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Should we form a PAC to recall the school board? Can we recall the Stuporintendent?

12 Apr

I’d like to thank all you people who voted to extend Measure A, the school bond that was originally shoveled down the voter’s throats with promises of a third high school. I’m so glad you all voted “YES!, Screw Me Blind! And my neighbors too!” on Measure E.

You bastards – of course I’m being sarcastic!

You’re probably the same dummasses that voted YES! on Proposition 30 – did you knuckle under to threats that  Dummass Junior would not get into Chico State because of “cut-backs,” or did you really believe they needed the money?

Again, you bastard! I would like to send my right Etnie straight into your glut-max!

Please forgive me for this rampage, I just paid my property taxes over the last couple of weeks, and I could eat the heads off a sack full of liberal tax-and-spend kittens.

Let me ramp it down a little, I have a good cup of coffee next to me here, I’ll try to think positive. It may be one of the last cups of coffee I’ll be able to afford.

When Kelly Staley and the Chico Unified School Board proposed this tax, they made all the usual bullshit promises about “citizen oversight,” saying there would be a citizen’s  and a list of projects that would be vetted before the public before any expenditures were made of this money. Now, what, five months later? The board has already approved a project to be paid for out of this money, without so much a list scrawled on a cocktail napkin discussed before the public.

They want to issue more bonds to get the money for a new gym floor – something called “capital appreciation bonds.” According to the Enterprise Record, school district “bonds advisor” Greg Isom is advising Kelly Staley to consider these bonds, and she’s listening to him. The ER explains, “With capital appreciation bonds, payments are delayed but the interest piles up. A $4.6 million bond for Yuba College will cost $58 million to repay. In Poway, north of San Diego, $105 million in bonds will cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion.”

That sounds insane, you might be surprised if you haven’t been paying attention to the school district over the years. They sold the voters on Measure A, promising to build a third high school to relieve the overcrowding evident to anyone caught within proximity of either of our high schools during class break, lunch, or before/after school rush. Kids come to those two campuses from miles around. Both have a junior high within a mile. It seems like a no-brainer to place another high school near the third junior high, in an area of town that’s been developing like crazy over the last ten years, even approved for a “city within a city” (Meriam Park). But the school district reneged on that high school, deciding pretty willy-nilly to spend the bond proceeds on whatever projects they felt like. Really dumb superficial stuff – facades! –  alot of of work that could have been done by the students themselves, even the construction students from Chico State. Instead the district has been spending the bond money on these projects, without any accounting to the public. We have no reports, no financial records – we don’t have the slightest idea how much money they’ve taken in off Measure A over the years or exactly where they’ve spent it. 

So now they’ve extended it, with the help of a pack of idiot lemming voters. Meanwhile, the third high school decision continues to haunt us. Now we find, the district is paying hundreds of thousands on mitigation for the land they bought but didn’t build the third high school on. They even mention they may still build a high school, “If the day comes that a high school needs to be built on the site…”  (“If?”)   But here they go right ahead and spend the money we were told would go to building that school on other stuff? 

And then what? “If the day comes…” they float another bond and tell us we have to pay more, that’s what. 

Here’s what I propose. I propose I start a “Friends of the Chico Taxpayers” Political Action Committee. All that requires is filling out forms Downtown, or at the county, whichever. We can collect money to run a recall on the Chico Unified School Board, and we can see what we can do about getting rid of Staley too. I’ll check into that, might pan out. 

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Chico school board asked to spend $436,000 on empty high school land

By ROGER H. AYLWORTH-Staff Writer
Posted:   04/09/2013 12:00:00 AM PDT
Click photo to enlarge

Wildflowers grow in a field at the corner of Raley Boulevard and Bruce Road that was to host the…

CHICO — Chico’s school board will be asked Wednesday to spend just under $436,000 to mitigate environmental concerns on a 50-acre lot that may not house students for decades to come.At issue is the parcel purchased by the Chico Unified School District in 2005 at the northwest corner of Raley Boulevard and Bruce Road in southeast Chico. The land was to host the future Canyon View High School, but with shrinking enrollment, the proposed project did not go forward.

Even so, CUSD Director of Facilities and Construction Mike Weissenborn will ask the board of trustees to pay for most of the environmental mitigation required under the various permits the district has on the property.

If approved, the money will go to so-called “mitigation banks” to cover the cost to create a vernal pool elsewhere and to maintain a population of the endangered fairy shrimp on the high school property at a different location.

Beyond the vernal pool mitigation, the district also must purchase credits to cover loss of intermittent streams on the property.

District building manager Julie Kistle said, “You can’t do anything without the mitigations.”

The district also needs to seek what would be the second extension of a permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers related to the use of the property. It expires April 17.

Kistle said while the permit and the mitigation are not directly tied, buying the mitigation credits would “really be a positive step,” to show the Corps the CUSD is

moving forward.Weissenborn said, “We have got quite an investment in that property and we don’t want to see it get re-regulated.”

He explained CUSD is working with “a set of knowns in a world that tends to create unknowns” — federal and state environmental regulation — and the CUSD would be better off complying with the existing rules than having to go through a new process and face new challenges.

Weissenborn said while the construction of a new high school on the property could be decades away, that doesn’t mean the land will continue to sit empty and unused.

He said it is incumbent on the district staff to investigate “appropriate interim uses” for the property.

On April 17, Weissenborn will bring a proposal to the trustees about the possibility of putting a solar power array on the Canyon View land. The electricity created could be used to reduce district power bills.

If the day comes that a high school needs to be built on the site, the solar arrays could be put on supports and provide both power and shaded vehicle parking such as now exists at Pleasant Valley High School and Chico High School.

He also said having the property in hand is good for the district’s future planning.

“They are not making more ground where we need it,” he explained.

Even if trustees approve the purchase of the mitigation credits, which will be funded through developer fees, no projects are going to happen immediately.

Kistle said the district is mandated to provide mitigations for the endangered meadowfoam plant, and as of right now there are no mitigation banks in place for meadowfoam.

PUBLIC MEETING:

CUSD board of trustees

6 p.m. Wednesday

large conference room at the CUSD offices, 1163 E. Seventh St.

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2 environmental fixes on 50-acre Chico school site OK’d

By ROGER H. AYLWORTH-Staff Writer
Posted:   04/11/2013 12:35:03 AM PDT

CHICO — In a split vote and after hearing a last-minute plea from another firm, the Chico Unified School District trustees voted to purchase environmental mitigation credits for a 50-acre parcel of land that was originally purchased to house a third high school.With board President Liz Griffin casting the lone nay, the CUSD trustees voted to purchase more than $175,000 worth of environmental mitigation credits for the district-owned property at the intersection of Bruce Road and Raley Boulevard.

Before the vote, Mike Weissenborn, CUSD director of facilities and construction, explained that in 1998, voters approved Measure A, a $48.7 million school bond, that was supposed to, among other things, build a third comprehensive high school.

He said that after extensive investigation, four sites, all along Bruce Road, were identified as the potential home of what was to be called Canyon View High School.

Weissenborn said all of the sites had environmental problems that would have to be dealt with before construction could begin. The Bruce and Raley site was chosen and in 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a conditional permit to the district that would allow construction when four problems were “mitigated.”

Under the conditions the district was required to obtain mitigations “credits” covering the creation of a 1.02-acre vernal pool, the preservation of an additional 2.24 acres of vernal pools that would include the preservation of fairy shrimp, and credits to cover the preservation of .33 acres of intermittent stream bank, and finally the preservation of one acre of land to protect less that 50 specimens of Butte County meadow foam, an endangered plant.

All of these mitigations take place on land preserves, not on the district parcel, and the district purchases the credits to have a private firm create the various conditions and maintain them forever.

As the student population failed to grow enough to justify the construction of Canyon View, the property has remained unused.

Weissenborn asked the board to contract with the Shauna Down Mitigation Bank, which has property in Butte County and corporate offices in Nevada, to do everything but the meadow foam mitigation.

He said the three projects would cost a total of nearly $436,000. The district had set aside about $500,000 to cover the mitigations when it first got the permit, according to the director.

The meadow foam question was not on the table because as of now, there are no firms that sell mitigation credits for the endangered plant.

Weissenborn said it was important to sign the contracts because the district is seeking a second extension of the Army Corps permit, which expires on April 17.

Things came together at this time, according to the director, because until recently there were no firms certified locally to do the mitigations.

That’s when Travis Hemmen, with Westervelt Ecological Services’ Sacramento Office, rose to claim his company could do the vernal pool creation work for $150,000 as opposed to the nearly $261,000 being asked for by Shauna Down.

Weissenborn said several firms, including Hemmen’s, were certified to do the work on April 1 of this year, and at the time his staff was reviewing possible contractors, these firms were not certified.

The trustees debated the question of reopening the projects to new bids, at the same time the district was trying to take actions to show the corps they were, in fact, moving ahead.

Weissenborn said he was concerned that if the permit extension was denied, the district could face new demands in the future.

Board President Griffin said she wanted to see the whole process opened to new bids. Trustee Andrea Thompson said she felt a fiscal responsibility to save the district money if possible, but at the same time, she said she was fearful of losing the permit.

Hemmen said his company was only really prepared to do the vernal pool creation work.

Weissenborn was asked if the district contracted for the other two mitigation projects, would the corps get the message the CUSD was serious. He said he thought that would work.

Then, on a motion by Thompson, board majority voted to award the two projects to Shauna Down for a total of slightly more than $175,000, and to leave the third part of the proposal for new bids. Only Griffin voted no.

No one from Shauna Down spoke Wednesday night.

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Letter: Here’s why CARD wants more money

7 Apr

Here’s a letter I sent to the Enterprise Record a full week ago. I don’t know why it took so long for Little to run my letter – I could speculate that he wants the CARD tax to pass. We’ll see when he endorses it in 2014.

My family received the Chico Area Recreation District’s survey regarding their proposed tax hike. We wanted more information, so asked for their 2012-13 budget figures.  

 
CARD says they need a new tax because of falling property tax revenues and a “disappearing RDA.” What they don’t mention is the recent $400,000 “side fund payoff” to the California Public Employees Retirement System. CalPERS has demanded public employers pay more toward their employees’ pension premiums, offering some savings on interest if they pay a certain amount immediately.
 
CARD, employing about 30 people full time, also paid $375,000  in regular pension premiums last year, and $300,000 in healthcare premiums. Salary and benefits totaling about $5 million dollars  eat over half their $7.2 million budget. 
 
They earn about $3.3 million of their annual revenues from their programs and rental of their facilities. The other $3.5 million  comes mostly  from taxpayers –  county taxes ($2,3456,782), homeowner assessments ($162,753), fees on new homes ($23,750), and $924,000 from the RDA credit card. 
 
CARD currently suffers a $420,000 deficit. Their capital projects reserve fund shows a sudden negative balance of $344,500. It appears to me they took money from their capital projects fund to pay their CalPERS “side fund payoff”, and now they want us to replace that money. It seems misleading to offer an aquatic center when what they are really asking for is money to pay for their pensions and benefits. 
 
I’ve posted the budget spreadsheet at chicotaxpayers.wordpress.com
 

Juanita Sumner, Chico CA

I know, I said I’d post the budget here – I can’t get it to come up right on this blog, so here’s the link to my other blog:

http://worldofjuanita.com/2013/03/31/card-2012-13-budget/

and here’s the link to the survey:

img003

This survey is completely loaded – essentially, they tell you, if you don’t pay this tax, your kids will end up on dope. Read it yourself.  They also promise “this measure would include strong fiscal safeguards and oversight, including that less than 5% of the proceeds would be used for administration.” 

CUSD stupe Kelly Staley said that about the school bond voters just extended. Chico Unified said they’d form some kind of citizens’ committee  to “vet” a list of projects, but the administration has already announced projects that have never been vetted in any way. And don’t forget, when the school district originally floated that bond about ten years ago, they said the money would be used exclusively to build a third high school. Then they changed their mind, and we’ve never been shown an actual accounting of how much they’ve raked in over the years or where any of that money has gone. 

In this case, you can see that CARD has taken money out of their capital projects fund and used it to pay their CalPERS obligation. When Steve Visconti sent me that budget,  I could tell from his attached letter he really didn’t expect me to read the budget, or thought I was too stupid to figure it out. I had asked him about revenues. 

“Our funding sources come to us a few different ways. One is a small portion of property taxes from each homeowner in our District. The other main revenue source is from programming fees. Those are also shown on page 6 of the attached budget.”

But the budget says otherwise. Like I said above – they get over half their revenues from property taxes and assessments – including $924,000 in RDA money. That RDA money is about to disappear, that’s just another reason they want this tax. Besides the $400,000 they stole to pay their own pensions.

You can print that survey from that link, fill it out, and send it to Visconti at the CARD center – 545 Vallombrosa Ave, Chico, 95926. You can e-mail him for more information at svisconti@chicorec.com

And here’s the funny thing – guess who’s on the CARD board – Tom Lando, the same guy who’s been proposing a city sales tax increase.

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Scott Gruendl calls defeat of Measure J a threat to the constitution – where did we get this guy?

6 Apr

I have to say, I did not support Toby Schindelbeck’s request for the city to make a resolution supporting the Second Amendment because I get sick and freaking tired of these resolutions and proclamations. But I have to hand it to Toby, he sure got a conversation out of it. The most interesting part for me was Scott Gruendl’s assertion that the defeat of the cell phone tax was “a threat to the constitution.” 

“but I believe there are threats to our constitution that go far beyond the second amendment.  I think they’re constant, I think they’re regular, and I think our affirmation of our oath of office is something we are confronted  with on a regular basis, and the Second Amendment is part of that, but it’s not the only part of it. One simple example  – we had a defeat of measure J that results in about  $25 in tax savings for the average public member, but for me, I have a tax rate that’s about 150 times that that’s imposed on me by the federal government because of a constitutional interpretation (his voice starts breaking here, as if he’s going to cry).  I don’t see the Chico Taxpayer’s Association standing up for my tax injustice and that’s just one example of what we’re confronted with on a regular basis…”

When I heard that on the video, I was shocked. I had to listen to it over and over to get it down, but that’s pretty much it. I punctuated the natural pauses in Scott’s voice, but I’m pretty sure I got it word for word. Let’s just take this thing apart, piece by piece, and try to make nonsense of it.

First of all, I just had a e-mail chat with Frank Fields over in the city finance office on this past Thursday. I asked him again, how many refund applications had been received as of that day, and what’s the average refund amount. Scott keeps using that $25 figure, the same figure he and Ann Schwab put in their “argument in favor” of Measure J. From Frank Fields:

“Ms. Sumner:

 

To date, the City has issued 157 refunds at an average of $50.81.  However, please note that six of those refunds were to business which obviously end up with larger refunds.  Excluding the six businesses, the average refund is $38.50.

 

Please let me know if you have further questions.

 

Frank”

That’s an interesting point Frank makes, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to worry about how these people  ran up their phone bills – they may have a business, or they may have family in Germany, I don’t care whether they use their phone for business or pleasure or to save a life.  It doesn’t matter how they run up the bill on which their tax is based, it only matters that 157 cell phone customers have applied for and received an average refund of $50.81, not the $25 Gruendl keeps claiming. In fact, we’re talking “average” here people – those businesses were taken for a lot more than $50 a year. When my family had AT&T, for three phones, our yearly UT was about $87.

And then Gruendl goes completely off the deep end with his walk through the dog park regarding threats to the constitution. The rest of his little peeve is just, well, crazy.  He says a group of citizens working to defeat a tax measure brought forth by government officials is “a threat to the constitution”? Whose constitution is he talking about?

“I have a tax rate 150 time that…”  Again, what is he talking about? 150 times…what? $25?

“that’s imposed on me by the federal government because of a constitutional interpretation…”  Is he talking about the gay marriage discussion? I thought the feds were going his way the last time I heard. Is he complaining that he is not allowed to write his partner off on his taxes? I have no idea of the law there, but I know “domestic partnership” has been accepted for some time – it’s in the cop contracts, and it’s on the paper work my kids bring home from Butte College. And, he complains that the CTA has never “stood up” for his “tax injustice” – well, Scott, we’ve never been asked. I’m not even sure what your “tax injustice”  is.

Here’s my “tax injustice” – I have to pay a salary and benefits for this ass Gruendl, I buy him a $21,000 a year health insurance policy, for which he pays $156 a year.  My cousins in Glenn County pay him about $103,000 a year and also give him a health benefits and pension package, for which he pays little or nothing. And now, he stands up before the citizens of this town and complains that he pays more taxes than the rest of us? This guy is a piece of work.

Maybe what he really means is, he gets more taxes than the rest of us – the 150 times figure might actually work there!

And then there’s the injustice of being limited to three minutes, even one minute!  to state my concerns and then have to listen to this crap-mouth rattle on at will, without any response from the public.  He’s allowed to say whatever he wants!  I’m not the only one who gets sick of these little diatribes. Here’s Bob Speer, from this past Thursdays News and Review –  – ” But it’s true, as critics often charge, that some council members, including Goloff, don’t always apply standards of brevity to themselves. They should take lessons from Councilmen Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan, who quickly say their pieces and shut up. It’s a sign of respect, and those of us in the audience appreciate it.“

I’ll say further, they don’t stay on topic, they use the podium to abuse members of the public who don’t agree with their agenda,  and they spread misinformation, all of which I’d say about Scott’s little rant.

And here’s the creepiest thing about that meeting Tuesday night: Gruendl and Goloff requested and got a list of the folks who spoke on the Second Amendment resolution request. Why would they need that?

UPDATE:

Today, at the First Sunday meeting, we were talking about the rules for council discussions. During this past Tuesday’s city council meeting, we found that the mayor is allowed to re-open the public hearing. When this was suggested by Sean Morgan during the eminent domain discussion, there was a moment of confusion. Mary Goloff said she was not able to reopen the public hearing, but Lori Barker interrupted that it certainly was allowed. That’s something to remember in future. 

Also, there was mention of a rule that limited the council members to three minutes – this I will have to check into, but it would certainly be worth it. 

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Just what really is the problem Downtown?

5 Apr

Yesterday was one of my top 10 worst days. I won’t go through the events – there was blood – but suffice to say, when the dirt settled, everything went my way.  In a roundabout fashion.

I was supposed to attend the “Luncheon with the Chief” with the Chamber of Commerce. I put my foot in Katie Simmon’s door and told her I didn’t think it was appropriate for city employees like Kirk Trostle and Brian Nakamura to talk to a “members only” audience. Nakamura has spoken at their last two meetings – I couldn’t make those, and yeah, I’m suspicious they were talking about their proposed sales tax increase, but oh well. Yesterday was plenty juicy.

Of course I showed up 45 minutes late. I had a horrible morning, I won’t go into that. I got the time all mixed up. When I realized I hadn’t completely missed the luncheon, I got in my car (!) and jammed Downtown to catch the Chief’s coattails. I wanted to hear what he had to say to this “members only” audience, and I had a few questions to ask him myself.

The Chamber is made up of businesses from all over town, but lately they are taken up, like everybody else, with the “homeless problem,” which is perceived to be mostly Downtown.   “Homeless” is the wrong word – it’s like saying “Tea Party Patriot” – it could mean anything. I’ve been “homeless,” by the standard definition – I had no address, I was a “couch surfer.” I had my stuff at my sister’s house, where she lived with Husband 2 and the assorted kids.  I slept at her house when things were quiet, I slept in a borrowed sleeping bag in the back room at my job, I slept at friends’ houses when they weren’t home, etc. That was a time in my life that I measured by semesters. I moved every six months, sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn’t. I’ll never forget the time a roommate and I both left our apartment in the middle of the night, sat all night at Dennys to avoid the domestic violence that went on in the apartment over our heads.  We sure as hell felt homeless for the month we lived in that dump, we never even unpacked our stuff.

But I’ve been Downtown, and I’ve lived in and around Downtown over the years – the problem there is mental illness, alcohol abuse, and a enabling city council and $taff.

The “homeless” question is complex. I attended a Police Advisory Board meeting a couple of weeks ago on the same subject. Lieutenant Linda Dye gave a short report about a week-long mental health class that trains “some” Chico PD officers in “how to handle”  people who may or may not be, uh, crazy.  She made note of the fact that some of these people are not crazy, but taking advantage of our kind hearts. Lieutenant Jennifer Gonzales pounded that point home at city council’s special meeting a couple of weeks ago. She feels Chico is on what she called “the homeless highway” and that most of them are perfectly healthy people who’ve learned to take advantage of the public in general.

So, with a “40 hour class,” these two women are now competent to  tell us who’s nuts and who’s just faking it?

Dye told us something that caught my attention – when they arrest somebody who is not considered to be rational, they take them to ENLOE for what they call “51/50”. That means they consider the person to be a danger to him/herself and/or the public and they are put on 72 hours observation.   These people are turned over to the staff at the Enloe ER – hey, that’s something you might want to know before you take your kid down to Enloe for that ear ache at 2:30 in the morning. I had a friend who took her kid in on an afternoon – sprained ankle – and described the place as “an insane asylum.” I thought she was talking about the nurses, but now I wonder.

So, they dump these nutjobs – oh, excuse me – helpless idiots off at the ER and drive away. These arrestees are supposed to be picked up by “the county.” That’s how Chief Trostle said it at the PAB meeting, just, “the county.” He and Dye said that sometimes “the county” is short handed, and they don’t get down to the hospital to pick these people up for hours. The hospital is not allowed to hold the person, so oftentimes these people, who some cop considered a danger to the public? – simply wander out of the hospital and back to whatever they were doing when the cops picked them up.

I looked into the county mental health department.  According to the Butte County website,  they’ve got 12 psychiatrists listed on staff and two nurse practitioners. But if you check the salary listings in the ER, you only find one of those psychiatrists listed, along with 23 “interns.”  As of 2010, that psychiatrist gets a major salary reduction, and then he’s gone.

I don’t know what to make of that, but given other stuff I’ve heard about Butte County mental health – including two suicides by patients who were allowed to wander out of the county facility – I don’t have very high expectations for their work.

So, here we’re left with a p0lice force that thinks they’re qualified to make mental health evaluations after a one-week class at Butte College, and an overpaid county staff who can’t even be counted on to pick up or supervise at-risk patients.

Yesterday the topic of conversation was a “sit lie” law, such as those currently under effect in cities like San Francisco. This means, essentially, the cops can arrest a person who is sitting or laying on the sidewalk and refuses to move out of the public right of way.

This law has been on the books in San Francisco, and got a  lot of attention during the “Occupy Movement”. Unfortunately, while you’d think it is a no-brainer to have laws permitting free movement on public sidewalks, this “sit lie” law has had little positive effect. For one thing, it looks like the cops, at their own discretion, are only really enforcing it in one part of town – the Haight district (don’t forget to wear a flower in your hair!). There it just looks like harassment, and the bums are moving through the jail faster than a revolving door, landing right back in their semi-dry puddle of puke before the average shop owner can hose it off the sidewalk. The shop owners are fed up – the “sit lie” law is just producing an overwhelming load on the courts, it ‘s not solving the problem of people laying sprawled out in front of doorways, demanding change, or just being generally abusive to customers and passers by. 

Here’s an article from the SF Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sit-lie-law-primarily-enforced-in-Haight-3763521.php

When I was a kid, we shopped in Chico, we never saw anybody resembling a wino or a bum. The sidewalks were clean – I think I would remember having to step over people, human and dog excrement, puke or other nasty substances, I was a little girl wearing my best patent leather shoes. My grandma was a very proper lady, and she wouldn’t have put up with stuff like that, she would have set up a howl with all her other old lady friends and it would have been dealt with, that’s how it was when I was a kid. You didn’t sit there and complain, you went out and said something to your elected officials. I remember standing on the steps of Ray Johnson’s house on Vallombrosa with my grandma and her lady friends, demanding highway improvements. Think of that next time you’re driving down Hwy 99 and you see that “Ray E. Johnson” memorial. 

So the Downtown merchants, mostly, are demanding the city and the cops do something about the mess this liberal council has allowed to fester Downtown. They want this “sit lie” ordinance. Chief Trostle says the police have been asking council to “give us direction.”  

And now, I have to go, but next time, I’ll tell you what the chief said when I asked him about the “A.C.E.” ordinance, which I feel is very related to the “homeless” conversation. 

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April is Taxpayer Appreciation Month – thank you Sue Hubbard and Harold Ey!

3 Apr

As I sit down today to make out the last of my property tax payments, I want to thank Sue Hubbard for writing and submitting the following:

Proclamation

 

WHEREAS, The approximate 47% of Americans who pay no income tax are supported by the 53% of those who do

WHEREAS, Five percent of Americans are paying 60% of all income tax

WHEREAS, America’s top tax rate is the second highest in the world

WHEREAS, Taxpayer’s money is used to fund government services

WHEREAS, Taxpayer’s money is used to pay salary and benefits to government workers

WHEREAS, Taxpayers are the ones who are paying for all the entitlements so generously given out in this country

WHEREAS, Taxpayers pay America’s bills

NOW THEREFORE BE IT PROCLAIMED, that the Chico Taxpayer’s Association hereby recognizes April as Taxpayer Appreciation Month.

This was supposed to be an official proclamation, Sue had asked the city clerk for the proper format etc, and sent it off for approval from a proclamation happy council – Mary Goloff turned it down. Oh well, one woman’s trash is the entire town’s treasure.  We don’t need those dummies to run our town – so be it, April is Taxpayer Appreciation Month. It’s just too good an idea to pass up.

Our first activity will be the usual First Sunday meeting at the library, or as I prefer to call it, The First Church of Democracy.

Harold Ey is not one of our standing members, but he’s our kinda guy. Harold has always lit up the letters page with his pokey wit, he tells it like it is. Here’s a letter of his I found in the ER this morning:

Letter: Taxes won’t solve homeless problem

Chico Enterprise-Record
Posted:   04/03/2013 12:05:04 AM PDT

 

One of the more off-the-wall suggestions we heard at last week’s 90-minute gabfest between Mary Goloff and Ann Schwab was the idea of taxing liquor sales. Schwab thought this could be a solution that might possibly reduce the number of down-and-out downtown drunks. Leave it to a liberal to attack private business with more taxation because; isn’t greedy capitalism the root cause of the homeless problem? However, as Schwab was rambling on, she brought up another point about how to deal with the perplexing problem of bicyclists riding on the sidewalks (there’s a cause of homelessness).However, you know her tax idea might actually work here. First, City Council puts a hefty tax on bicycle shops in the downtown area. After all, the sale started the problem to begin with, right? Then we require the shop owner to register each bicycle sold (another government fee) and keep a database for an undetermined number of years.

Then when a police officer stops someone riding on the sidewalk and runs the registration number, the shop selling the bicycle gets fined as well as the operator of the bike, and we double up the fine when a plastic bag is involved also. Makes sense, doesn’t it? The bicycle shop contributed to the scofflaw’s actions by selling the bicycle to begin with. Makes about as much sense as the first 90 minutes of last week’s “study session.” Yes, Mayor Goloff, the public is very upset.

— Harold Ey, Chico

I have to add here, this liquor tax is not Mary Goloff or Ann Schwab’s idea. It came to us from Chico PD, when Mike Maloney was chief, and now Kirk Trostle has picked it up. It’s called the ACE initiative, “Alcohol Compliance and Education,” and it’s to be administered, and I believe collected, by Chico PD. They tried to get us interested in it before the 2012 election, but they saw all those other tax increase proposals on the ballot, and they backed off, planning to bring it back around in 2014.

This is a fee collected from “alcohol related” businesses. It is at the discretion of Chico PD WHO pays,  and HOW MUCH they pay.  Here’s the slick pamphlet they’ve been handing out:

http://www.butteyouthnow.org/public/uploads/City%20of%20Chico%20ACE%20Issue%20Brief%20%232(1).pdf

Now take a look at the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control website:

http://www.abc.ca.gov/programs/grant.html

As you can see, the ABC is fully funded from fees collected from alcohol related businesses. Chico PD seeks to place additional fees on the industry in order to duplicate the actions of the ABC. I don’t see the sense in this. The police are supposed to be out there enforcing the laws, preventing and solving actual crimes – providing special consulting services to one industry in town does not seem appropriate to me.

Chief Trostle and his management staff spend a lot of their high dollar time yakking, I’ll say that. I just attended the Police Advisory Board meeting last week and tomorrow I’m headed to a Chamber of Commerce “luncheon with the Chief.” This guy is paid over $160,000 a year to run the cop shop, but he seems to be some sort of Public Relations expert. Same for Linda Dye and  Jennifer Gonzales – both paid around $100,000 a year to give reports at meetings. I know, they put on their vest and gun and go out for the photo ops – in fact, Dye was carrying her riot stick, which she handled absentmindedly, while she spoke at  the Police Advisory Board meeting. 

The cops are management heavy. They also DON’T PAY ANY OF THEIR OWN BENEFITS OR PENSION PREMIUMS. This is why I have said we need to reorganize the cop shop, but yeah, last night, Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan voted along with the rest of the fist puppets to renew the cop contract as is, with all the perks and benies. Sorry Harold, I think that booze tax is a done deal too.

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Letter: Chico Council has allowed salary spike

1 Apr

I wanted to get back to posting people’s letters to the papers, keeps them circulating, gives us a chance to talk about  them. This letter from Stephanie Taber ran about a week ago in the Enterprise Record.  

Chico Enterprise-Record

Posted:   03/26/2013 12:09:27 AM PDT

The city of Chico “has 106 people earning more than $100,000,” according to your Wednesday editorial and your database at www.chicoer.com/salaries.That’s not a surprise if you’ve been paying attention but that takes time and effort, not something a whole lot of people seem to want to do including our long-term City Council members — both present and those who have recently left office.

I’m not sure either of our two newest members, Tami Ritter and Randall Stone, have any inclination to curb the city’s incredibly generous benefit package. But then I don’t sit in on closed-door sessions so I don’t know what direction they have given to our still new city manager. After all, if the council does not bother to give direction, nor ask what the financial impact is of any proposed memorandum of understanding (contract) with any of the unions or contracts made with upper management, or ask where the funds to pay for that and our infrastructure too are, well you can see how personnel costs just kind of get way up there. And the potholes too.

It is the council’s responsibility to lead, to give direction. The city’s fiscal crisis is not the fault of the economic downturn, nor the current city manager, Brian Nakamura. If there is fault it lies with the former city management staff and a council unwilling to tackle hard fiscal issues instead of feel-good issues: nuclear bombs, human slavery, plastic bags and corporate personhood.   You get what you vote for, plain and simple.

— Stephanie Taber, Chico

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CARD 2012-13 budget

31 Mar

Sorry I couldn’t figure out how to post a visual of the budget – click on the link below for the information I used in my letter to the Enterprise Record:

2012_2013 Final Budget (4)

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Jennifer Hennessy off to Temecula – a geography lesson!

29 Mar

I was just looking over the stats for today and it looks like everybody’s talking/reading/thinking about Jennifer Hennessy.  You know she “resigned” yesterday, from her position as city finance director. This on the heels of lots of criticism at a meeting I missed earlier this week, detailed in a pretty nasty little report in yesterday’s paper. 

At Tuesday’s Finance Committee meeting, which I missed, due to being too tired from snowboarding my ass off Monday at Tahoe to get out to another stupid 8am meeting, there was a frank announcement from Planning Services Director Mark Wolfe that our “development fund” is some $10 million in the hole. Yes, that’s MILLION – 1-0-000-000. 

This is not a secret, Mark Sorensen. This subject has been kicking around in meetings for years. I been kicking it around, for one. The developers do not pay their way, some developers pay less than others, etc. They use all this staff time and pay nothing. I mean, “$taff time,” you know, those people in that building Downtown, more than 100 of whom rake in over $100,000/ year, just in salary.

All the sudden it’s a big deal? Where was all the angst when they decided just last year to “defer” developer fees for Downtown development? 

When I bitch about stuff, it’s just bitching, ever notice that? 

The newspaper article did not flatter Jennifer Hennessy, in fact, it sounded like they were insinuating something. I’m not going to speculate. I already have, many times, read up. 

I’ll tell you something funny though – Jennifer just “resigned” yesterday, but as of an hour ago, at about 6:30 pm, the Enterprise Record, with glowing remarks from Mark Sorensen, announced the hiring of a new finance director. 

This stinks, oh boy does it stink. It’s like when I smell something in my refrigerator, and I know it ain’t right, but I’m too busy to drag everything out right at the moment. I’ll get time, you turkeys, believe me, and it’s turkey season right now. 

Here’s something else funny – Hennessy is headed for one little pimple of a town – Temecula. Not far from Hemet!  And, co-inka-dinkkally – Temecula is in the middle of  the creek without a paddle, like Hemet. Last fall they fired their city manager and then their finance director, the latter of which will be the position Hennessy is stepping into. I don’t know if they’ve replaced their city manager. 

According to Nelsy Rodriguez of the Press Enterprise, “On Nov. 5, exactly eight days before the City Council voted unanimously in closed session to place him [city manager Bob Johnson] on paid administrative leave, Johnson sent an email to all city employees announcing the creation of a ‘transparency sharepoint page’ containing information regarding city salaries and benefits and official communication between the city and union representatives, among other information.”

Verrrrry iiiinterestink!  There’s a barrel of stinking fish here, a barrel full.

 

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They can’t fix our streets because they’ve taken up all the money for their salaries

25 Mar

The city of Chico is currently perpetrating a sewer scam on residents all over town. They’re telling people septic tanks are causing a nitrate problem in our groundwater, but that was proven false about 20 years ago.  Ask Jane Dolan – back in the 90’s, when the city tried to force all kinds of people onto sewer, she and others asserted correctly that the nitrates in our drinking water were coming from cattle ranching above town and fertilizer use along Chico Creek.  The project was dropped.

But, I sat in on a meeting years back with Colleen Jarvis, Dan Nguyen-tan, and current city councilor Scott Gruendl, during which they expressed the need not only to raise the monthly fee for sewer, but the need to get more people on sewer  in order to pay for the expansion of the sewer plant out by the river. 

There is so much to this story, I hate to tell it. I just heard more at another meeting Downtown recently. See, if you’re on sewer, your poop goes to this plant out in the orchards west of town, you can smell it for miles when you drive out there toward Scotty’s or head for Willows. There it is “treated” – read up on that yourself – basically, the sewer treatment plant has nothing on septic tanks, it IS just a big septic tank. 

The difference being, after your poop goes through your septic tank, it is leached into your yard. When it goes to the sewer plant, it is sent to the Sacramento River.   The pipe leads to leach lines buried under the river bed. 

One problem here being, the leach lines lay just about exactly where M&T Ranch pumps water for their huge agricultural and animal preserve operation.  Also, the river naturally “meanders,” and this has left Chico’s sewer leach lines “high and dry” several times, resulting in millions of our city dollars being spent on re-doing the lines. This seems to happen about every 10 years. The manager from M&T recently came to a meeting Downtown, where he described a plan to stabilize the river banks by building these enormous rock “jetties,” but he didn’t say who was going to PAY FOR IT. He did say the Sacramento River Conservancy is dead against this project and they’ll fight in court – more $$$$$$$!

I’ll tell you another problem I made them admit at the meeting – the sewer plant has “accidents” – funny word, huh? Cause “accident” means, during a big rainstorm, raw sewage can be and often is discharged into the river. Ask any River Rat, they’ll tell you their turd cloud story. It seems to stick together, as it floats in the river, like a brown cloud. What is that? you ask yourself – yes, I’ve seen human turds floating in the river, and too many to have been just some old fisherman crapping off the side of his boat. 

But the city of Chico has managed to perpetrate the sewer scam on the unwitting – in fact, a friend of mine over in Chapmantown was “allowed”, along with many neighbors, to hook up free of charge! No hook up fees, that’s how desperate they are to get people on the system. Cause once your house is hooked up, it’s a guaranteed fee every month, a fee they can raise at will. The meeting I sat in on with Gruendl, Nguyen-tan and Jarvis was about just that – raising sewer fees to cover the cost of expanding the sewer system so the state would allow us to build more housing. Jarvis argued they should raise the fee immediately, some $15 a month – “let’s be honest with people,” she said –  but Nguyen-tan and Gruendl, cagey bastards – they didn’t want to piss people off, they wanted to raise it incrementally. They won. 

I’ll tell you what Jarvis wasn’t being honest about, was the reason. She would have let people go on thinking this move to sewer was for public health when it was really about revenues for the city. She was a pretty cagey old broad herself. And if you disagree, you didn’t know her, so shut the hell up.  

And now they’re winning the silent battle to get more people on sewer, even when there’s absolutely nothing wrong with their septic tanks. A well-maintained septic tank should cost you less than $100 a year, while sewer will cost you some $40 a month.  And you’re not paying for service, you’re paying salaries Downtown.

Yes, they need the money badly Downtown. They aren’t even paying for the sewer upgrade, they’re paying their own salaries. This is another problem Downtown – they were paying many salaries and benefits and pension premiums out of the recently disbanded RDA. The RDA had a credit card, and they spent wildly on whatever they wanted – one year they gave developer Tom DiGiovanni $7 million in RDA money, that’s how wild.  The new successor agency is limited to about a million and a half a year.

Would you believe, they were even paying the city council salaries out of the RDA?  

So, now, $106,000 a year engineer Bob Greenlaw says they don’t have any money to repair the streets. That’s the same song I’ve been hearing Downtown for years. At one meeting, Jennifer Hennessy said, point blank, the gas tax receipts, which we were told were legally supposed to be spent on road maintenance, are spent instead on salaries Downtown.

This city council and $taff are handing us nothing but bullshit.  If you people reelect Gruendl and Goloff  in 2014, you’re saying, “Yes Mother, may I have another!” 

Here’s the story from the Enterprise Record:

By ASHLEY GEBB-Staff Writer
Posted:   03/24/2013 01:30:12 AM PDT
CHICO — While Chico residents lament residential road conditions, officials say the damage was not caused by the nitrate compliance project, and is not fixable anytime soon, thanks to limited funding.Residents on Pillsbury Road reached out to the city this week with complaints about potholes and broken pavement they say is the result of a state-mandated project to convert residents from septic to city sewer.

But, those roads — like many others throughout Chico — were in disrepair long before the project, said senior civil engineer Bob Greenlaw.

Construction does exacerbate conditions, but funding restrictions limit the cash-strapped city from making better improvements, he said.

“It’s not that we are not paying attention to this, but right now the funds are there for the most part to patch things up and keep them safe,” he said. “Those are our priorities — is the road safe, is it stable? Does it look good? No. Does it ride good? Ehh, maybe not the best.”

The nitrate project is funded by a state revolving fund loan that limits fund uses, Greenlaw said. Repairing or overlaying the entire roadway after sewer lines are laid is not an eligible use.

That’s little consolation for some residents.

“I don’t see how it makes sense to leave us with streets in such horrible condition,” said Jane Evraets, a 33-year-resident of Pillsbury Road. “Maybe it’s not a good idea to tear up something if you can’t put it back together to where it’s decent.”Now that contractors are mostly finished, main trunk and laterals are filled with fresh asphalt but the surrounding road is pocked with cracks and holes.

“Our roads have been destroyed,” said Sylvia Brock, who has lived in the neighborhood for 28 years. “They weren’t perfect but they were a heck of a lot better than they are now.”

She attended every public meeting about the project and said the city has not upheld its promises.

“They were supposed to restore the roads to pre-existing conditions,” she said.

Brock and Evraets would like to think attention to the problem will change it, but they have their doubts.

“We’ve been given no hope. No one has said, ‘In X amount of time,’ or ‘We are working on it,'” Evraets said. “It’s, ‘We hear you, but there is no money.'”

Residents near Enloe Medical Center addressed the City Council in January with similar complaints and were given a similar answer.

Near Enloe, the $500,000 to $1 million cost to resurface and make other improvements to a 12-block area was to be funded by the Redevelopment Agency. When that funding source dissolved, the project came to a halt.

It and other projects throughout the city, such as streets that needed resurfacing before the nitrate project, remain on a to-do list.

“The public always saw some roads being paved before through different sources of funds but those are now really limited,” Greenlaw said. “Now, it’s down to either the grant funds … or gas tax, and that’s not been available.

Some roads might have been slated for resurfacing back when funding was available but it was postponed because of the nitrate project. The city didn’t want to invest in resurfacing only to tear up the roads again. “The city definitely has a desire to freshen up the roadway surfaces and not just in the nitrate areas but in all roadways within its jurisdiction,” Greenlaw said, noting the city has 300 miles of streets, 187 of which are residential.

He expects staff soon will present the council with road infrastructure conditions, funding needs and a ranking of necessary projects. The city can then develop a multi-year plan for improvements.

“These are not the conditions we would like to keep the roads in,” Greenlaw said. “We will get out there and get back to it, but it’s going to take a little while.”

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Brian Nakamura wants to keep the public out of the contract talks – some sunshine!

20 Mar

Several years ago, because of inquiries and complaints on the part of various citizens, including myself, Chico city council made a verbal agreement with the public, recorded in the minutes of the meeting, that they would “sunshine” future cop contracts  before they voted on them.   So, if you look at the agenda for March 5, you will see the proposed cop contract.

I went over this in a letter to the Enterprise Record:

The tentative Chico police contract is available in the March 5 city council agenda packet at 

http://www.chico.ca.us/government/minutes_agendas/city_council.asp

 Some highlights:  
 
Page 33: the taxpayers will continue to pay most or all of the health insurance premium. 
 
Page 34: the taxpayers will pay the employee’s full life insurance premium based on salary plus lesser policies for spouse and children. 
 
Page 35: the taxpayers will pay the full long term care insurance premium.  
 
Page 42: the taxpayers will continue to pay both the “employee’s” and “employer’s” share of pension premiums, for current employees only.   For employees hired on or after January 1, 2013,”the city shall not pay any employee contribution, and those employees shall pay the entire employee contribution rate of 50 percent…”  
 
Page 43: “City agrees to the establishment of a retiree Medical Expense and Health Insurance Trust…funded by monthly contributions made by the city…” of more than $300/employee. 
 
Chico Police currently boasts 147 full-time employees. They claim to be short of staff, but still demand very generous salary and benefit packages for current employees. Their demands place not only the public, but the police themselves, at risk. This contract also creates a dangerous disparity between existing and incoming employees.  There’s already an issue of “compaction” between lieutenants and sergeants, two lieutenants have filed formal complaints.  
 
Brian Nakamura recently announced a $50 million deficit  related directly to the “unfunded pension liability”. When will the CPOA bring a rational proposal to the table?
 

Juanita Sumner, Chico

I read  the entire contract, and was really interested in what the council had to say about it – turns out, “sunshining” does not mean, “public discussion.”  They posted the contract on the agenda for the public to see, but when that item came up at the end of the meeting, Mayor Goloff simply closed the meeting. She didn’t even mention that the contract was available for public review.

I’m not the only person who’s miffed about that. Below read Stephanie Taber’s e-mail to city council and Brian Nakamura:

6.3 on the agenda last week was the sun-shinning of the new CPOA MOU.  Apparently based on a conversation between the City Manager and the city’s chief legal strategist there was no mandate that there be an open discussion regarding the contents and that is now sufficient to just place it on the agenda.  I do not recall that as a decision by council during discussions regarding transparency and sun-shinning.  I object.  I think it is necessary for the City Manager to justify why this MOU is being placed on the agenda for apparent approval without regard to the cost to the city taxpayers.  No fiscal impact – really?

There is no dispute that Public Safety consumes the majority of the General Fund budget.  There is also no dispute that those employees under the Public Safety umbrella deserve the wages they make.  But that is where the consensus ends for many of us.

Why has the city not mandated that current Public Safety employees pay their share of retirement benefits?  The County was able to negotiate a gradual down-tick of employer pick up of their retiree benefits over a three year period.  Why hasn’t the city taken the same approach?

Why hasn’t the city discontinued the $300 per month per employee toward the employees “retirement trust fund”.  That is an incredibly costly benefit – $3,600 per year for one employee, in ten years that is $36,000; 20 and that’s $72,000.  And how many Public Safety employees do we have?  Do the math. What is the justification for that?  What private employer in Chico provides a similar benefit?  And this has been in effect since 2007.

In these tough economic times, City employees who make 2, 3 and even 4 times the wages of those working for private employers, not including very generous city benefits, need to consider shared sacrifice.I see no evidence of that in this current agreement with Chico Police Officers Association.

Perhaps it is time for the city to consider the hiring of a profession labor negotiator to deal with the unions.

Stephanie Taber

Apparently, Stephanie found out, this was Brian Nakamura’s decision.

He’s Mark Sorensen’s pit bull, Sorensen needs to answer for this too. 

UPDATE: Mark Sorensen responded to my e-mail query, but I’m out of town this weekend – I’ll get back to it on Monday. Unless there’s wi-fi in my cheap motel room. 

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