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Private developer fund deficit due to $6 million pension liability

19 Nov

What a day I had yesterday, started it off with that Finance Committee workshop Downtown.  I was on my bike, bouncing through the park by 8:20, the air was damp and smokey and my muffler was wrapped around my head. When I rode home about an hour and a half later, the sun had warmed up and the day positively sparkled. I was home by 9:45 and off to work. All day I thought about what I heard at that meeting, and it really pissed me off.

Hey, do any of you remember that story out of Manton, just east of Red Bluff, about a group of school kids waiting for their bus one morning, witnessed a fight between a bear and a cougar over a deer carcass?  I can’t remember how that played out, who got the carcass, but the kids described it as quite a sight.  Well, yesterday I got to watch our mayor, Mark Sorensen, and one of our long time local developers, Pete Giampoli, go at it over a $6 million pension deficit. 

A couple of days ago I was complaining about the report for this meeting –

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2015/11/14/consultant-report-if-we-stopped-subsidizing-new-development-we-could-get-a-whole-nother-cop/

So yesterday I went to the meeting to see what the developer community had to say about it. There they were – Webb and Giampoli, and a few others, an old realtor named Doug, the usual suspects. I’ve watched Bill Webb get older,  but I am still waiting for him to grow up.  I know they read the consultant’s report because they carried it up to the dais and referred to various entries, questioning this and that. I know they are pissed because  the report makes them look like leeches – taking services from the city for which they pay less than the average homeowner. The homeowner has been subsiding the developers – when we put a new roof on our house, we pay about three times what they pay for the permit.

The real stinker –  ‘cuse my pun – is sewer connects. You probably know the homeowner pays thousands – our neighbor paid about $17,000 – just for the hook-up. Just to tap into the trunk line that runs past your house. Meanwhile, I got Tom Lando to admit, at that same time, about 2003 – developers were paying $3500 per unit. Why? Because developers are not made to pay for the trunk line to be laid, but the homeowner is expected to pay for that. That’s why the homeowner is charged by the “frontage” of their lot, the actual street length of their property. So, if you have a wide shallow property, you will not only pay more than the developer, you’ll pay more than your neighbor with the same size lot, but his is narrow and deep. Get what I’m saying?  Homeowners have been taking a screwing for years, while developers have oftentimes skipped without paying any fees. The city has been “deferring” fees – so the developer does not have to pay until his job is “built out”, or finished to the last lot. How long you think it’s going to take them to finish Meriam Park?

Ever hear of the Winchester Mystery House? That lady wasn’t crazy – check the records, she never paid one dime towards permits for that mess. As long as she kept building something she didn’t have to pay.

Developers have enjoyed a sweet hayride in this town, all the while telling us of the benefits they provide. They provide jobs – well, at least as long as the boom lasts. They provide housing – at inflated market prices that will fall in a few years and leave people all over town in foreclosure.  They destroyed our housing market over the years from 2005 – 2007, and the city went along with it for the one time fees. They might have thought property tax values would go up, but that was short lived. As foreclosures swept our town, property values went plummeting. A house on our street that originally sold for almost $600,000 last sold for less than $400,000.  Families were ruined.

 Over that period, city council signed an MOU attaching city salaries to revenue increases, “but not revenue decreases”, and salaries Downtown roughly tripled.

A couple of these developers tried to tell the city, the business has up-turns and down-turns, and the city should have responded to the downturns by cutting expenses Downtown. Frank Fields and Sean Morgan were quick to bring up the lay-offs, but forgot to mention – new positions have been hired since, and salaries have been raised. Morgan even made a creepy speech about how “the people who were responsible for this (our current financial morass) are gone now, you don’t see them around town anymore….”

See, he’s afraid to say, “Dave Burkland”. For your information, Sean the Idiot, I just saw Burkland at Mangrove Safeway the other day. He looked right at me and my husband with that “oh GOD!” look. He lives out off Hwy 32, west of town, in a great big nice house, and hauls in over $100,000 in pension a year. Wow, he’s so punished!  Hennessy pulls down a great salary in Temecula and her family still lives in a posh pad in North Chico. Unless she is caught literally stealing, she will enjoy a pension of over $100,000 for the rest of her life.

Morgan makes this speech at almost every meeting, reminding everybody that our new, fiscally conservative council is on the job! But, guess what – they’re not.

First I listened to Fields lay out the kind of mess we’re in – over $6 million pension deficit, just in the Private Development Fund. Yeah, remember that cost allocation Bullshit I told you about – well the developers got their introductory lesson yesterday. Yes, through the magic of cost allocation, the city can dip into funds to pay salaries and benefits and pension for employees who have nothing to do with that fund – they were at a meeting one day where that fund was discussed…

The developers railed, they said the cost study must be wrong.  Mark Sorensen became impatient – I’ll say it – bitchy.  He really attacked Pete Giampoli, telling Giampoli he wanted a specific point from that cost study that was wrong. I know Giampoli wanted to say, “the part where we have to pay the pensions”, but you know what, Pete Giampoli doesn’t have the ganas to say “shit” when he has a mouthful. I think “Giampoli” is the Italian equivalent of “peindejo.” 

Here I sat, like Little Black Sambo – watching the tigers fight. They both suck as far as I’m concerned, but I have to agree with the developers on this pension liability crap. And then, Consultant Chad Wolford moved up to the microphone to tell them both to put their peckers back in their pants.

I like Chad, he’s funny. I could tell he’d dealt with these developers personally, he used first names. I could tell he was slightly insulted by the cracks about his cost study, he assured us that the study was completely objective. He also pointed out he’d answered all their questions previous to the meeting – “in every case the critics had not read the study or had not listened to me when I explained it…”

The study involves the “actual” expenses – and, sorry, that includes the pensions – related to the services they receive – for example, plan checking. Through cost allocation, they’re not only paying for the employee who comes out to the job site and handles their plans, they’re paying for the maintenance and utilities for his office space at City Hall, they’re paying for the assistants who help that employee by making copies and coffee, they’re paying for the janitress who comes through to clean the coffee pot and empty the trash cans. 

And, since they laid off so many of his co-workers, plan checker man  told us, he’s “in the field all day and in my office until 7 o’clock at night…”  That’s Overtime sweetie, and they allocate that.

Sure you pay for that in private enterprise, but Giampoli reminded us – in the private sector, there’s competition to keep prices and salaries reasonable, affordable. The city has quite the monopoly here, and they get to make the rules. And they charge more for these services than the county charges, without any apology. 

Chad was not hired, he reminded us, to decide whether salaries or compensation were fair, he was there to tell us what those expenses were and what were our options for cutting the divide between revenues and expenses. He’s nobody’s friend, he has no dog in this fight. I bet if he did have a dog in this fight, it would have no hind legs.

http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/price/frog.htm

As I listened to the consultant I realized I was running out of time – I promised my husband I’d be home by 9:45 so we could get a jump on our work day. He was home oiling and sharpening his chain saw, rounding up all the rakes and loppers, getting ready to spend a sunny afternoon clearing brush and cleaning up tree trash with our son. I was looking forward to a day of running between burn piles with a pitchfork, cause I’m a weirdo.  I started toward the front door of the chambers, pulling on my jacket and digging my hat and scarf out of my bag. I lingered in the front entry to put away my notebook, and I heard Chad saying something about the “real problem,” so I got my notebook back out and stood listening by the door.

He explained very plainly that when city management went through two rounds of cutting workers from the payroll, “you didn’t reduce the cost of overhead”. He doesn’t mean, the PG&E bill. He said, “management salaries, compensation and pension.”  The mayor and his “conservative council”  laid off all the worker bees, but they didn’t lay off any management. In fact, they hired more management and raised management salaries. 

Right now, our management employees are all veterans of the CalPERS system. As such, they are not subject to the new legislation that forces public employees to pay half their expenses – they pay 9 percent of pensions of 70 percent of their highest year’s earnings at age 55. 

Frank Fields made it very clear – the private development fund deficit is “largely due to pension obligation.”  They’ve emptied the General Fund making transfers, now they want the developers to pay more.

And not just the developers – they did not, in front of me, address the problem of homeowners paying so much beyond actual cost. 

PS:  Now you might want to read the conversation I had about a year and a half ago with Mayor Sorensen, in which he says I made up the pension deficit. That Mark, he’s a crack-up.

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2014/03/04/2508/

PSS: The consultant made a remark that stuck – he included city council as “overhead“, and actually mentioned that we could cut our city council. That’s true – a lot of towns operate fine with five, we have seven. I don’t have a current figure, but last time I checked, the mayor gets a $9,000 “stipend,” the other councilors get almost $7,000 each, and then they get health insurance packages ranging from about $8,000 to over $20,000 (Sorensen was taking a $21,000 package last time I checked, in addition to whatever he gets as city manager of Biggs). Cutting two councilors would mean a minimum savings of two $7,000 stipends and two $8,000 health insurance packages – $30,000/year.

 

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Butte County Behavioral Health director describes process by which more homeless are attracted to Chico to provide salaries for public workers

5 Nov

I attended the Local Government Committee yesterday afternoon, and after listening to the Butte County Behavioral Health Director Dorian Kittrell talk about his departments’ efforts to administer to the homeless, I’m depressed.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this discrepancy between what I’m hearing from Chico PD about their spending hours at Enloe with “street people” and what I have been hearing from Kittrell about all the staffing and programs the county offers to administer to the same people. 

According to County Administrative Officer Paul Hahn, over half our county resources – employees and budget – go to programs to administer to the homeless and poor. 

This item was agendized by Chico council member Reanette Fillmer, who said “people” don’t think the city is doing enough to administer to the homeless, and she wanted to hear what the other various agencies were doing. 

Here’s what they’re doing – they’re bringing homeless people to Chico every day, providing millions and millions of dollars in housing and “programs” to facilitate their dysfunction. Some of these programs, according to Kittrell, are intended to house these people only for a couple of days, get these people cleaned up, sometimes “back on their meds,” and then back out into the community to go back to being a problem.  He even mentioned one program for which patients are being brought in from outside the county to fill the beds.He acted as though that was great! Yeah, it means more money for him and the rest of the hogs. 

Kittrell is even trying to enlist private landlords to house these people. This, he answered Reanette Fillmer, is “the gap” in local homeless services, we aren’t providing enough housing for these people. Even after he listed the various types of transitional, temporary, and “emergency” housing the county and other agencies offer, and the millions that go into these programs. 

You know what that means – instead of having to get a use permit and deal with public hearings, they just sneak what amounts to a group home into your neighborhood without having to even tell anybody. This is the kind of thing that makes neighbors hostile toward landlords and rentals. 

Kittrell says they actually spend about $2 million a year on employees who are supposed to be contacting local landlords, asking for housing for these people, openly described as having “mental problems” and even substance abuse problems.  Not just housing, he says, but people who care enough to babysit their tenants, make sure they pay their rent on time, mow their lawn, and take their meds. 

Excuse me for saying this, but that’s nuts.  They spend millions on buildings that only house 9, or 11, or 16 people at a time, millions more on staff to run these programs, and then turn to the public and tell us, we need to be our brother’s keeper.  We’re all qualified to provide care for mentally ill people? But Kittrell gets a package worth over $200,000? 

Kittrell and others tried to tell us, 80 percent of our “homeless population come from Chico.” What does that mean in a transplant town like this? Where do their parents live? That’s where “they come from”. Where was the last place they served time? That’s where “they come from.” For every one of these people who was born in Butte County, I’ll show you somebody that followed the Grateful Dead out here, or came here because we have a college campus, or came here because we have “good” social programs. 

What does “local” or “townie” even mean around here anymore? Nothing. Kittrell lives in Yuba City, his last job was in Sacramento. What we’re talking about, are the two kinds of people that take advantage. The first kind are creeps who have learned to live a life that doesn’t have any  rules or boundaries, just blend in with the local scene and don’t get caught red-handed. If you do get caught, your crazy, and that includes your drug problem, and you must be taken care of like a new baby.  

The other kind of take advantage types are the public workers who make a very sweet lifestyle out of administering to these creeps.  The first kind might break into your car, or sell drugs to the kids at the high school, but the second kind gets into your purse, into your bank account, attaches themselves to your property taxes.

It’s like being eaten alive from both ends.

At one point Kittrell said he wants to get to people “before they are in crisis.” Well, I’ll say, Kittrell and these others are creating crisis in our community. They’re ripping us off of money we need to pay our bills, send our kids to school, money we could  be spreading more around this community. While our streets and other public facilities are in ruin, these people manage to get a bigger budget every year, telling us they’re looking out for our interests. They’re just feathering their own nests.

Here’s why they don’t go into the park, or “under the bridges”, as Kittrell says – they’ve cut the funding for that kind of outreach in favor of paying $100,000 + salaries and $25,000 + compensation packages. They don’t have enough money for outreach workers – one man blamed it on Arnold Swarzenegger. No, it’s mismanagement. It’s managers eating all the money for themselves and leaving nothing to hire people who actually work “hands-on” with the patients. 

Why are Chico  PD spending so much time at Enloe with “street people”? Because even with all these agencies and staff who are supposed to be equipped to deal with the mentally ill, I was told, law enforcement can’t tell when a person is drunk or on drugs or has schizophrenia, so they have to take them to Enloe ER to be evaluated. Kittrell insisted that Butte County BH has plenty of staff to take these people, but I’m still told that a police officer has to be present. I’m just not getting it.

What I am getting, is that with these people in charge, we will soon be living in the most expensive mental hospital north of San Francisco. 

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Happy Election Day! Time to join Chico Taxpayers Association, get ready for the tax blitz!

3 Nov

Gotta love this modern world – today, my cell phone reminded me, is Election Day, “all day.” 

The second Tuesday in November is reserved for elections, whether or not there are any issues to put on the ballot. Elections are usually held in even years, but “special elections” can be called in the event of a vacancy on a board or maybe somebody gathered enough signatures to put a measure up. I’m not sure what the rules are. There’s also an opportunity for “special elections” in June.

What I do know is we have a year before next Election Day, and things are going to start happening over the next six months. People are going to announce their candidacies, and I’d bet my last five dollars at least two tax initiatives will pop up – I’m guessing, Chico PD will go for a sales tax increase and CARD will pursue a bond or assessment on our homes.

There are different ways this can happen. For the sales tax increase, I believe Chico City Council could just vote to put it on the ballot, or they could require some local group to go out and get the signatures on petitions. Measure J, the cell phone tax measure, was placed on the ballot by city councilors, although I can’t remember the vote, it wasn’t unanimous. I don’t know if it takes a simple or super majority to place a measure on the ballot. 

The elected board at CARD could also decide to put an assessment or bond on the ballot, or, failing to get the required votes, refuse to place it on the ballot, necessitating the collection of signatures on petitions by some local group. 

One group that has mentioned raising the sales tax specifically for Chico Police is local realtor Jack Van Rossum, who is also with an organization called “Chico Police Department Business Support Team”.  Interviewed by Alan Chamberlain on his podcast “Chico Currents,” Van Rossum said he would like to have a sales tax increase that is devoted to hiring more staff for the police department. 

I have not seen anything in the agendas about this issue, but I know this man, or member of his group, or the police chief, the president of the CPOA – anybody can lobby members of council separately. Under the toothless Brown Act, he can speak to each and every one of them, and as long as there aren’t four of them in the room together, the public is out of the conversation.  I sat at one meeting where our mayor Mark Sorensen went on at length about the ways council members can kibitz city issues privately without violating the Brown Act.  I know neither Sorensen, Coolidge nor Fillmer are stupid enough to get caught there – and they can check with Debbie Presson, who councils them in the ways in which they can circumvent the Brown Act. 

Morgan is stupid enough, but he knows he’s being watched.

So, I’m guessing there has been a lively conversation about raising sales tax, here and there, snitch and snatch, but we won’t hear about it until they’ve figured out how to get it on the ballot without getting kicked out in the 2018 election.   My prediction is, if they pass this tax, Morgan, Coolidge and Fillmer will toss Sorensen to the taxpayers like a spring lamb and then throw down over who gets the mayor’s chair. 

As for CARD, I’d bet they will also throw a bond or assessment on the ballot without much discussion. I think they’ve already decided to do it, they’re obviously trying to figure out how to frame it for the public.

Imagine my surprise when I read David Little’s editorial this morning:

“CARD promises at least one more of these wish-list meetings, which get people excited about the possibilities. But even though there’s an obvious need for a facility and the site is chosen, CARD continues to ignore for now a key component: money.”

Tough Guy, eh? 

“The consultant says the financing question will be addressed later, but it seems backward. It’s useless to do studies, gather stakeholders and invite the community to public meetings — all of which costs taxpayer money — before figuring out what the community can afford.”

Oh, I forgot – Little did not attend nor did he send any reporter to the 4pm committee meeting that preceded the 7pm public meeting. He would have heard the consultants both telling the committee the same thing. I could tell both consultants were getting frustrated – this group wants all the bells and whistles, they want to sell a pie-in-the-sky to the voters, without showing the price tag right up front. That is exactly what CARD and the Chico Area Swim Association people are trying to do – get us drunk and then tell us to get out our check books.

Even Little is going along with the notion that “user groups” will pay for this turkey.

“CARD has already said it doesn’t have the millions for an aquatic center just sitting around. So any multimilliondollar project would require financial support from swim teams, businesses and taxpayers, probably in the form of a tax.”

The lady consultant flat said it – “user groups” come to the table with their palms up, hands empty. The editor whispers into his shirtsleeve, “probably in the form of a tax.”  Probably? Again, he didn’t attend the meetings, any of them. I wonder if he saw CARD consultant Greg Melton’s three design proposals, the cheapest of which was $10 million. 

It’s easy to see where the Enterprise Record sits on this thing – that’s a pretty limp-wristed protest. I’m guessing they will back the sales tax increase as well.

So, we have our work cut out for us. It’s time to join Chico Taxpayers Association. What does that involve? Stay tuned here. Attend meetings and write a report for me to post. Write letters to the city council and CARD. I’ll keep posting the information and the links, it’s up to you to act.

Like Arlo Guthrie said in Alice’s Restaurant ramble, “One guy is crazy, two guys are (politically incorrect), but three guys – that’s a movement…”

 

 

 

 

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Airport Commission will not recommend AVPorts; CARD committee will hear from $60,000 swimming pool consultant tonight

28 Oct

At last, good news to report.  The Airport Commission will not recommend hiring AVPorts to manage the airport – just when I thought these guys would trade a cow for a bag of magic beans.

And, here’s the refreshing part – 13 people lined up in the council chambers to tell the commission not to recommend this deal. That’s actually a lot of people to attend one of these commission meetings. They all said they thought AVPorts’ proposal was too expensive and many felt AVPorts was making promises they could never keep. For one thing, somebody pointed out, AVPorts has never successfully brought commercial service back to any airport they’ve worked for, and that was the carrot they’ve been dangling for months now. 

Some people opined that “there’s no hope” for regaining commercial service.  I’m glad to hear that – why we need commercial service with Sacramento International Airport less than a two hour drive up a road we’ve spent millions of tax dollars improving is beyond me. The commercial service conversation is being kept afloat by a very small group of self-servers, who, as my grandma used to say, can’t see past the end of their own nose. They want commercial air service, for themselves, for their puffed up visions of what Chico is “supposed to be“, so they don’t have to feel as though they come from a podunk town when they are hobnobbing with their expensive friends in the Bay Area and LA. They’re embarrassed of our town because we don’t have big, stinking jets flying over our homes, dropping space peanuts through our roofs?

It’s hard to relate to this crowd – maybe because they don’t really live in Chico, they live on the road and in the air between their “homes” – storage units – in the Bay Area and Hawaii and other wonderful places. Chico is just one of the places they temporarily hang their hat, sticking their johnson into our business here for their personal gain and then hitting the road for better prospects. I’ve met these people through these meetings Downtown, I get to know their faces just about the time they pack up their carpet bag and head for some other little burg that still has a few loose bucks to grease their palms. 

AVPorts got about $200,000, just for coming to Chico and entertaining us at a couple of meetings. I’m still laughing about the idea of putting city staffers in pilot’s and stewardess uniforms, having them walk around City Plaza during functions, acting like, “Flying is FUN!”  Brings back memories of a, uh, simpler time…

The real simpletons here are the council who agreed to this deal. AVPorts actually mentioned hiring a specific person – Rod Dinger, who has run Redding Airport. What’s wrong with our council and staff? Why can’t they just hire an airport manager?  We need a $200,000 consultant to hire a person? 

The same thing is going on at Chico Area Recreation District this afternoon, 4pm, CARD Center on Vallombrosa. A consultant will report on the $60,000 “feasibility study” being run to get the voters to put a bond on their homes to pay, not really for an aquatic center, but for the $1.7 million pension deficit currently hanging over CARD, and CalPERS, like a time bomb. I’d sure like to think 13 members of the public would come in to express their concerns about CARD’s spending policies – especially now that they are thinking of taking over the Nature Center, including another management salary, and promising money for projects like the recent pump track and improvements at the skate park. In 2012 they laid off employees and cut hours so they could avoid paying Obamacare for their hourly workers, opting instead to make a $400,000 “side fund pay-off” to CalPERS toward salaried management pensions. Current CARD management pay NOTHING toward their own pensions out of salaries over $100,000.

They also ran a survey a couple of years ago that came back negative – the taxpayers do not support a bond for a facility that will primarily be used for private clubs.  But the CARD board recently voted to spend another $60,000 trying to tell us we do! Helloooooo? 

Meetings People, you got to attend the meetings.

 

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search term of the week: “how to defeat a city sales tax increase…”

4 Oct

I’ve been busy – I got a splinter in my finger and whoa, it got infected. Having run the gamut with the local medical scene, I waited until it was swollen up like a basketball and then I got a new razor blade out of my husband’s tool box and I cut it.

BOOM! Bloody puss everywhere, what a mess. I had to cut it a couple more times to get all the junk out, squeezing it and dabbing at it with a Q-tip soaked in witch hazel. Then I took a pair of scissors we got from the vet, and I cut the rest of the blister off so it wouldn’t get full of puss again. At this point I started to see tadpoles swimming in my eyeballs so I had to quit.

I would have amputated the finger to avoid a trip to any of our filthy local medical establishments. I’m looking at it right now, poking it with my other finger and everything – I can’t believe it’s almost healed already. Feels brand new, except a stiff little scab on the tip of my finger. It’s shocking how an injury like that just takes all my concentration, even now I think about it every time I touch that finger to the keyboard.

It’s still hard to concentrate with all the stuff going on around here. It’s like one of those tv shows where the plot line is so complicated, if you miss one episode you might as well quit watching. And when I turn to fellow audience members to see what happened while I was in the bathroom, I get, “sorry, I missed that meeting…” or “oh, I don’t have time…”  

After a recent conversation with one of my elected representatives and staff regarding the homeless situation, crime, and the County Behavioral Health Department, I’m tempted to blow this whole Chico scene and go off grid.  Just say,  Fuck it,  like EVERY DAY.  But when I look at that sea of crap floating in here and all I got is this little dinghy, I want to scream at the top of my lungs, “Man the battle stations!” There is nothing left but The Fight. I won’t give up everything I own here and hit the road like a dust bowl Oakie.  

So imagine my delight when I look at the search engine and see “how to defeat a city sales tax increase” hanging among the debris of the week? Somebody else is out there!  

I wonder what they found besides this blog. I type their search phrase into the computer.

I find out, right off the top, about two-and-a-half years ago, the voters of Los Angeles defeated a half-cent sales tax increase – $211 million/year “to prevent layoffs, fund the Los Angeles police and fire departments and improve city streets and sidewalks.”  Facing a $215 million deficit, 55% of voters just said “No!” to their city employees’ outrageous demands. Good for the people of Los Angeles. But that’s kind of a squeaker.

Next I read an interesting story from Park City, Kansas, a small town near Wichita, where a sales tax increase was placed on the 2008 ballot.   According to a pre-election article in  the Wichita Business Journal, ” a proposed one-cent sales-tax increase over 10 years — to be decided by voters Nov. 4 — to finance the construction of an $8 million recreation center is putting Park City’s pro-business reputation under fire.”

There are pictures of businesses around town with “Vote No” messages on their marquees – a sign at the local Spangles gives a phone number and encourages passersby to contact their  council members. “Park City business owners talk about the competitive disadvantage and how a higher sales tax rate would drive patrons to places outside the city with a cheaper sales tax.”

Good for Park City business owners, and good for the voters who turned out to trounce that measure by 88%.

In 2014, Wichita tried their own sales tax increase – to fix roads was all I could find on that – but the voters defeated that measure by 62%. There were three sales tax increase measures on the Sedgewick County  ballot that year, all defeated.

Kansas kicks ass. 

But, I can’t find very much about how they defeated these measures.  And there’s not much news for what happened afterwards. I found an article that threatened more highway fatalities because Missouri voters defeated a sales tax grab.

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/blog/morning_call/2014/08/missouri-sales-tax-hike-defeat-could-mean-more.html

That’s all they have – threats. Here in Chico, our police department threatens not to do their job. Well, they already don’t do their job, so what do we have for perspective?

I find, I’m not the only person who thinks the government is a financial black hole, that our public employees are only interested in their personal finances, and that we the taxpayers have had enough. 

 

 

 

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Chico PD announces quarter cent sales tax increase campaign through “Business Support Team”

29 Sep

I don’t like the Annie B’s Foundation because it’s misleading. This is supposed to be a community fund through which the willing and able can channel their disposable dollars into various “community benefit” organizations. Lately it is more and more misused by public agencies phishing for money to cover their outrageous salaries, benefits and pension packages.

And, here’s something that makes my teeth hurt every time I read it – “In addition to receiving a grant from Annie B’s, The City of Chico will match your donation by 40-60%! If you give $100, this organization can receive an additional $50 or more, based on how much is raised!”

As a city of Chico taxpayer, I am forced to give to these organizations whether or not I believe they provide any kind of “community benefit.” 

Like Chico Police Department. They’ve found a way to use a good-will organization to get more money for themselves, through an outfit called “Chico Police Department Business Support Team.” Mysterious front man Jack Van Rossum was interviewed a couple of months ago on Alan Chamberlain’s podcast variety show “Chico Currents”.  Van Rossum makes it very clear – Chico PD runs this organization, telling Van Rossum and his friends what they want and sending them out to get the money for it, one way or another. 

http://chicocurrents.net/2015/08/10/459/

Not only is Van Rossum stumping for money from Annie B’s Foundation, with the 40-60% matching grant from the city of Chico, but he says CPDBST is asking Chico city council to place a quarter cent sales tax measure on the ballot, “specifically used only for the police department…the primary concern is staffing.”

Backing Van Rossum and the  CPDBST are organizations like Chico Chamber/Clean & Safe, Chico Rotary (of which Mayor Mark Sorensen is past president and an active member), Chico Exchange Club, and Neighborhood Church.  Van Rossum says members have been very generous – he mentions the license plate readers purchased in 2013, as though they were completely paid for out of the donation fund. He forgets to mention, “40 – 60%” of that money came out of the tax coffers. 

He mentions the city of Chico is “on the verge of bankruptcy.” But can still make a 40 – 60% match on charity funding? 

Van Rossum begins by describing the “close to a substation” Chico PD is requesting at Enloe Hospital – that’s what they want the Annie B’s/City of Chico charity handout for. Van Rossum claims police officers spend a lot of time at Enloe Emergency Room,  “because of their requirements when they deal with people they meet on the street…”  He says Enloe will give the space, but it needs to be outfitted with special radio equipment because the cops can’t use their cell phones or radios from inside the hospital. He also complains that the emergency room is “always backed up…the hospital does not provide priority to the police department.”    Anybody who’s ever been to Enloe ER, he says, “knows there’s a long tedious wait to get someone to serve you…” So, these officers need their own space to do “other work.” What other work? Their other work is outside the hospital.

Wow, I don’t know where to go with that – I sat at a meeting earlier this year and listened to the head of Butte County Behavioral Health talk about the new building the county just bought over near the old Chico Community Hospital. This building would house the staff who are supposed to meet the Chico PD officers at Enloe Hospital and take these “street people” off their hands, freeing police officers up to, well, get back to their jobs.  Here Van Rossum is telling us it’s their job to sit down at Enloe cooling their heels “in the cue…”  

So, we need to pay for a county building, and we need to provide a substation at Enloe Hospital? 

And then Van Rossum goes off on a bender about how the police department is having trouble filling the positions approved and funded by our “on the verge of bankruptcy” city because the police department is understaffed. Feel dizzy?

Here’s a direct quote: “the police department has a low morality.” Chamberlain didn’t correct Mr. Van Rossum, neither will I.

 Listen to the complete interview for yourself. This is the beginning of Clean and Safe’s campaign to raise our local sales tax. 

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Latest police logs show car burglaries – with windows smashed out – on the rise in Chico

11 Sep

Almost a month ago, my husband and I encountered broken glass littering the ground at the park entrance there where Centennial meets Chico Canyon Road.  It was obvious cars had been broken into, at least four of them, right there at a popular parking lot in full view of the road. 

I was shocked that a person had just driven right up and parked on top of an obvious crime scene.

This picture was taken the morning of August 19. I was shocked that a person had just driven right up and parked on top of an obvious crime scene.

There were about a half dozen newer model cars parked there, never mind the scattered safety glass.  I wondered if people realize how many cars are broken into in various parts of the park and surrounding areas, and I’ve been watching the police logs run in the Enterprise Record. 

I was shocked to see what appears to be a jump in crime, specifically vehicle burglaries. Maybe they’re reporting better? Today I saw a lot more stuff listed than I’ve seen over the last few weeks. 

For example, did you know, there were 16 vehicle burglaries reported in the paper for the period of six days between September 4 and September 9? A vehicle burglary means something was taken without the owner’s permission from within the car, whether the car was broken into by force or the thief got in through an unlocked door or window. If the car got stolen, that’s a vehicle theft. In 10 of those vehicle burglaries, the cars were broken into, 9 of them through a smashed window. Maybe you read the blog in which I posted this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhlmKHbPFhU

This is so for real, “ninja rocks”, or “ceramic or porcelain spark plug chips or pieces”, were added to the California burglary code, possession a misdemeanor worth six months in jail or a $1,000 fine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_rocks

When I wrote that last blog a month ago, I realized, something like that is so easy to carry and dispose of, good luck ever catching anybody with them. You’d have to catch a fella in his sleep, catch him at something else illegal – say, illegal camping – and find things like that through a legal search.

The cops have been rousting bums at One Mile lately, it’s their latest campaign. They come in about 5 am and, I’m assuming, sweep the picnic tables and the ball field, maybe the roads and bigger trails directly around One Mile, with flashlights. So far I think they’ve busted about half dozen illegal campers, including some people with warrants or in possession of drugs. But no “ninja rocks” so far. 

Critics have pointed out that One Mile isn’t the only place the bums are camping. There are camps all through the over grown muck from Sycamore Pool to Five Mile, and beyond. You see the garbage littering the blackberry stands, toilet paper fluttering gaily from a dead  tree branch,  backpacks/bindles stuffed into the bushes along the dirt trails, stashed away for the owner to pick up later? I’ve seen a lot of abandoned underwear, just hanging in the bushes. 

This morning about 9am we were riding some trails in Middle Park, just below Manzanita Ave, when we smelled a wet campfire. I know there was a fire in town, but this was close, and very wet. I suspect people are camping without fear in the vast overgrowth between the creek and Vallombrosa, and I don’t know if the cops are going in there. I’m afraid they focus their efforts in areas like One Mile, and they’re just pushing the illegal campers farther up into the park. When the focused on the Downtown area they pushed them onto the Mangrove corridor and into those neighborhoods along Mangrove and Vallombrosa. 

The first thing I would say is, I’m not talking about the truly needy, or the mentally ill, I’m talking about the criminal element that swims among those others and even predates on them.

I believe the police could be more aggressive in enforcing the laws against camping on public property – that would seem simple enough. It’s covered in the city code, first in Title 9 – “Public Peace, Safety and Morals”,   “Except as otherwise provided in this Chapter, it is unlawful and a public nuisance for any person to camp or occupy camp facilities on any public property or any private property which is not operated and maintained as a campground in conformance with the regulations set forth in Title 19 of this code.”

“‘Camp’ means to place, pitch or occupy camp facilities; to live temporarily in a camp facility or outdoors.”  And, “’Camp facilities’ include, but are not limited to, tents, huts, vehicles, recreational vehicles, or temporary shelters”

I will say, the definitions seem to indicate there’s some sort of structure involved. Does this leave a loophole for the bum who sleeps on the ground under the stars? I don’t think so. I think that’s covered under the prohibition on “Depositing Foreign Matter in Public Ways,” which prohibits leaving “any glass, broken wares, hay, straw, dirt, rubbish, garbage, waste matter, filth, butcher’s offal, or branches of trees” laying around on public or private property. 

Vice Mayor Sean Morgan, Busy Bee he is, is proposing to “broaden” the “Sit and Lie” ordinance passed a couple of years ago, (which pretty simply prohibits people from laying on sidewalks Downtown) to our parks and riparian areas, even the grass around City Hall.

The City of Chico (“City”) currently has an Ordinance Prohibiting Sitting and Lying on Sidewalks in Specified Areas (“Obstruction Ordinance”); however, the City Staff recommends adoption of the attached Ordinance to broaden the language of the existing Ordinance to eliminate potential obstructions to the public right-of-way and interference with public property. Furthermore, the proposed Ordinance will designate City Hall and the immediate surrounding area as the City’s Civic Center and allow and prohibit a set of uses that preserve government and civic functions. Lastly, the City does not have regulations in place to protect its creeks, tributaries, riparian corridors and associated natural resources. The proposed Ordinance will create comprehensive regulations specifically prohibiting deleterious activities, such as: disturbing natural resources; staying or camping overnight; entering unauthorized areas; possessing alcoholic beverages; littering and illegal dumping; urinating and defecating; and discharging weapons and fireworks, in the City’s waterways.

First of all, I think our current code covers the problem, makes it pretty clear. Why they had to spend more money having the law consultant write this up is beyond me. Second of all, I’m not really sure what I think of the part where “the proposed Ordinance will designate City Hall and the immediate surrounding area as the City’s Civic Center and allow and prohibit a set of uses that preserve government and civic functions.”  

So, who gets to pick and choose which activities are appropriate for the open space around city hall? I don’t like the sound of that.

When Chico PD screamed for Sit and Lie, I happened to find an article from 10 years ago in the News and Review, regarding a similar ordinance they’d passed way back then, an ordinance that specifically banned lying on sidewalks, panhandling within certain specific boundaries, and many of the other activities the cops were ignoring. They said they needed a stricter ordinance. I didn’t get that, and I don’t get this. 

I do notice, crime is getting worse and worse in Chico. 

 

 

How will Obama’s “Cadillac health plan tax” affect city of Chico?

1 Sep

 

I heard the term “Cadillac Plan” in reference to public and quasi-public pensions and healthcare plans a few years ago. These are “defined benefits” plans – as it was explained to me, this means, the pensioneer is guaranteed payment, no matter the economy. Meaning, we, the taxpayers, are on the hook for these benefits that we were never allowed any oversight in negotiating, no matter that our jobs are headed overseas, and our homes are threatened with foreclosure.

Let’s face it – we never would have agreed to pensions or healthcare benefits for which the employee pays little to nothing, and  we certainly would have chortled and guffawed at pensions of 70 – 90 percent, available at age 50-55. But we weren’t consulted. 

These contracts are still negotiated behind closed doors without public  oversight. They show us what they’re doing, between sessions,  but it’s not like we’re allowed to push some button and throw the whole thing out when it sounds crazy. And how would we know – have you seen the kind of double-talk these things are written in? 

Steady public pressure has made slow changes. “New hires,” meaning those newly hired employees who have never worked for any public agency, are now required to pay 50 percent of their own pension and benefits. The police department has taken in a couple of new recruits from the academy over the last few months, but Chico mostly hires people who are already in the stream, and they are allowed to go on paying 9 – 12 percent.

The police recently agreed to pay 12 percent, up from ZERO percent, only if they were given generous pay raises. Right now they are pushing for a “step system” with automatic salary increases, salary minimums, and “compaction” increases – whenever a subordinate’s salary comes within a certain distance of their supervisor’s salary, the super’s salary automatically increases. Salary increases raise their pension and benefits expenses – for employees who have been “in the system,”  over 30 percent of that expense is shouldered by the taxpayers, the rest still rides on a bucking bronc of a stock market. Cal Pers is demanding more be paid by the employer/employee every year. So far our “fiscally conservative“council majority is allowing the employee to ride pretty cheap, while the taxpayer is expected  to pay more to run along behind the truck. 

Or, in this case, the Cadillac Escalade. 

The other day I finally heard about the “Cadillac Plan Tax.” Wow, how did I miss this? I know, I usually am skeptical of taxes, but this one might just pass the mustard for me. It seems, health care plans worth more than $10,200 for an individual and more than about $27,000 for a family will be subject to a (sit down) 40 percent tax.

Am I hearing, tax the public workers?

That’s what the unions heard way back in 2010. They went to Obama, who gave them a reprieve til 2018. So, that’s why we’ve been hearing about it again – they’re reprieve is about to expire, and the unions are beating the drums to get it dumped. Here’s an interesting article on that, from 2010:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/details-emerge-on-white-house-labor-health-care-agreement

But, here’s the thing. It’s not a tax on public workers, it’s a tax on their employers. Oh, shit – that’s US! Here’s an article I found from about a year ago – the state of Vermont was predicting it would cost them $9 million a year.

http://vtdigger.org/2014/11/24/cadillac-health-plan-tax-expected-cost-state-9-million-start/

And here’s Obama, trying to modify our behavior again:

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150302/NEWS/150309985

But the tax also was viewed as a way to reduce the number of health plans that have little cost-sharing and premium contributions, which some argue contribute to the overuse of healthcare. President Barack Obama has been quoted as saying the excise tax will discourage “these really fancy plans that end up driving up costs.” Lavish executive-level health plans and collegiate benefit packages, like Harvard University’s, have been oft-cited targets.

But oh oh, he might have got his pants caught on his own pitchfork – 

“However, many collectively bargained policies fall into the Cadillac bracket as well.”

And here’s the truth – public employees pay less and get more than the taxpayers.

The Health Affairs study, published Monday, sought specifics about what kind of health benefit packages unions provide for employees. People with union plans have lesser out-of-pocket obligations and don’t pay as much per month toward their premium as others with employer-based insurance, but the surprise was “the magnitude of the differences for certain things,” said Jon Gabel, a healthcare fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago and one of the study’s authors.

For instance, families in collectively bargained plans paid about $828 per year toward their premium, or about $69 per month, according to the study’s surveyed data. That compared to $4,565 for the average employer-sponsored family plan, or about $380 per month, according to 2013 data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

I don’t know if this pending doom scenario has caught on yet with our city council. The last time I looked, council members were getting packages in excess of $10,000. They choose the package they want, and only pay 2 percent of their salaries – the mayor only makes about $9,000, so he pays about $180 a year for a policy worth about $21,000.  Other councilors get similar policies but pay less because they make smaller salaries. Who wrote that? Will they pare packages down? Or will we pay more? 

I’ll try to keep an eye on this. 

 

 

Meet the New Boss – same as the Old Boss

27 Aug

Yesterday I attended the Finance Committee meeting Downtown, and found out the “salary schedule” plan Human Resources had hatched out of Reanette Fillmer’s head is as bad as I thought. I was surprised to hear Ass City Manager Chris Constantin say so. He says it will not only amount to automatic raises without review, but it will tie the city’s hands somewhat in negotiating salaries with new employees. He and Manager Mark Orme are passing along a negative recommendation to council. 

Fillmer’s little gal from Human Resources argued that it would set maximum salaries, but Constantin aptly pointed out – it sets up minimum salaries too, and they’re too generous to be competitive in our favor as employers. 

The committee – Mayor Mark Sorensen, Vice Mayor Sean Morgan, and council member Randall Stone – also rejected the salary schedule, but are recommending other changes to employee policy, regarding severance and other items. I don’t understand all of this stuff, but I hear interesting things. The severance package is important, according to Constantin, because “it’s not just about the employee getting money when they leave, it’s about them signing away their right to sue…” The stuff you hear at these meetings. 

I’ll tell you what I got out of that conversation – and yeah, this is just my best guess – the cops and fire department want automatic pay raises, and Fillmer was going to hand them over through this new salary schedule BS. I knew she was going to be bad news. Her sole purpose on council seems to be backing the public safety unions in their money demands. 

The next item involved the city’s purchasing practices. I remember listening to Constantin when he came here, telling us the various departments were just buying their pencils and paper and other supplies as they wished, some of them had caches of the stuff. At the end of the month they’d just present their bills to ex-Finance Director “Lucy Goosey” Hennessey and she’d pay what she could and turn the rest over to the red column. 

Apparently this is still going on. At one point Administrative Services (Finance) Director Frank Fields said, “we have to get it through to the department heads – you’re out of money, stop spending…” But, he still wants to raise the discretionary spending limit (what they can spend without permission) from $1,000 to $2,500.

And it’s not just about paper and pencils. There’s stuff in there about management being allowed to throw little soirees within certain amounts – and they do. The other day Mark Orme threw a little gala for Comcast. He got to use the big scissors and everything. Apparently Comcast just put some money into their infrastructure for a change, and that’s a reason to cut work and throw a party at the taxpayer’s expense. Maybe if I’d been invited my nose wouldn’t be out.  Maybe if this meant better Comcast service for me, my nose wouldn’t be out. 

This meeting was all about the State Auditor. The State Auditor determined that Chico was at high risk for financial collapse and put us on the red list. They were threatening an AUDIT, which I think they should still do, but will be satisfied  if they see that Frank and the boys  are putting some awesome overtime into talking about the budget. All they need to be doing is manipulating funds to make sure there are no deficits. They talked about that new ordinance at the last meeting I attended – whenever a fund is low they just steal money from another fund. It’s called “allocation.” Fields admitted there were severe  shortages in some funds  – one fund short by $6 million – but those deficits will be “allocated away.” In fact, some of them will be “allocated” to the Finance Committee meeting we just sat in yesterday. All those staffers – including the fire department employee who sat silently behind me through the whole meeting – will have their salaries for yesterday morning paid out of the funds discussed. 

So, yesterday’s meeting wasn’t about solvency, it was about pleasing the State Auditor and avoiding an audit. They sure are afraid to be audited, is what I’m hearing. 

Fields said as much about 100 times, he’s very “frank”. There were four items for recommendation in his report – three had to do with bookkeeping, but the fourth was just fluff – an ordinance stating that the city would use local vendors whenever possible, even  if they couldn’t beat prices from out-of-town vendors. Mark Sorensen said this idea was “ridiculous” because it would mean turning away a vendor who might be located “200  yards” out of the city limit. 

I think it’s counter-efficient. The bid should go to the lowest offer, unless that vendor is known  to be sub-par. But, Sorensen and the team recommended this be “redefined” by the city’s law consultants and brought back. I can’t imagine how much that is going to cost, for an ordinance the mayor has described as “ridiculous.” Then Fields said it didn’t matter – the auditor was only interested in the first three items. The local purchasing ordinance “clearly sends a message that the city desires to do business with local vendors.” That’s the same kind of feel-good crap people like Sorensen and Morgan complained about when the liberals were in charge.

Meet the New Boss – Same as the Old Boss.

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$taff seems to be setting up a scheme by which they can raise their own salaries without council oversight – read it for yourself

24 Aug

There’s a city Finance Committee meeting Wednesday, 8:30 am. There is a ton of interesting stuff in the agenda, including what looks like pay raises for the police and fire chiefs. 

Click to access 8-26-15FCAgendaPacket.pdf

As usual, it’s loaded purposely by the clerk so that it can not be cut and paste, you will have to troll through the whole thing yourself, like I did. 

Frankly, the reports are so thick I don’t quite understand them, but I did see copies of a pay chart and a budget that were chock full of stuff you people should know about. $taff is also recommending policy changes that should not be swept by the public in an 8:30 am meeting. It looks like they are setting up a scheme by which they can bypass council and the public and give themselves raises. 

$taff and Council just finished telling us what great shape the city is in financially – why does the budget show a $7 million General Fund deficit?  The figures are confusing – on one line it says there’s $12 million plus in the sewer fund – on another line it’s shows a $3 million deficit. And the Park fund looks tapped – somebody better tell Tom Lando, cause he’s told CARD he will try to get money for the Aquatic Center study out of the city park fund. 

That reminds me – Lando and other CARD board members have been having “Intergovernmental” meetings with members of city staff and other agencies. These meetings are not noticed on the CARD website. I’ve been asking for months to be added to the notice list. First Steve Visconti told me I’d be added but never did, and now I’ve got new director Ann Willmann giving me the dis. She told me she’d add me after the July meeting and now they’ve had another meeting for which I have not been noticed.

I don’t care if I called her a human potato – I’m not taking that back, she deserves worse. She can call me what she wants, but as long as she accepts salary and benefits at the expense of the taxpayers, I’d like to see her do her fucking job.

NOTE: Willmann finally got back to me yesterday, excusing herself for being out of the office Monday. She said, “In regards to your question, the Board’s standing committees are consistently listed on the Agenda for the Regular Board Meetings.  This allows the Committee members to report to the Board and provide information if there was a Committee meeting.  However, all Committees do not meet monthly.  The only Committee meeting that was held between the Regular Board Meeting in July and the August 20, 2015 Regular Board Meeting was the Finance Committee.  We are aware of your request to be notified of upcoming Intergovernmental Committee meetings as well as AFAC meetings, and we will notify you when we have meetings scheduled for either of those committees. ” 

Yes, the worthless wad of Brown Act allows them to list stuff in their agenda that may or may not be discussed at the meeting. It also allows them to have sub-quorum meetings (not enough members of the committee to vote) without noticing the public at all.

Well, there you see, she’s said she’s aware of my request to be notified. But, if more of you don’t start paying attention, it’s not worth my time to bother with this crap. 

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