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Short Attention Span Theater – we have the government we deserve in Chico

18 Jun

I’ve just been having a frustrating conversation with a friend about public participation. 

Sorry if I have been rude, Friend.

Friend tried to explain to me how overwhelmed most people are in their lives, they can’t pay attention.

That just got my skivvies in a bunch. I pay attention, and let me tell you, I got stuff going on.  I won’t bore you with my epic problems of the past months, but through it all, my close friends have been annoyed with my constant complaining about what the city and county and various local agencies are doing. My husband keeps telling me the government stuff is stressing me out, I should concentrate more on what’s going on at home. At least we can do something about our private problems, he says.

I have a hard time keeping it all under my hat.  Every morning, when I give my dog her insulin shot, I have to mentally prepare – “don’t think bad thoughts, don’t think bad thoughts…” as I skewer that needle into a lump of flesh behind her collar.   She lays on the floor behind me as I read the paper, read e-mails, she can hear me grumbling about stuff. I have to be careful or she’ll slip into the bedroom and stick her head under my husband’s side of the bed. I can feel the tension in her neck, makes it hard to get loose skin, sometimes she lets out a yelp and a half.

What bugs me is how people are so quick to use any excuse to stick their head in the sand, but they still expect to be allowed to complain when something finally gets under their skin.  I won’t mention names, but I’ve watched the local gadflies make big stinks about stuff, after a few months, the stink dies down, and the problem still exists.  All that blab about volunteers for the park – the park still looks like shit. The work they did at the One Mile parking lot last year has become completely overgrown with non-native invasive plants again. An area they did earlier this year is also going back to a mess.   Whole sections of the park are sub-code – if it was your yard, you’d get a notice to clean it up or pay the city to do it. 

And this conversation about keeping public restrooms open has been going on for two years now. Meanwhile, the million dollar One Mile restroom is pretty hit and miss – here’s the conundrum – if it is open, will it be usable? 

Short Attention Span Theater.

I’m going to tell you Esplanade lovers – don’t go back to sleep! Isn’t it pretty obvious, they’ve shelved the roundabouts until after the election? I’m hoping Cheryl King and friends are quietly looking for somebody to run for council, but I’m not going to bank on it.  

I’d like to see somebody run for CARD. Why don’t I do it? I would if I had some support – I ain’t going into those meetings without a posse anymore.  If they pass their bond, it means the people of Chico are completely gone fishing.

Tony St Amant said it in this morning’s paper – we have the government we deserve.

 

 

Somebody needs to run for Tom Lando’s CARD seat in November

7 Jun

When I was a little kid, a teacher told my classmates and I that if we could convince every person in America to give us a penny, we’d never have to work again.  Even a fraction of the population, he said, could make us very rich.  All we had to do was talk them into giving it to us – simple enough?

Well, I could also form an assessment district. Like Butte County Mosquito and Vector Control, or Chico Area Recreation District. Did you know – Paradise and Oroville have cemetery districts.

When you live in an assessment district, that means these agencies can stick a fee on your property taxes. These fees require a vote, but usually, just property owners, and – get a load of this – votes are “weighted” depending on how much property is owned by the individual/company/group. That’s fair, really, since the larger property owners will pay more. 

Ballots are sent by mail, looking like junk mail, and there’s no requirement that these agencies advertise or notify anybody ahead of time.   So watch your mail box – CARD is thinking about putting a property assessment in your mail box.

I wonder how many are returned and how many end up in the trash. I wonder a lot of stuff. I wonder how many homeowners have their property taxes paid by their mortgage lender, and therefore never bother to look at the itemized bill. I wonder how many people just send the check without looking.  I wonder how many people just grit their teeth and pay it, afraid to ask any questions,  cause every question just makes their heart beat harder, their blood pressure push higher, their hair fall out faster.

I’ll tell you two things that are on a ballot in November – two seats up for grabs at CARD.  One of them is currently being smothered under the elitist ass of one Tom Lando.  Mr. Lando had an agenda when he took his CARD seat – appointed, because nobody else bothered to run.  Lando’s agenda was to raise taxes, using CARD’s assessment powers to bring in more revenues to pay CalPERS every increasing demands.

See, Lando is a retired public employee – former manager of the City of Chico, in  fact.  As such, he yanks in one of the biggest pensions that ever inflicted  liability on our fair city – over $135,000/year, almost $12,000/month, in pension.  

If CalPERS goes bust, Lando is out, you heard me – almost $12,000/month. So, it’s absolutely reasonable to assume that this guy would do just about anything to keep the money pouring into CalPERS. 

You’ve heard the old Yiddish proverb:  When the fish stinks, it’s the head of the fish that stinks.  Tom Lando is your stinking fish head, you need to wrap him in newspaper and put him in the bin next November.  In order to do so, we will need a viable candidate. 

 

 

Taxpayers pay about three times the “employee” share of benefits and pension

5 Jun

What a week! I’ll ask  you a question people around here have asked for ages – is it hot enough for you?

I bet you’ve been thinking about your electric bill.   A couple of months ago, I got a notice from California Public Utilities shill Cody Naylor, inviting me to a sort of private (not noticed to the public) meeting regarding implementation of “time of use” rates, for everybody, starting in 2018.  “Time of use” means, the price of your electricity rides the stock market all day, between 10 am and 7 pm. Meaning, you pay whatever electricity is selling for, at  that moment.  Right now you can volunteer for time of use, and PG&E will give you reduced rates the rest of the day. But forget about using any of your major appliances during the day – like local Fascist Mark Stemen once sniggered at me – “get used to doing your laundry in the middle of the night Juanita!” 

Well, what about my refrigerator Mark? Where’s the social equity, Mark, when people like you, on a public salary, are able to run their air conditioner all day, damn the torpedoes, while those of living on normal salaries are balancing our PG&E with our food bills? Don’t cook in the house!

Naylor had sent me the notice, telling me he hoped I’d spread the word!  What a liar – they didn’t want people to come, are you kidding. When I complained that they weren’t running ads in the paper or sending notices in bills, Naylor’s co-shill, Claudia Portillo (Office of the Rat-out Advocate) just handed me a pile of limp excuses.  She said the utilities (this was shoved into a Cal Water rate increase meeting) missed their printing deadline and the CPUC doesn’t have the money (!?!)

The utility was originally supposed to send the public hearing notice as a bill insert. However, they were unable to meet their printing deadline to include it with customer bills. Normally the customer notice is sent only once as either a bill insert (most common), or a separate mailer (used by Cal Water for these PPHs). Unfortunately, TV and radio ads are not used because of the high costs which are allowed to be passed on to ratepayers. This is also the reason notices are usually only sent once. The CPUC keeps the costs and their passing through to ratepayers in mind when working with the utility company on customer notifications.

As a government agency, the CPUC has a very limited budget and usually cannot afford to pay for ads. However, it is customary for the CPUC’s media office to write and distribute press releases regarding these types of public hearings to various media outlets. This is done in the hopes that a media outlet will be interested and pass along the information to its audience voluntarily, at no cost to the CPUC or ratepayers.

They don’t want to pass the costs of noticing on to the ratepayers? What kind of bullshit is that? Can you believe she eats with that mouth?

Well, nevermind all that – did you get the notice for the next rate increase proposal from PG&E? This isn’t about “real time pricing,” this is just another rate increase, period.  I got the notice in my most recent bill – “operate, maintain and upgrade” systems, bs bs bs.  They mean, pay off their pension debt.

When I asked Ms. Portillo and Mr. Naylor about their pensions, Portillo sent me some interesting links.

https://www.calpers.ca.gov/

There I found this pdf – “Facts at a Glance”

Click to access facts-at-a-glance.pdf

The first fact that caught my glance was there at the bottom – taxpayers (“employers”)  pay about three times what the employees pay for their own benefits. 

I  know I’ve been bitching alot about the homeless and the crimes they commit. Here we have a whole class of people who are ripping us off, and we’re just sitting here allowing it. 

Enterprise Record running a scare campaign on behalf of Chico PD – they will endorse a safety tax, I’ll bet my bicycle on it

8 Apr

I love to read what the readers are thinking about – the search term of the day is “collective bargaining is inherintly political”  Typo included. 

Inherently – according to Google, means  existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute

If you want to understand “collective bargaining,” watch “On The Waterfront“. 

Right now the city is bargaining with the police department. Their contract includes stuff like, automatic promotions with step pay increases.  They get 90 percent of their highest year’s earnings at age 50, paying only 12 percent of the premiums out of their $100,000+ salaries.  And the contract is written so that they don’t have to pay taxes on these benefits. Think about that, but don’t hurt yourself.

They even get paid to “don and doff” – shower and dress before and after their shift. Talk about Divas!  My goodness, somebody get me a wet towel. SNAP!

Chico PD are a gang of racketeers. They use intimidation to get what they want. They use their imbedded newspaper editor to spread fear – gangs? Really David Little? What would David Little know about gangs? His kids went to “charter school” (where students are picked and chosen) and had a backyard swimming pool (despite all his insincere protests about the closure of Shapiro Pool). 

Then yesterday, we see a headline story about an old idiot who leaves his bike unlocked at Walmart and it’s stolen. Because this man makes a weekly fun ride up to Salmon Hole wearing a green t-shirt printed “Park Watch” (that’s funny, I don’t believe he is watching anything but the trail in front of his tire) – we’re supposed to feel sorry for this man? If he were my husband I’d take away his driver’s license and his credit cards, and I damn sure wouldn’t leave him alone with the grandkids.

This merits a big, front page story? And how do you like the way the editor made it sound like a mugging in the park? 

All this, while the death of Merle Haggard runs across the bottom of the page like so much Hollywood trivia.

David  Little is running a scare campaign for the cops.  Good bye journalism. 

 

 

 

This is why taxpayers get cranky

5 Apr

Where have I been? Where have you been?

I’m still waiting to hear back from Enterprise Record editor David Little regarding the disparity between the public salaries he reports in his “newspaper” and the figures reported by the state controller. For example, Laura Urseny reported that CARD director Ann Willman makes $111,000 a year, the state controller reports $124,000 – just in salary.  I wrote the editor the usual polite note, and he promised to check into it and get back to me.

And the crickets chirped.

I am also waiting to hear back from my Third District supervisor Maureen Kirk regarding a joint Cal Water and PG&E “hearing” scheduled by the CPUC for April 26. Maureen sent me the notice, and I asked her what the county’s strategy is for opposing these rate hikes. 

And the crickets chirped.

I’m still waiting to hear the outrage of the public over all these rate hikes and tax increases, but, again, chirping crickets.

What is wrong with people in this town? I think it’s that everybody sits in their little houses, hiding, telling themselves it’s more important to watch American Idol. 

PG&E tells us they want to put us on “time of use” rates. That means, if you use power between 10am and 7pm, you pay whatever electricity is selling for on “the market.” Think back, think hard, think ENRON.

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

Hey, here’s something I never knew – CalPERs current situation has a lot to do with questionable deals they made with Enron (from Wikipedia):

In 1993, Enron established a joint venture in energy investments with CalPERS, the California state pension fund, called the Joint Energy Development Investments (JEDI).[28] In 1997, Skilling, serving as Chief Operating Officer (COO), asked CalPERS to join Enron in a separate investment. CalPERS was interested in the idea, but only if it could be terminated as a partner in JEDI.[29] However, Enron did not want to show any debt from assuming CalPERS’ stake in JEDI on its balance sheet. Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Fastow developed the special purpose entity Chewco Investments limited partnership (L.P.) which raised debt guaranteed by Enron and was used to acquire CalPERS’s joint venture stake for $383 million.[26] Because of Fastow’s organization of Chewco, JEDI’s losses were kept off of Enron’s balance sheet.

In autumn 2001, CalPERS and Enron’s arrangement was discovered, which required the discontinuation of Enron’s prior accounting method for Chewco and JEDI. This disqualification revealed that Enron’s reported earnings from 1997 to mid-2001 would need to be reduced by $405 million and that the company’s indebtedness would increase by $628 million.

The wheeling, and the dealing – it’s enough to give you motion sickness, doesn’t it just make you want to barf? Here’s what the whole thing was really about;

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/enron-traders-caught-on-tape/

And who do we have to protect us? The CPUC? It was CPUC judge Jeanne McKinney who made the decision to consolidate a PG&E hearing with a Cal Water hearing for later this month. She also decided to consolidate the  Cal Water hearings for Chico, Marysville, Oroville and Willows on the same night, here in Chico.   Write her a note, and ask her why she would expect people from these towns to drive to Chico for a 6pm meeting.  Ask her why the PG&E hearing was scheduled for the same night.  While you are at it, ask her for her salary and how much of her own benefits she pays. There’s a phone number, if you find that more convenient.

Jeanne M. McKinney

Administrative Law Judge

California Public Utilities Commission

jmo@cpuc.ca.gov

(the address on the e-mail exchange was  jeanne.mckinney@cpuc.ca.gov  – I would use both )

Or give her a call at   (415) 703-2550 

 

Efforts underway to undermine Prop 13 for both commercial and residential

14 Mar

We barely recovered from paying our property taxes (which empty out our bank account twice a year just in time for some personal emergency to manifest itself) when I found this article online. 

http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2016/03/40-years-later-prop-13-to-be-a-main-attraction-on-2018-ballot/

For years I’ve been aware of the effort to undermine the protections of Proposition 13 for commercial properties, but now we have an effort to undermine the protections on people’s personal homes.

Wow, after that last BOOM!, can you imagine what your property taxes would have looked like under the old law? How many people would be forced out of their homes if we lost Prop 13? I know my elderly neighbors would be paying more in taxes than they paid for their home, and that seems very, very weird to me.  

And if they sold, they’d still have to pay tremendous income tax, regardless of the property taxes. Why don’t people see this for what it is – SHAKE DOWN!

In a perfect world, property taxes would be assessed based on projects within a certain distance of your house – your “neighborhood”.  We should pay for maintenance of the streets and other public infrastructure around our homes, that seems fair. When was the last time you saw any road work in your neighborhood, that didn’t involved hooking somebody up to sewer? Yeah, the city wants folks on the sewer, so they can pilfer the sewer fund for salaries and benefits, but you notice they don’t fix the street after they gopher their way in, they say they don’t have the money…

The streets in my neighborhood and around my rentals are a disaster, but the paychecks still roll out, and we are still on the hook to pay for pensions of 70 – 90 percent at age 50 – 55.   

It’s hard for little people like me to fight these big efforts, I spend most of my energy locally.   If we had better local watchdogs, we could make a difference. We need better people on council, who can negotiate down the pay and benefits and get more employees in the bargain. We have so many overpaid management positions, paying less than 10 percent toward their own pensions, we can’t afford anybody to actually do the work. 

Mark Sorensen and his friends are the beginning of the end for Chico. These people have taken business behind closed doors, actually cancelling this week’s meeting, saying there’s no business for the agenda.

Well, I’d sure like to know why my garbage man is telling everybody that Waste Management will get all the residential accounts east of the freeway when Mark Orme keeps telling me the deal is “still in negotiation”?  I’d like to know what the city, who was supposed to register with the CPUC as an “Intervenor” in the latest rate increase case for Cal Water, has not made any announcement of the hearing that’s been scheduled for next month.  It seems Mayor Sorensen feels it is not important to keep a rapport open with the public. It’s just too damned expensive to keep the public in the loop, isn’t it? 

Write those letters, ask those questions.  

Bits and pieces – readers’ questions lead me to some interesting reading

10 Mar

Recently somebody got so frustrated they typed in the search term “why is pge screwing us!!!!!!!!”

Yes, eight exclamation marks, I counted ’em.

Here’s an answer: it’s the pensions, it’s the pensions, it’s the pensions. I don’t know what PG&E’s pension liability is, but I’m guessing it would be more than the city of Chico.  They don’t pay into their own pensions, but they expect the same 70 percent at age 55, do the math.

Here’s another answer: cause they can.  Something happened at some point, and all the public watchdogs turned on the people, including the California Public Utilities Commission. Here’s an article from the Sac Bee on how that happened (sorry, old column from last October, but full of details):

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article38487060.html

Eight exclamation marks, but I wonder – has this question asker written any letters, attended any hearings? 

I’ve been getting a lot of searches regarding “Chico homeless problem” and “Torres Shelter,” as well as “Brad Montgomery salary.”  I see I’m not the only one who is curious how much it costs to run that place. Montgomery came around to answer some of our questions, including, his own salary and how much that translates into day-to-day costs – see his comments here:

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2016/02/02/its-good-to-see-people-asking-questions-about-funding-torres-shelter/

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2016/01/27/torres-shelter-closing-may-be-reason-to-celebrate/

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2016/01/28/i-think-we-all-agree-we-need-some-level-of-help-for-homeless-people-but-we-need-to-be-asking-questions-about-the-expense-and-lack-of-results/

He says they don’t receive much public money – he seems to forget all the salaries that go into that place that are paid with public money. I’ve given examples in those posts. According to Butte County Administrative Officer Paul Hahn, over half the county budget goes to indigent and mental health services.

Montgomery says it costs roughly $25  a day to house each person at the Torres, asking who can beat that. Well, I can’t – I did the math on our property taxes yesterday, and that adds $26 a day to our expenses, right off the top. We also house people, and yeah, given they have to pay their own utilities (including the salaries and pensions of utility company management), buy groceries and gas in a town swimming with public salaries, and compete for everything from daycare to clothing with people who can afford anything they want, I’m pretty sure it costs them more than $25 a day per person.

And when we go to Enloe Hospital, we are on the hook for our whole bill, or we are dead beats. Not only does Enloe serve the indigents for free, they just handed $20,000 of patient’s money to the shelter, as if it came out of  Mike Wiltermood’s back pocket.

Got any more comments to make Brad? Please, step right up, don’t wait until a post is a couple of weeks old and you don’t think anybody is reading it anymore.  

I also noticed in my stats, somebody had been looking at posts I made about Tea Party presentations. We used to have a very active Tea Party, they met monthly, and had guest speakers, like Brian Nakamura, short term city assassin. They’d filmed these presentations and posted them, sending me links to post. Now those links don’t work anymore, sorry about that. When I checked into the Chico Tea Party, I see it’s pretty dead. I can’t find current information on any local Tea Party groups. Wow, talk about a tempest in a Tea Pot.

As I recall, Tea Party patriots I knew started joining the “State of Jefferson” movement. They were having regular Sunday meetings at the library, but I don’t see those scheduled anymore. State of Jefferson, or the Pacific State, as some call it now, is still active elsewhere. 

https://www.facebook.com/StateofJeffersonParty/

At last, the unfunded pension liabilities are getting some attention.

http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2016/03/doing-the-gasb-gasp/

John Moorlach actually considered a run for governor a couple of elections ago, but I’m  guessing he stared straight into the machine that is Jerry Brown and his testicles went right into his throat. At least he’s still banging his drum.  

Reading that, we must wonder, what is Butte County’s unfunded liability? City of Chico is carrying over $90 million. 

 

 

 

City of Chico needs to amend employee contracts to count employee benefits toward their income, make them pay their own “Cadillac Tax”

2 Mar

 

When I first heard about the “Cadillac Insurance Tax” I had to giggle – a tax on those over-generous health benefits packages we give our public employees – then I found out – they don’t pay it, WE PAY IT.

Something I haven’t got around to bitching about is the health benefits packages enjoyed by public workers. I’ve said plenty about the Pension Time Bomb – well, there’s a health benefits time bomb too, at least as big as the pension bomb. Workers are getting three and four times the benefits enjoyed by most tax payers – look at the controller’s website:

http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Counties/County.aspx?entityid=4&fiscalyear=2014

Top of the list, Dorian Kittrell, County Behavioral Health Director – $48,000 in benefits. I don’t know the split there between pension and health insurance, but I know he pays less than 10 percent of the premium out of his almost $300,000 in salary.  The taxpayers pick up maybe 30 percent more, and then the rest rides on the stock market.  That is what creates the “liability” in these funds – our gracious elected officials have promised these crazy salaries, pensions, and health care packages to our elite public management, but they are paying less than 50 percent of  the cost up front.

At the city of Chico

http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?fiscalyear=2014&entityid=79

public safety “workers” take away outrageous packages – at the top of the list, a $74,229 benefits package for  one fire chief who makes more than $200,000/year in salary. 

These are the “Cadillac” plans Obama is after, to pay for his failed Obamacare, and the county of Butte and the city of Chico will be on the hook to pay 40 percent of the value of those packages. 

Why the employer? Because we give our public workers a contract stipulation that says their benefits will not be counted as part of their income. That leaves the public entity on the hook, and that means, WE PAY IT.

Here’s a good link to find information about this tax, which is set to go into effect by 2020, if not 2018.

http://www.fightthe40.com/news/

As for our local situation, the contracts are on the table right now, write to your mayor and tell him we want the benefits counted as income. Tell him we are not willing to foot the bill for these people’s outrageous lifestyle demands. 

That’s Mayor Mark Sorensen, mark.sorensen@Chicoca.gov

Election 2016 will be The Battle For Chico

2 Feb

I like to look at the blog stats, see what people are thinking about, what searches bring them here. I have to wonder if somebody’s just having fun with me when they type in “reanette fillmer stupid bitch.”

What in the world did Ms. Fillmer do this time?

A month or so ago, the lines were bouncing with curiosity and outrage over the Feaster shooting – now it’s the Torres Shelter. Tonight shelter director Brad Montgomery will make some kind of plea before City Council, we’ll see what happens.

A friend of mine asked me what I thought of Chico Chamber chair Mark Francis’ suggestion that Chico is ready for a quarter cent sales tax increase. That reminded me – I need to make another order from Lucky Vitamin. I found Lucky Vitamin a few years ago when former city manager Tom Lando started talking about raising sales tax. I didn’t like online shopping at first, but wow, it’s gotten so much better.  Since Lando first broached the subject of a sales tax increase, I’ve found my way onto various shopping sites that offer good prices and free shipping. I find shipping to be getting a lot better, and when there’s a mistake, you don’t have to drive to the store and wait in an onerous line to make your return.

It’s up to the seller to collect sales taxes, and they are not required to do so unless they have a “physical presence” in California. I know Amazon.com has made a deal with the Franchise Tax Board but only for items shipped from a California location. The customer is on the hook to report and pay uncollected sales tax, or  “use tax,” but there is no mechanism to sort this out by city, the state just keeps it.

http://blog.taxjar.com/sales-tax-for-california/

Whether or not the city gets the sale tax, local businesses will suffer. They need to know that before they decide whether or not to support a sales tax increase. For a while I got over Lando’s little threat, but I shop online more now than I did, and Francis has pissed me off again.

Sheesh, Nevada is a day trip, do they realize that?

It’s funny-weird, not funny-ha-ha,  that Francis’ wife Jolene has brought a proposal to rename City Hall after former City Mangler Fred Davis.  Davis, until his recent death, was one of the biggest pigs in our pension trough.

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2013/07/13/heres-whats-really-behind-the-park-closures-more-than-21-retirees-get-over-100000year-in-pension-ex-fire-chief-gets-over-200000/

How did that old guy worm his way up to over $149,000, in pension? He helped Tom Lando pull off that MOU that “attached salaries to revenue increases, but not decreases…”  That’s how!  Old bastard had a bag of tricks, and long after he’s rotted to dirt, Chico taxpayers will be paying for his hijinx.

Time to mount up, get ready for battle – they are coming after the roof over your head, the food on your table, your kids’ education.

It’s the Battle for Chico.

 

 

 

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The state of our city is disgraceful

30 Jan

At yesterday’s “State of the City” address, Mayor Sorensen admitted that pension liability is the biggest problem we face, that only 51 of our 400 and something employees are under the new “post retirement reform” laws (meaning they pay 50 percent of  their own benefits instead of 9 percent like the others), but cried like a baby that we “have no control” over the situation.  Soon we will be paying 41 percent of their pensions, while most of our employees pay 9 percent. We’ll pay more next year, and the year after that. We don’t have the money – that’s why they call it a “liability.” 

Sorensen even had the nerve to say, the city is putting their “deficit” to bed soon. If you look over the meeting agendas of late, you will see how they have separated the pension deficit from the budget – a second set of books – to hide the millions we owe on pensions for long-gone city employees. 

Mayor Sorensen might be a master chef and book cooker, but his daddy must have been a glassmaker, cause we can see right through him.  Although, I don’t think Sorensen can see past the end of his own nose. He simply has to protect the pensions, because he’s going to get one when he retires from his job as city manager of the little town in the orchards, Biggs.

Knowing people in town are pissed off about the condition of city and neighborhood streets, letter after letter asking that the Esplanade be left alone, and just another letter this morning describing our City Plaza as a “refugee camp,” Sorensen apparently didn’t touch those subjects. Fair weather mayor. Instead he’s going to spend a bazillion more dollars on gadgets for the cop shop. 

Like Nextdoor, the website that was touted as a kind of “Neighborhood Watch” on the computer? A big crime fighting tool? I wouldn’t know, apparently I was held out of most conversations because I did not have a “neighborhood group.” None of my neighbors were joining, nor were they interested. When I asked to be added to another group they simple never responded.  So,  I was left out of most conversations, left with general postings like, yard  sales, ad for local services, now and then a report of a suspicious activity, and meandering chatterfests about what neighbors were doing that would come to a halt as soon as somebody got their nose out.

Frankly, I began to wonder – are there even 100 Chicoans signed up for this service?

Then, after I’d been signed on about a month,  they sent me the notice about their “privacy” practices, including this blurb about cookies:

Server Logs. We automatically collect information created by your visits to our website and use of our apps, your use of Nextdoor, and your interaction with the messages we send. This information may include the browser you are using, the URLs you came from and go to, the model of your computer or mobile device, the operating system version, IP address and protocol used by your computer or mobile device, your mobile device or app identifier, and usage and browsing habits. We use this information to provide and improve our Services, to diagnose and resolve problems, to analyze trends, to help target offers and other ads (if and where applicable), to monitor aggregate usage, and to gather broad (aggregate) demographic information.

You can configure your browser to reject cookies, but doing so will prevent you from logging into our website. Our systems are not configured to accept browsers’ Do Not Track signals.”

So, I realized, this was the entire idea behind Nextdoor – gathering data for advertising. Wow.  And, I never found any useful news – I know there are car break-ins and other property crimes going on within a mile of my house but nothing ever turned up on Nextdoor.  My husband and I are able to find out more about what’s going on in our neighborhood simply by taking a rake out to our front yard and puttering around for half an hour. We also walk the hood at different times of night and day, we try to stay in touch with our neighbors. Having face time with neighbors is probably the best way to keep your hood safe.

Chico PD has credited chatter on “social networking sites” with helping them solve certain crimes, but they’ve never named Nextdoor so I don’t know what sites they’re talking about. I’m sure they watch Facebook, I’m guessing it looks like a scene from “Batman Forever”.

Take a good look, this is what you look like to passersby when you’re texting. So much for technology and crime fighting.

I didn’t hear Sorensen’s whole speech, I had to rely on the media! I didn’t hear him talk about the crime rate. But I did read a back page story about a guy who was just arrested in October for stealing a car – grand theft auto – furthermore, assault on a “police animal” – and just got arrested for essentially the same thing again this week.

http://www.chicoer.com/general-news/20160129/chico-police-nab-man-allegedly-spotted-in-stolen-pickup

In fact, Anthony Raymond Beck seems to bust out and steal a car quite frequently. In 2013 he was arrested and convicted for stealing a  car under the influence of drugs and booze, causing injury and property damage, but let out on probation in January 2014. By March he had violated his probation, arrested again for obstructing a police officer. He was arrested three times within a week in April 2015, released “O/R” each time, even after found with burglary tools.

He was arrested a total of six times in 2015, found with drugs and needles, burglary tools, under the influence, with stolen cars, yadda, yadda, yadda.

And now another stolen car. This guy is a crime spree. Why is he still out there, endangering the public safety? 

The cops will tell you it’s because these crimes have been lowered to misdemeanors by the voters. The jail is overcrowded, and they are forced to release criminals without serving a sentence, because of the voters.

No, it’s because their salaries and benefits eat the budget so that we can’t build a decent and sufficient jail. Now we are told we must pass a bond to pay for improvements at the jail or we will be at the mercy of criminals.

I feel like we’re at the mercy of the public workers. When will we get these people to do the right thing, pay their own way? 

 

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