mark Sorensen, Chico revenues are flat, while expenses continue to go through the roof.

As reported in the Enterprise Record in in May of this year, “The Chico City Manager’s office anticipates flat revenues for the upcoming fiscal year (ending June 2025) while facing rising expenses due to inflation. Revenue for the upcoming fiscal year is estimated to be no higher than the $100.6 million reported for the previous fiscal year. A significant portion of the city’s funding (52%) comes from sales tax, and statewide projections point to a slight decrease (1%) in the previous year’s sales tax revenue, with only slow growth anticipated for the following year.”

Revenues are flat? But they told us Measure H was a big success, that the millions were rolling in, that the new revenues were being used for all that roadwork around town. In reality, most of that work is paid for with state and federal funds, like the state gas tax, and Americans with Disabilities Act funding. Most of the money from Measure H is being funneled into increasing payments toward the pension deficit.

Here’s a city report from 2022 with the details.

https://chico.ca.us/documents/Departments/City-Manager/Better-Chico-%E2%80%93-Join-the-Conversation/copy_of_city_and_calpers_3-2022.pdf

This report is a must-read if you want to understand how the public pensions are funded, and by whom. What is the UAL, or pension deficit?

Unfunded accrued liability (UAL) is the difference between what the pension plan is worth [what has been paid into it through employer – the taxpayers – and employee contributions] and what is expected to pay retirees. It estimates for current employees and recipients of deferred benefits, as well as retirees. The UAL for the City is about $150,769,372. The City cannot use bankruptcy as a means of relieving this shifting burden.

This “burden” has been created by unrealistic contributions, and over-generous salaries and benefits. Instead of demanding higher contributions from employees and basing salaries somewhere in the realm of reality, city management has made contracts that do not take our current financial position into consideration. When they want money, they tell us we’re in the City of Dire Straights, but when they are dealing with the employee unions behind closed doors, the sky’s the limit.

What has the City done to reduce the cost of employee pensions? You tell me. Here’s what they’re saying, which is completely misleading.

Beginning in 2011-2012, the City began negotiating lower wages with staff and paused cost of living increases for most employees to reduce what the City pays for CalPERS. In 2013-14 the City required employees to start paying some of the “normal cost” of their pension. The “normal cost” is the actuarial amount determined that is used to pay for active employee pensions. In 2015-16 employees became increasing responsible for paying some of the City’s share of pension costs and are now paying from 7.5% to 16.75% of their wages. In the 2020-2021 fiscal year, employees paid $1,020,000 of retirement that was previously paid by the City.

Here’s what really happened. In 2011/12, city council, led by then-council member Mark Sorensen, hired a guy out of Southern California for the city manager post – Brian Nakamura. Nakamura was what I call “an assassin” – he was brought in to cut staff, brutally, and get rid of any employees who were not considered to be part of the game. Sure, he cut “some” salaries, but he raised the city manager’s salary by over $20,000, up to over $200,000 a year. Now Mark Sorensen, who hired Nakamura at that unprecedented salary, is making over $211,000/year.

Nakamura did inform the public of the UAL, and the fact that neither management employees nor public safety were paying anything toward their own pensions. But the contributions he suggested were ridiculously small, and have remained that way – 7.5% – 16.75% of their salaries? And they expect the taxpayers to pick up the rest – the UAL – with interest.

“Has the City done anything else to be proactive about pension reform?” No, but they went about guaranteeing that they will get their sweet pensions without ever having to pay any reasonable share of the cost.

“The City created a Section 115 Pension Stabilization Trust to pay for future pension costs of employees. As of 1/31/22 there is $2,707,773 in this irrevocable trust account to pay towards future pension costs.” Remember this part, later we’ll see just where they get the money.

This report shuffles along through the barnyard. “Are there any additional ways the City can explore reducing pension costs?” And here begins the Big Lie.

“The City has explored Pension Obligation Bonds, which would allow the City to sell bonds to pay pension debt at a lower interest rate” Again, a lie. A Pension Obligation bond does not reduce the cost of pensions, it just shifts the entire burden, permanently, onto the taxpayers.

What they are not telling us here is that what they tried to pull – instituting a POB without an election – is illegal. They aren’t telling us that Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association issued a Cease and Desist Order, threatening to sue the city of Chico for trying to institute an illegal tax.

This sounds like another chapter of Al Franken’s book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. That was a good read, until Franken himself became a politician and a lying liar. Oh well.

The report goes on to tell us about staff’s additional efforts to get us to pay their bills – “Additionally, staff continues to campaign for pension reform within California and has met with CalPERS executives and attended board meetings to ensure the City’s voice is heard on their desire for reform.” These are exactly the words late CARD manager Ann Willmann during her parcel tax campaign. It’s a campaign folks, run by the California League of Cities on behalf of their CalPERS addicted members.

And I’ll leave you with this little pack of threats – “Why can’t the city leave CalPERS?” This is how it cuts-and-pastes, but it’s all there, I don’t have time to fix it. A figure that really bothers me is the UAL they posted in this report, dated 2022 – $150,769,372. In 2023 they reported it was only $92 million? That’s another post, or you can figure it out for yourself. Paid down with “Surplus General Funds”? Where exactly would that come from?

  1. Why can’t the City leave CalPERS and create a new retirement system for employees?
    If the City were to leave CalPERS immediately, money in CalPERS accounts would be placed in a trust to pay
    current and future retirees. If the plan is only funded at 50%, payment to current/future retirees would be 50%
    of what employees had originally been promised. This would likely result in litigation for the City.
    If the City were to leave while paying retirees full benefits, a deposit would need to be made with CalPERS to
    cover existing/future retiree benefits. Funds would be placed in an “exit trust” that would be considered
    financially “safe” resulting in interest rates of 1-3%. This is opposed to the CalPERS rate of 7%. The amount of
    the “exit trust” is required to be 4-6 time the UAL. (current UAL is $150,769,372). The deposit must be much
    higher because the interest rate in the trust account is so much lower than CalPERS 7% rate. Once the City
    leaves CalPERS, employee unions will negotiate a new defined retirement contribution.