Archive | June, 2026

I’d like to hear Bennett, Winslow, Hawley and Goldstein explain why they just jacked rents all over Chico

21 Jun

Well, the sewer rate discussion took a nasty turn when Bennett, who asked to be allowed to reconsider his ‘yes’ vote from a previous discussion, went with Winslow, Hawley and Goldstein, voting to shove the sewer rate increase right up people’s asses.

Yes, they expect the rest of us to foot the bill for their little pipedreams for Downtown. None of this money will show up in your older neighborhood, take good care of your septic tank. There are square miles of Chico that do not have any sewer to hook up too, having been annexed for the tax money but never hooked up with any city services. When they come after us, they’re going to want a lot of money.

My family tried to sell out of Chico, but the developers who looked at our property told us the Chico market is overbuilt already, and they are waiting for another “correction”. Like 2008?

A local contractor we know told us that the only money in building right now is in low income housing.

Mark Sorensen once reminded me that low income property takes that property out of the tax base. It turns into an expense instead of an asset. Think hard about that, and then take a look at what the city is permitting around Chico.

Nobody wants to explain to me why when we build more housing the price of homes AND rent just keeps going up.

Ann Seymore says in the letters section that compared to the bill for the war and the new ballroom, the sewer charges are just chump change. Does she even know what she’s talking about?

Here’s a good question for Bennett, Winslow, Hawley and Goldstein – what do they expect the sewer increase to do to rents in Chico?

Back to the coffee pot Bat Mom.

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Tomorrow night council to discuss their sewer rate scam. Staff admits – that original sewer rate proposal was their way of getting existing users to pay forward for years and years of development.

15 Jun

Tomorrow night city council will revisit the sewer rate increase. I read the report, available here

https://chico-ca.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&event_id=1196&meta_id=103624

Here’s the problem – developers don’t want to pay their own way, they want existing neighborhoods to be stuck for their cost of providing whole new parts of town with sewer lines. Read this excerpt.

Sanitary Sewer Master Plan (SSMP) identifies all projects necessary to support buildout of the City per
the General Plan. If new development occurs and a new pipeline is installed to serve only that
development, then that financial responsibility is completely put on the new development. However, when a new development occurs that relies partially on existing sewer mains that do not have sufficient capacity, then that sewer main needs to be upsized. When this occurs, the existing users benefit from a brand-new pipe and are therefore responsible for a portion of the newly installed pipe cost. This is deemed “Sanitary Sewer Master Plan Projects – Existing User Contribution”.

So, when a developer wants to flop a new subdivision in your neighborhood, and the sewer main has to be upsized to provide for that new subdivision, existing users have to pay for it? Even though it would not have been necessary if not for that subdivision? Wow, a brand new pipe! For that they wanted to raise sewer rates by 150%. For developers.

But they hit the beehive with a stick this time – finally. People who threw the mailed ballot assessment that changed us to a “volumetric” rate base came out of the wood work to bitch about this new increase. So staff came up with some new suggestions. They admitted that they based that rate increase on the “assumption… that buildout will occur over the next 20 years.” Assumptions, assumptions – always making asses out of you and me! After the tar and feathers committee came out of nowhere they offer to “extend” their assumption to 40 years or just have it “removed completely”.

My dad would say, they just pulled that rate increase figure out of their ass-umptions.

Our council and staff are afraid of developers. They threaten that if they can’t get us to pay they will have to issue bonds (another way of getting us to pay).

If no fees are collected for this purpose, the risk is that a developer will propose a new development with
their share of sewer costs, and the City will not have funds available to support the existing user
contribution. In this case, the City could reimburse the developer or pursue debt financing to provide the
City’s existing user share of costs.

That original sewer rate proposal was their way of getting existing users to pay forward for years and years of development. We’re not paying the real cost of delivering our own water, or carrying away our sewage – we’re paying for the next wave of overdevelopment.

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Yes California elections are full of fraud. The Feds could help instead of standing by thumbing their noses at us.

8 Jun

It’s funny to hear the conservatives in Washington cluck about campaign improprieties in California – they blame mail-in ballots. I think that’s ignorant on their part. There’s a lot more wrong with California elections that has nothing to do with how the ballots are delivered.

It starts with voter registration. Our registration process here allows not only non-citizens to vote, but allows people to register without a real address. As one legislator pointed out on the morning news, California does not require any proof of citizenship, only a statement from the registrant that they are a legal citizen.

California also allows a person who claims to have no fixed address to register just about anywhere in the jurisdiction in which they want to vote – a street corner, a shelter, city hall. They can have their voting materials mailed to a PO Box. Without very strict oversight, these policies allow non-citizens to vote at addresses all over the state. That is fraud.

I’m sorry Pollyanna, but some people are bad and they lie. And people can also be stupid and not good at their jobs. It’s just too easy for the overseers to be crooked or incompetent, it’s a system that is set up for election fraud.

The conservatives at the federal legislature think mail-in ballots are ripe for fraud. They are accusing liberal California election officials using mail-in ballots as an excuse to hold up the count while they manufacture more ballots in their favor. Is that my fault? I mailed my ballot in and received a receipt via email on May 16. But the election office was not allowed to count it until election day.

I like mail in ballots and I think it would be easy to make sure they don’t hold up the election process. It is a fact that we have a lot of ballots here in California, it takes a long time to count millions of ballots. So we need a law that says the ballot has to be received, not just postmarked, on election day. And county clerks always complain about staff shortages. Maybe the feds could help us out with teams of official, impartial, trained ballot handlers.

The registration process should be the same whether or not a voter requests a mail-in ballot – you should have to present identification with your picture and street address when you register and sign your form with the same signature that’s on your ID. This could be done at the post office, the DMV, and other state and federal offices that serve the public. But it should be done in person, and it should be good as long as you have that valid ID. But then my mail-in ballot should be good with my signature as long as my ID is valid.

I don’t need the results overnight, I want them to be accurate. I think we need more federal oversight to achieve that.