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Stay Awake – there are a lot of issues to watch these next few months

8 Jan

What a week. I’ve been busy trying to stay on top of 2016.

People are still angry about the shooting in Paradise, judging from the searches I’m seeing, they want criminal charges for Feaster.  We’ll see where that goes, but it looks like the DA is just going to fall on the ball and lay there.

There are also a lot of searches and hits on information about city contracts, pension deals, etc. People finally seem to be paying attention to the CalPERS disaster, we’ll see if they come to the polls in June and November to do something about it.  If there’s one thing I’d like to see out of 2016 it would be four new faces on city council – four new faces that are not beholden to public employees. I’d like to see Sorensen, Coolidge and Fillmer sitting on that dais with their thumbs up their asses, getting voted down on everything, that’s what I’d like to see.

Did you read David Little’s editorial this morning? Sorry, I still read the Enterprise Record compulsively, it’s like the back of the cereal box, it’s just there.  This morning I was treated to a huge surprise – Editor Little taking on his old buddy Mark Sorensen over the hike in room fees at city hall. Ooooo, do I sense a little rub between the conservative factions? Little seems to be sticking up for League of Women Voters – which is weird, they’ve always been a little to the left, and I had thought Little was such a staunch conservative. Is his wife a member of the League? He acted the same way about Country Day School when his kids were students there – one word against Country Day and Little would go ape.  The guy has no objectivity if he’s got a dog in the fight.

I got a notice from CARD director Ann Willman about an upcoming Aquatic Facility Committee meeting, next Thursday, Jan. 14, 6pm, at Lakeside Pavilion. She also informed me they’d posted the consultant’s presentations for the previous two meetings on the website. Of course she didn’t give me a link I had to search the website.

I have to wonder why these meetings aren’t noticed on the usual page with the Board and Finance Committee meetings, but Willmann won’t answer me  on that. She’s determined to run this AFAC thing under the table. You won’t find any information about who attended or any remarks made by attendees. But, the consultant’s report is pretty damning – over 60 percent of the cost of this boondoggle will be salaries and benefits, and they will never come close to recovering costs through fees. This monstrosity will have to be almost entirely taxpayer supported, by people who will never even drive by the facility. You can see both of the consultant’s presentations here, but these aren’t “reports.”  

http://www.chicorec.com/About-Card/Aquatic-Study/index.html

I’ve probably missed some important stuff here, things are busy, busy, busy.   Other issues I’ve tried to keep track of are the school district’s plans to put a bond on the ballot, the city’s airport management discussion,  the city garbage deal, and the changes at the county dump, but that will take more nose to the grindstone, I’ll keep you posted. 

 

 

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Mayor Sorensen runs a racket

6 Jan

Last month Chico city council brought the “noise” and “disorderly events” ordinances up for an overhaul. Chico PD complained that both these ordinances were straining their workload but needed to be changed so that they could better enforce them.

The Number 1 problem with the noise ordinance was that most people were complaining about construction sites operating before 7 am and after 7pm. So, they extended construction hours from 6am to 10pm.  This, says our mayor, is to address OSHA rules about extremely hot weather.

Mark Sorensen ought to have to wear a t-shirt listing his sponsors – Chico PD and Franklin Paving.  Franklin Paving was a major donor to former Chief Mike Maloney’s PAC, which paved Mark Sorensen, Reanette Fillmer, and Andrew Coolidge’s path to council, so those three will be forever grateful.  During a construction boom, construction companies just want to get that money as fast as they can – they don’t give a rat’s ass about their employees.

As for the “party” or “disorderly events” ordinance, the cops say they needed to drop the section requiring one or more citizen complaints before they are allowed to wade in like Clint Eastwood and bust up a party. They said, and Enterprise Record editor David Little claimed in an editorial, “The primary flaw with the existing law was it required a citizen to sign a complaint, a step that could and sometimes did result in retaliation.”

Little explains, “The police said the old ordinance wasn’t doing its job. They’d enacted it just 41 times since it went into effect and hadn’t cited anyone, despite averaging more than 1,700 party complaints each year. That sounds to us like the ordinance is working.

But police say they go back to the same addresses night after night, which to them is a sign that the ordinance isn’t working.”

No, Editor, that is a sign that the cops isn’t working!  1700 complaints and they haven’t cited anyone? They say they go back to the same addresses night after night – the old ordinance allows them to cite on the second complaint.

Eliminating the requirement for a complaint allows Chico PD to pull over and investigate any gathering over 20 people that officers suspect to be “out of control.” If they decide to break up the party, they are allowed to bill the “responsible party” for their “response costs” – overtime etc for every city employee who comes on scene.

The responsible party may very well be the person who hosts the party. But if no one steps forward to take responsibility for the party, the homeowner is considered to be the responsible party. In the case of high school kids partying while the parents are away, this is legitimate. But, how can a landlord be responsible for a party when they don’t reside at the house?  The law limits what a landlord can demand of their tenants – it’s not legal to tell your tenants they can’t have their friends over for a reasonable and orderly gathering. The problem being, here, the police get to decide what is “orderly.”  The landlord hears it later – despite what the tenants have to say.

This ordinance also allows the police to notify the landlord of a “disorderly event” by mail.  All they have to do, is say they mailed the notice, and if a second offense occurs at the same address, they can bill the property owner for “response costs.”

The police say they expect landlords to evict after the first offense.

All this to protect neighbors who were harassed after they placed complaints?

After I read Little’s editorial, I wrote him a quick e-mail asking if he knew of any specific incidences of a citizen being harassed or “retributed” against for making a complaint.

He replied, “At the meeting, an officer mentioned that people who called and signed a complaint sometimes were subjected to vandalism. Specifics may be contained in the video, or I can ask Ashiah what specifics were mentioned, but she’s not in the office right now and I don’t want to pass along secondhand information.”

In past, Little has held my letters, demanded I take stuff out, because he didn’t believe something I said had really happened that way.  I don’t know where he gets off treating me that way, everything I’ve ever told him has turned out to be true. In one incident, he got the other party to admit they had been lying when they initially denied my report. I tell what I see and hear, from meetings at which no notes are taken.  I take copious notes, and I keep them stored, anytime anybody wants to see them, I’ve got piles of notes.  I write down names, I ask more questions, I write and write.

I didn’t want to make him mad, but I thought the coverage of this ordinance has been very sloppy journalism. I responded, “Now listen, I don’t mean to be flip, but what’s the difference between that and “second hand,” or “anecdotal” information?”

His excuse: “Ashiah said she has heard it several times during discussions of the noise ordinance. She can’t recall whether that was in a committee meeting, on Tuesday’s discussion of the noise ordinance (before the party ordinance) or in conversations with city officials away from meetings. I too have heard that residents are hesitant to complain.”

Even I was shocked, this is a new low for Editor Little.

Wanting to give the poor beaten down bastard another shot, I e-mailed the police department on the website:

“I have heard there have been retaliations against folks who have complained about their neighbors’ parties – where can I find the record of these complaints?”

I got this response:

 Web PD (web-pd@Chicoca.gov)
 
1/04/16
Hello Ms. Sumner,

I do apologize for the late response to your email.

I am told this is not information that is tracked by us so there isn’t any “record” to refer you to. But you are welcome to look through the media log (public information we provide for the news media, etc) that we have available at our lobby counter.

Regards,

Bret

Chico Police Department”

Well, there you have it – there is no evidence of any complaints of retribution from complainants.  It’s a racket, cooked up by the cops, perpetuated by the mayor, and endorsed by the local daily editor. They are now allowed to bill property owners for doing the job they are already getting paid for.

The city has handed the cops, and fire, very generous contracts. They don’t have the money to pay for the stuff they promised them, so they are turning to the taxpayers.

As a landlord, I screen my tenants, but I still don’t know what I am getting until they have moved into my house. Sometimes they look great on paper, they have friends and relatives who pose as ex-landlords, they use old information that is hard to verify. A couple of the worst tenants I ever had were recommended to me by a former city council member.

What would I do if I found out my tenant was having an out-of-control party? Shouldn’t I, as a taxpayer, be allowed to call the police if the party goers refuse to desist, just as I would call the police if I came home from vacation and found my house had been robbed?

But, for a second incident, I am charged? Here’s the sitch –  I’ve had tenants trash my house as they were moving out because I’d terminated their lease.  I can’t expect taxpayer supported public employees to help me without paying extra?  Would I be charged if my house was robbed twice?

This is another money grab by Chico PD.

And what else really bothers me about this whole thing is the concerted effort on the part of agencies, including the newspaper, that are supposed to work on behalf of the voters and taxpayers.

And then, as if he’s messing with us, Little printed a cartoon Dec. 29 – “The Anecdotal Evidence Detective”.  Ha, ha, ha, joke’s on us.

Public Management Contracts: “FISCAL IMPACT: The PSM Initial Proposal results in a fiscal impact of $82,994 over two years, or $9,222 average cost per employee”

3 Jan
Here's our next Book In Common

Here’s our next Book In Common

It would be so easy at  this time of year to wrap up in a shawl and retire to a rocking chair with a good book. The urge to hibernate through January is almost overwhelming. But, there’s a council meeting Tuesday, and there’s contracts on the table.

The Public Safety Management proposal is available for viewing here:

http://chico-ca.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&event_id=231&meta_id=47812

Read it yourself – they want automatic raises and more benefits. Bend over and squeal like a collective pig Chico taxpayers, as if we could stop Sorensen from handing the candy jar to the employees who got him elected. Go down there and shake your fist at that bad, bad man!

Better yet – let’s put our heads together and figure out who we can find to run against Sean Morgan in 2016. Getting rid of Morgan might restore some balance to the council, right now Sorensen and his little friends are on a tear. They are going to lead us into bankruptcy if we don’t do something to curb the salaries, benefits and pensions they are handing to management employees.

I know, you want to hibernate, me too. That’s the best time to make yourself a monster pot of java and stay alert.

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Chico PD hires 5 new officers, promotes 4 – is this going to solve our crime problem?

16 Dec

 I don’t know if you’ve been “Nextdoor” – a social website for neighbors that was introduced into Chico a few months ago. I signed up, despite a pain-in-the-ass process for which I was first asked to give my social security number or my credit card number but finally opted for a post card sent to my house to “prove” my residency.

I went along with it because I was hoping for a sort of bulletin board about crime in our neighborhoods. I expected the classified ads, the greetings, and now I find there are exclusive neighbor groups who are allowed to pick and choose who they let in regardless of address. But, I have also found some people use it to inform each other of criminal activity. I’ve noticed this type of post is increasing. 

Lately people have reported stuff like home deliveries being stolen or opened and rifled through, cars are being broken into and items stolen, and one man’s back yard shed was jimmied. These crimes have all been reported within a mile of my house. 

The pivotal weakness is that not very many of my neighbors, or anybody for that matter,  have signed onto Nextdoor, so I know there’s stuff going on that’s not appearing on the site. My husband and I used to keep up a chatter with our nearby neighbors, but our hood has changed alot over 15 years.  Lately a lot of my neighbors have moved, new people have appeared who I don’t know. One neighbor who signed onto Nextdoor has since moved, a new woman lives in her house, but the previous neighbor is still registered at the old house. This kind of website needs a good monitor. The monitor I contacted never responded to me. 

But, I see enough to know, crime is steadily increasing in Chico, and the new cops they’ve hired over the last year and the raises and promotions they’ve given have not changed anything. 

In today’s Enterprise Record, I read, “Five new Chico police officers were sworn in and four officers received promotions during a ceremony Tuesday at the Chico Fire Training Center.”

I guess there’s some good news – “The new officers — Jeremy Gagnebin, Jamie McElhinney, Trey Reid, Francisco Salinas and Miranda Wallace — graduated from the Butte College Law Enforcement Academy and will now undergo roughly six months of field training, Chico Police Chief Mike O’Brien said”  – this means, they will pay 50 percent of their own benefits and pension. I don’t think that’s enough but it’s better than the 12 percent most cops pay. 

“O’Brien also announced the promotions of Sgt. Jeramie Struthers, Lt. Matt Madden, Lt. Rob Merrifield and Deputy Chief Dave Britt.”  I’ll lay down a five spot right now – Merrifield is spiking – he’s getting a raise now so he can retire soon at a higher pension. 

And this is very telling – “O’Brien’s promotions of Madden, Merrifield and Britt were the first of his tenure as the city’s chief of police, he said, adding that when he stepped into the role six months ago he had to replace half of his command staff.  ‘I had to tap some very specific individuals on the shoulder to come serve at a very difficult time,’  he said, noting strained relations between the Police Department and community, as well as historically low staffing. ‘And each of them answered that call. In that six-month period they have all performed extraordinarily well.’  The Chico Police Department, O’Brien said, is still hiring. The department is authorized to fill 92 sworn positions. About 88 of those are currently filled.

So, O’Brien is aware the public is very pissed off, that’s good. But low staffing? They always say that. They hire more but crime just keeps increasing. They pay themselves too well, according to that front page article run in the ER recently, and I’ve checked – they get paid on a par with San Francisco PD. Been to San Francisco lately? Been shot/mugged/carjacked? Here we have petty crimes committed by a population of scum bags who are allowed to camp illegally in our parks, sit/lie/and beg on our sidewalks, harass our merchants, all despite the creation of endless ordinances designed to give the cops more excuses not to bust any of these people. 

On Nextdoor Chico PD officer Paul Ratto announced they again rousted the permanent illegal camp along the creek and under the bridge at Humboldt and Cypress. 

“Target Officers encounter repeat encampments under the bridge at Cypress Ave. / Humboldt Ave. The Target Team is in an education phase of the new ordinance (9.20.050 CMC) prohibiting subjects from storing personal property in Chico’s waterways. Today, three subjects were contacted and two were arrested on outstanding warrants. Warnings were given regarding the ordinance. Also on scene was Stairways Program Manager Michael Madieros. Sometimes in these situations subjects with mental health or substance abuse issues are identified and can be rapidly housed. Through the Stairways Program these subjects are given a place were their needs and met and treatment can begin.”

Two of them had arrest warrants, the third was illegally camping – why can’t that person be cited or arrested? They hand him over to Michael Madieros – a guy who has made a tidy living for himself because he is willing to deal with these people when the cops don’t want to be bothered. Stairways is part of Butte County Behavioral Health. County Admin Officer Paul Hahn recently reported over half the county’s budget goes to “helping” the homeless and mentally ill. I have no idea what Madieros is paid, but there’s a pack of them down there getting salaries, benefits and pension for continuing to enable and encourage dysfunctional behavior. It just perpetuates their salaries, they don’t care about the consequences this practice is having on the rest of the functional community.

What in the world are we doing, catering to these people, and paying the police more and more money to stand by “meeting their needs”?  O’Brien compliments himself  – “During the past six months, he added, the city has been able to stem the flow of officers leaving the Police Department, which is something O’Brien has attributed to competitive salaries and a “sense of hope” brought on by the leadership of the department’s command staff.”

Yeah, “competitive salaries,” competitive to huge cities with outrageous crime problems.  I don’t see any hope down there – I see a train headed for a picnic blanket. 

UPDATE 12/8/16 – Rob Merrifield retires at his spiked pay rate, Item 1.7:

http://chico-ca.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=649

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Council, CARD board up to no good – Lie Cheat and Steal!

14 Dec

Tomorrow night Chico city council will discuss applying for “Intervenor” status in the Cal Water rate increase application filed last July (CPUC rate case A.15-07-015). I’ve already let them know how I feel, time for you all to do same. 

You can reach them via the clerk, debbie.presson@chicoca.gov

You probably read, the city is under fire in a few directions. According to a study, our employees are among the highest paid in the state. Our desk clerk’s salary compares with cop salaries in the Bay Area, which is an item of concern to more people than just me. If I were a cop in Oakland, and I knew some ditzy bitch who sat on her ass in an office all day was making more in salary than I got paid in total compensation, that would piss me off.

Not to say, cops don’t get paid plenty nice. This whole salary thing is completely WHACKED.

Council is denying Jessica Allen’s claims that they violated the Brown Act, which I think stems mostly from behind doors contract talks. Allen complains the agendas aren’t clear, and she’s right. I get so tired of asking these self-satisfying $taffers to explain stuff – the explanation is usually even more confusing. Like the time Chris Constantin came to one of my Sunday CTA meetings at the library, brought the wife and everything. I thought it was cute the way they got into their rag bag trying to dress down for the common folks. Constantin was very uncomfortable. He was trying to tell me that they needed to wave the two-week sunshine period for the new police contract, saying they needed to get that signed asap to start saving all this money! It was a total load of bullshit, the police budget is bigger than ever now. Of course you might not be able to check on that, because they don’t save the old budgets or contracts on the website. Good luck finding those anywhere. 

We are dealing with liars and cheats,  who steal. Reminds me of the great days of WWE!  I miss Eddie Gurerrero.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lPA050q-GY

Lie Cheat and Steal! Like CPOA!

Tomorrow they will be putting the screw to landlords and tenants when they pass two ordinances that throw out landlord rights and curtail renters’ rights. They will be tweaking the Disorderly Events and Noise ordinances to cut the notice time for property owners. Meaning, by the time you get your mailed notice – and that’s if the county has your correct mailing address on their tax rolls – your tenants could have had a second “event” and you will be summarily charged with any “costs” the police and fire departments decide to rack up in trashing your house. 

You don’t think that happens to good landlords and tenants? How about the time my tenant had less than a dozen friends over to watch a sporting event on tv. When they went back to their cars out on the street at about 11 pm, talking and joshing I’d imagine, the neighbors called the police. Chico PD came over and broke it up, then told the neighbors it was a “gang bang.” Yeah, my tenant was Mexican, and I imagine so were some of his friends. The cops told him his friends couldn’t mill around on the street like that. Well, okay, they’d said. And the following weekend he invited them back over to watch  tv again – you should have seen this tv, it was HUGE. When you put out the bucks for a tv like that, you want to be able to invite your friends.

My asshole neighbor, Pat Brown, who had better have his left on the ready if he ever shows his face to me again, called the cops a second  time. At this time, a week later, neither Mr. Asshole Brown, who had our phone number, nor the cops had bothered to notify us of the first incident. The party was broken up again – again, a bunch of guys yakking at their cars on a public street at 10:30 or 11 pm. This time we got an angry phone call at 7am that next day, from Asshole Brown. He was so loud at the other end of the phone I could hear him in the next room. Then he backed down, he actually apologized, cause you know, he’s the kind of neighbor who acts in anger, because he’s an asshole,  and then wakes up the next day grovelling for forgiveness. 

Maybe he realized, if we went asshole on him, he would be at the asshole end of a lawsuit. So would Chico PD, they already have enough claims of racism against them. 

My husband tells me, don’t worry about this ordinance, we have so restricted our tenants’  in our leases – in fact, today I’m writing up a new addendum. According to this new party ordinance, a “gathering” is 20 or more people. I will have to add a legal addendum restricting my tenants from having gatherings of more than 15 people. Hey, if the cops can do it, I  can do it and will.

Right now I got an Avon Lady. Wow, you know those Avon parties can get swinging out of control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RcXH4nq2PY

This is an attack on renters’ rights, but I’m with my husband – let the renters come out and fight it for a change. Old Juanita has other irons on the fire right now. 

Wednesday (Dec 16 7pm) brings another public meeting at the CARD center to discuss plans for the aquatic center. CARD director Ann Willmann tells me they will not be including any discussion of Shapiro Pool or the cost estimates to fix it, which are not posted anywhere on their website either. I’ve had it with Willmann, she needs to goooooo. 

Aquatic center proponent Jan Sneed was re-elected to the CARD board with 9,000 votes.  If every one of those voters wrote a check for $1,000, we’d have almost enough money to build the least expensive design that’s been discussed so far. Those estimates go up to $28 million, but wow, wouldn’t $9 million be a start? 

 Willmann has a son on Aquajets, maybe she should open her purse. She could easily spare some money out of her $120,000/year salary, especially since she pays nothing toward her benefits or pension. CARD currently sits under a pension deficit of more than $1.2 million. None of their management pay anything toward their pensions, but expect to receive 70 percent of their salary in retirement. 

And they bitch about the street people with their hands out! 

Hold your purse strings tight, there are scum bags on every corner here.

 

 

 

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Sewer fund in trouble because of developer fee deferrals, transfers to salaries/benefits/pensions – Constantin says we have to raise fees now to avoid big fee increase in future?

3 Dec

Chico Assistant City Manager Chris Constantin assured a group of $taff, council members, and a few members of the public that our sewer treatment plant is in great shape – in the same breath he mentioned a sewage spill at Chico airport. What?  

Constantin was walking a fine line at yesterday’s Finance Committee meeting, trying to assure us that there was no imminent danger, but we better make a plan anyway, so we don’t have any more situations like the above (very quickly mentioned) spill. Not only do we need to maintain our sewer plant, but we need to plan for future hook-ups. He says 20 percent of incorporated Chico is not on sewer, and we need to plan to accommodate those households. I don’t know whether he expects people to hook up voluntarily, or if he is urging some sort of mandate, but he does not seem to think our gazillion dollar poopy ponds will be able to handle it.

He says we need some sort of regular fee increase schedule to avoid big increases in future. 

Yeah, I know – he says this was a concern before we even discussed hooking Paradise to our system. But the council went ahead and told Paradise to “look into it.”  “Look into it” meaning tens of thousands in consulting fees, but whatever, it’s not their money.

Constantin mentioned “nitrates”, as if that is the main concern in getting people to hook up to Chico sewer.

My mom gave me these. She used to go to a lot of these meeting too.

My mom gave me these. She used to go to a lot of these meetings too.

Constantin’s daddy must have been a glass maker, cause I can see right through that guy. It is NOT about the nitrates. That’s the excuse they used to get that grant to run all those lines into certain neighborhoods in town, higher density neighborhoods where they SPECULATE nitrates would be high. They have no proof, no report, nothing that says nitrates are polluting our drinking water. They do have plenty of paperwork involving the old dry cleaning establishments and gas stations around town, but those lawsuits ended up in the turnip patch.

Again people, it’s the Pension Deficit.

I have a stack of financial reports next to me – I’m not an accountant, these spread sheets look like something you’d find in the bathroom after a KISS! concert. I’ll tell you one thing I know – parentheses around numbers mean “shortfall”, “deficit”, – FUND EMPTY and still being used. There are parentheses all over our budget reports, enclosing figures in the hundred thousands and even millions. Millions of dollar of deficit in these funds, and where did it go?

You got to follow those walnut shells People, you’re getting kinda slack. $taff has learned to spin the wheel on us, move money from one pile to another so fast we can’t keep track. In fact, I think council can barely hold on themselves.

Yes, we’re in trouble. Chico is going to become a very expensive town to live in – I know, that’s already happened with the price of homes, which carries up the price of everything else with it. We need to start thinking, not only about all the tax campaigns that are rolling at us, but who we will support for council in 2016. We’ve got a mess on that dais. We have four spend-thrift “fiscal conservatives“, and then we have three liberals who don’t seem to have a clue either. They all spend other people’s money like it grows on trees.

Sheesh! 

The other thing we need to think about is, do we want to go all the way and make Chico Taxpayers a PAC? Right now it’s a registered  website, a discussion  site, but we can go all the way and  register it a PAC – that is what we need to get any respect out of the county recorder so she’ll give us the registered  voters’ list. She says only PAC’s can have the list, that’s her rule. This whole thing is pretty stacked against “grass roots” involvement. If we want to make an impact in 2016, we might want to think about it.

 

 

 

 

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No Kidding – our city is headed for deep doo-doo

29 Nov

I sent the letter below last Saturday, I had to resend, although Dave Little excused himself – “just a lot of letters in the queue”  Sure, okay, at least he printed it before this item goes to council.

There’s another Finance Committee meeting scheduled this coming week. They will pick up the conversation they left in the “workshop” I’m speaking of below. This time they will talk about how developers have got off without paying sewer fees, and how the sewer fund has been in arrears for years. From the staff report, available here:

http://www.chico.ca.us/document_library/minutes_agendas/finance_committee/12-2-15FCAgendaPacket.pdf

“For over a year, City staff have highlighted the impact of reduced revenues received from development for sewer capacity fees. As a result, the City’s general sewer operating account has picked up the significant annual loan obligations required to pay the state for the capacity expansion made to the sewer treatment plant.”

Yeah, I’ve been following this conversation – what they don’t mention is, like the Private Development Fund, the Sewer Fund has been dipped into to pay salaries, benefits and pensions for people who have never even been in the neighborhood (where property owners complain they are being eaten by flies from the poorly managed plant, staff admitting they dump raw sewage in the Sac River during heavy rainstorms…)  They don’t mention the constant tug-o-war going on between the sewer operation and M&T Ranch – both suck water out of the river for operations, which has left City of Chico leach lines “on the rocks” on several occasions, leading to millions in repairs paid by taxpayers.

Our sewer plant is a disaster, but city of Chico keeps trying to hook more people up, cause they want those fees to pay – you got it – the Pension Liability.  Now they are holding a carrot out to Paradise? Wow, this is just getting surreal. 

So, I’m just glad Little finally decided to run my last letter, I already feel another one forming in the old Brain Pan.  I wish you folks would write too. Our biggest question being – all these years you been letting the developers off, you been charging private homeowners by frontage – meaning, the length of your property that meets the street. Developers pay a flat rate – why not homeowners? Here we been subsidizing development for years, and the fund is still RED.  

$taff has been embezzling. I realize, the developers have been getting a better deal than we have, but we all been taking a screwing from $taff. 

My letter, run this morning:

A consultant’s report given to the city Finance Committee says homeowners pay about 130 percent of the true cost of building permits while for-profit developers pay less than the cost of services they receive  from the city. But this is not the entire reason for a $9 million deficit in the private development fund. 

Consultant Chad Wolford explained, while we cut our workforce heavily, we failed to cut “overhead” – that is, the management positions that take most of our budget. 

Next door, the Internal Affairs committee tackled the subject of civility as I watched our mayor attack a local developer who came to the podium to question the allocation of a $6 million pension deficit on the private development fund. Mayor Mark Sorensen listed two other options – “keep moving in your direction…racking up a million dollars a year in debt…” he told Pete Giampoli.  Sorensen’s other option was to take the money out of the General Fund, already empty because of such transfers. 

The unspoken option is  cut management positions. One recently hired finance department employee, salary over $100,000, attended the meeting for no apparent reason.  He gave no report, sat in the audience, and left the building several times during the meeting. 

This is why we’re in trouble – we have too many redundant positions, getting over $100,000 in salary and paying little toward their benefits. Most of our management employees are longtime CalPERS participants who pay less than 10 percent of their pension premiums. 

Juanita Sumner, Chico

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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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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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