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Strap yourself in, 2016 may be a rough ride!

2 Jan

I feel overwhelmed by tv and print news stories about “the year in review.”   I don’t like letting the media tell me what were their most important stories, it smacks of tail-wagging-dog.

I let the readers tell me what were the most important stories of the year.  Looking over my statistics for the past year, I found one of my most hit posts was the recent one about Paradise Police officer Patrick Feaster being related to former Butte County Supervisor Jane Dolan. I’m still getting searches for those names and also “recall Ramsey”. We’ll have to see where that sad story goes in 2016. 

I don’t watch county politics as much as city politics, that story about Feaster was sent by a friend.  I see the posts that usually generate the most traffic here are those related to City of Chico management, or mismanagement, whichever way you look at it.  That’s the way it’s always been, pretty much.  This blog really reached a peak under the liberals, when the general feeling around town was, “why would we want to pay more taxes when our city council buys stuff like ‘Spirit Flags’?!”   We thought it would be different under a group of “conservatives” – boy, when will we learn – they all tell us whatever we want to hear, we’re just too damned easy!

People are slowly figuring that out, and “Brown Act” has become one of the most common searches.   I haven’t covered the city’s – really, Mark Sorensen’s – skirmish with Jessica Allen over the Brown Act, because I don’t understand it. The Brown Act seems toothless to me, really, because it depends on the honesty of the elected people, and the diligence of the voters. Excuse me – guffaw – that is a hoot.  I hooted my way through Sorensen’s assertion that they’re not doing anything wrong, just go back to minding your own business people.

People are also coming here to find out about tax increases, in general, but “sales tax increase” and “assessment” are probably the most common search phrases. Posts about CARD’s proposed aquatic center are specifically the most hit.

I think Bob and Jim speak for everybody when they express concern about the upcoming tax measure tsunami headed our way this year. It’s like, knowing the Dark Forces are massing, somewhere out there beyond the stars, trying to go on with your life with one ear pricked up to the sky, one eye turned to the horizon. 

2016 will be a hostile year for the Taxpayer. We have to figure out whether we are going to sit here and be milked like a herd of shackled bovine or whether we will mount counter campaigns and demand the public employees start paying down their own pension deficit, out of the salaries they currently enjoy. 

As always, I will have one ear pricked to the skies and one eye on the horizon, and a megaphone to my mouth to squeal like a pig as soon as I see the rough beast coming ’round at last. You do same!

 

 

Enterprise Record running the tax increase campaign? I thought newspapers were supposed to be objective

23 Nov

It seems  the Enterprise Record is running the campaign for a local tax increase – read Laura Urseny’s “Biz Bits” column for Sunday:

“Former Chico airport commissioner Karl Ory certainly brought a surprise to last week’s City Council meeting. During the public comment period over the AvPORTS proposal to manage the Chico airport, Ory suggested that airport improvements might warrant a bond measure.”

I know Ory has been beating this horse, can’t figure out what his interest is. Maybe somebody out there can fill me in. 

“AvPORTS — and others — have suggested that the terminal at the Chico airport is too small, given airline industry trends toward larger planes to carry more people. Sky-West used to fly in with a 30- seater, but nowadays the planes that might come to Chico — if commercial service ever returns — could be in the 100- seat size. AvPORTS suggested a larger terminal with a larger area for the Transportation Security Administration processing is needed.”

Chico couldn’t even fill the 30-seater, is the reason Sky-West is gone. Why in the hell would they send in a bigger plane? 

“One criticism was that Chico has no way to pay for the improvements. A counter was that no airline was going to come to Chico without those improvements.  Ory suggested Chico could turn to a bond for a public vote to pay for capital projects at the airport. Ory is a retired Chico airport commissioner and retired city councilman.”

Here she forgets to mention, the airline wants a subsidy to cover their losses when they can’t fill the planes – like $200,000/year!

Then she seems to be playing the Devil’s Advocate. “But this is one of those suggestions that raised eyebrows. We wonder if the community would vote to tax themselves for airport improvements, when a smaller group wouldn’t even fly out of Chico to help support commercial air service here.”

But here she comes again with that bond stuff.

“Since then, I’ve heard from another airport advocate who didn’t automatically dismiss the idea of a bond.”

She’s talking about Tom Lando, I’d bet my last $5.  Maybe Lando is finally getting a thin-skin about being tagged with this tax increase.

“Why such a thing might warrant community support, he explained, was because the airport benefits many in Chico. Benefits include the transportation for residents and businesses, as well as jobs. The advocate pointed out that large companies in considering a new location would consider getting in and out of Chico via commercial service important.”

Lando is also a member of the CARD board, as well as member of the Aquatic Facility committee. He listened to the consultant say that not having an airport was a bad indicator for the success of the Olympic style swim center CARD is pushing.  If we can’t support an airport, how could we support this aquatic facility? Lando and friends are even proposing a sports stadium for Chico, all to be built with a bond.

What neither Urseny nor Lando is talking about is how big of trouble every public entity around here is in over their unpaid CalPERS liability. You just read here, the city has assigned $6 million in pension debt to the Private Development Fund – that’s only the tip of the iceberg.  That’s what a bond would really be about, and then, in a couple of years, like Chico Unified, they’d be telling us they need yet another bond to actually improve the airport. Same old story. I hope you kids are paying attention.

Recently I’ve noticed our local media has fallen to yellow journalism. We don’t really have a newspaper in this town. I know, I’m just a blogger – internet gossip monger? But these people are supposed to uphold some sort of journalistic integrity. They are supposed to work for the public at large, not the government, or the corporations. 

Aside from the rather loose rules set before me by Word Press (for one, you have to publish, something, somewhat regularly, or they will take your blog away!) , I am free of corporate and government influences. I will continue to work in 2016 to inform you and be a tack on the chair of the Overlords. 

POST SCRIPT: And today (11/25/15) Dave Little has foisted an editorial – he’s actually mad because Chico isn’t “stepping up” to “save the airport”. 

Mr. Little, you need to step aside, and let a real journalist save the newspaper. 

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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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U-6, labor force participation, the poverty rate, and the New One Percent

28 Sep

I was just questioning the affordability of Cal Water’s proposed rate increase, here:

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2015/09/23/are-cal-waters-rates-affordable-for-butte-county/

Since then I’ve been seeing more evidence that NONE of California can afford to foot the bill for Cal Water’s champagne lifestyle anymore. Read Dan Walters, here, in the Sac Bee, published just the other day.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/dan-walters/article36719727.html

Walters is talking about our “true unemployment rate” or U-6, “which counts not only workers who are officially unemployed, but those ‘marginally attached’ to the labor force and those involuntarily working part-time.”

In Chico, for example, we have hundreds of part-time CARD workers, who by a decision of the board, were cut to 28 hours or less so that CARD would not have to pay Obamacare on these people. Meanwhile, roughly 33 CARD management employees enjoy fully paid packages running as much as $23,000  a year and full retirement at age 55 – for which they pay nothing. 

Walters reports, “Our U-6 rate is 14 percent, down a bit from the recession but still the nation’s second-highest, topped only by Nevada’s 15.2 percent.”

And here’s something I had never heard before – Walters compares our unemployment figure with our employment figure – the “labor force participation rate”. 

“Finally, the true employment picture is affected by the “labor force participation rate,” the percentage of those in the prime working age group (16-64) working or seeking work. Ours is 62.3 percent, the lowest level in 40 years.”

So, “When more than a third of potential workers sit on the sidelines, the official unemployment rate, or even U-6, look much better than they truly are. The true underemployment rate may be closer to 20 percent.”

That sounds more like Chico to me, where most of the people I know are not as employed as they would like to be – construction workers who are not getting 40 hours a week even in this supposed “building boom” we’ve been hearing about, salespeople who are not making enough sales to earn a living, retail workers who are held to less than 30 hours a week because their boss, like CARD, can’t afford Obamacare. 

I talked about the poverty rate in Chico in a recent blog – that’s people living below the poverty level ($24,000/year for a family of four). Chico’s poverty rate is higher that California – 23% compared to 17% statewide. That’s according to

http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/INC110213/00,0613014

Statistics are tough – we aren’t counting all those street people, this is information given by households to the Census Bureau. “Household” meaning a group living under one roof. We also have the State Franchise Tax Board, the IRS, the Social Service administration and the welfare agencies. According to all those people, Chico is poor by state standards, even with all those public salaries over $100,000/year – it takes a lot of poor people to balance out Mike Ramsey and Mark Orme. 

So, we’re poor for California – according to Walters, California is poor by national standards.

Back to the poverty rate. It’s not only higher than the national rate, but as the California Budget and Policy Center points out, the data indicate that 22.7 percent of the state’s children are living in poverty, and they are nearly a third of all officially impoverished Californians.

As dark as that situation may sound, it’s actually worse. By the Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure, which uses broader factors including the cost of living – especially housing – 23.4 percent of Californians are impoverished.

Those data are bolstered by two other factoids. Nearly a third of California’s 39 million residents are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the federal-state health care program for the poor, and nearly 60 percent of K-12 students qualify for reduced-price or free lunches due to low family incomes.

According to the Census Bureau, a lot of Chicoans have no healthcare insurance, more than the state average, so yeah, we have a lot of people who are eligible/enrolled in Medi-Cal. 

I found another “factoid” site when I was looking at all these figures, the California Employment Development Department:

http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/cgi/databrowsing/localAreaProfileQSMoreResult.asp?menuChoice=localAreaPro&criteria=high+wage+occupations&categoryType=employment&geogArea=0621017020&more=More

Above you will find the “High Wage Occupations” in Chico. Are you surprised to find it is mostly doctors and other medical professionals? Of course not, that’s come up before – doctors are the highest tier of the new One Percent who own most of the wealth in America, followed by professional athletes.

Are you surprised to find “Chief Executives” at Number Four in Chico? That includes public and private enterprises. In Butte County as well as Chico, I will throw out a guess – most of these positions are in the public sector, Dave Little just ran an editorial about it.

I would also include the “quasi-public” sector – the utility companies, like Cal Water and PG&E. Cal Water management pay nothing toward their benefits and pension, I haven’t been able  to find out about PG&E. 

The One Percent, vs the Ninety-Nine Percent who are too stupid to get it? 

 

What about assessment districts?

20 Sep

Word Press provides statistics about my readers, my favorite of which is the search terms by which people arrive at this site.

This week’s prize goes to the individual who punched in “bullshit district assessments”. 

Because assessment districts are bullshit.   A district that is formed to take your money based on some service that you most likely would not have asked for and will very likely never receive. 

Take the Butte County Mosquito and Vector District. These guys just put a bond on all our homes a couple of years ago, through a process by which people who own more properties get more votes, and your assessment is based on acreage. Here’s the thing – homeowners who live on a quarter acre pay more than rice farmers who flood thousands of acres of mosquito habitat a year. 

Chico pays – I pay for 11 houses because that’s what the city of Chico has planned for my two acres. But I keep up with the spray notices – they only spray South Chico. My complaint is not that I want spraying – I haven’t seen a mosquito all Summer. So, why am I paying $20 a year for mosquito fogging? 

Where do they spray? Mostly the rice fields and towns like Biggs and Gridley. Why do they need the money? Mostly for management – see here:

http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/SpecialDistricts/SpecialDistrict.aspx?fiscalyear=2013&entityid=1663

They have a Taj Majal HQ  over at Otterson Park where they have a manager, assistant manager, and office manager who take over $300,000 in salary just between them, and another $100,000+ in benefits and pension. District Manager Matt Ball told me they only paid 3% of their benefits and pension – he was glad to say that had been raised from 1%. 

Notice how salaries go down rapidly for the people who actually do the service. A pilot who spray toxins all over Butte County makes less than a guy with soft hands who sits at the office, in Chico, all day?

And then there’s CARD, who has cut their lower-paid, unbenefitted staffers, in favor of raising management salaries over $100,000 a year. CARD management pay nothing toward their benefits and pension, which are about the same as Butte Vectors.

http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/SpecialDistricts/SpecialDistrict.aspx?fiscalyear=2013&entityid=1875

CARD will put a bond measure on the ballot in 2016.

Yes, assessment districts are bullshit. See how many assessment districts run out of Butte County:

http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/SpecialDistricts/SpecialDistrictCounty.aspx?fiscalyear=2013&county=Butte

This adds to the cost of housing and everything else in our town and county, not only through assessments on our homes but because these outrageous salaries raise the cost of everything from housing to daycare to healthcare to groceries and gas. 

You might have seen the “ratesucker” commercial run by some auto insurer. It’s funny as hell, and it’s true – bad drivers add to your insurance costs no matter how good a driver you are. Well, bad voters, asleep-at-the-wheel rate and taxpayers, and corrupt politicians and public employees do the same thing to your cost of living. 

 

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Norman Elarth: “they will speak of uncontrollable external cost increases, rather than overcompensated and underfunded employees”

8 Aug

From the Chico Enterprise Record:

Policies help conceal false allocation of resources

Aquatic centers, solar power, new sports arenas around Sacramento, etc. Many are seeking the notoriety, above-market compensation, or even the cheap entertainment that becomes available by taxing the workingman. The question is why our politicians want to destroy our wealth by investing in entertainment and doubly expensive electricity, particularly since businessmen will not increase production and employment until workers are capable of paying down debt and increasing expenditures.

Unfortunately, while democracy and capitalism are both succumbing to government overspending, public greed, and the faulty allocation of financial resources, the problem is amplified by the leaders of government and its related entities. In order to maintain their power, they must increasingly provide a free lunch even more grandiose than the public can stomach, and hence we often find that their policies are shrouded in falsehood and deceit.

Thus, while our school board obscures the cash bonus and cumulative 9.2 percent raise given to our teachers, they completely hide the additional 4.3 percent of their salary that we will be paying into their pension fund for the years 2014 and 2015 combined. Another 4.3 percent will be added next year under Assembly Bill No. 1469. Their poorly managed total compensation for 10-months work will be about $60 per hour.

When cities and water and power companies help bankrupt our workers and the elderly with increased fees and rates, they speak of uncontrollable external cost increases, rather than overcompensated and underfunded employees.

— Norman Elarth, Chico

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