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Write those letters! Sustainability Task Force needs to GO!

23 Jan

I have finally given up trying to attend city council meetings. It finally hit me that all the real business goes on in the daytime meetings, by the time it gets to council, it’s pretty done.  As if I’m going to sit through another plastic bag discussion when I know the votes are already there.  Or, if it’s an especially contentious issue, or too complicated for their tiny minds, they kick it down the road. Right now, service fees, for stuff like, monopolizing a city parking lot for five hours every Saturday morning, have not been reviewed since “2005 or 2006, not sure…”  According to Scott Gruendl, the city is losing money hand over fist as long as we don’t update, or raise, those fees.  But our Finance Director won’t have any reports on that until March or April – she waiting for her paid consultant to get back to her.

This is how they milk us for money, they just take FOR-EV-ER to do anything. 

All the real important stuff is done behind closed doors anyway. The employee contracts are being discussed tomorrow night behind closed doors. We are not allowed in there. They are supposed to bring us some contracts to look over, but according to one council member I asked, they have NOTHING right now, they’re still hashing it out. I’ll never forget Steve Bertagna’s answer when I asked why the public is not allowed in those discussions – it would put the city at a disadvantage he said, to have the discussion public. He explained how they play the various groups against each other, and secrecy is a big part of that. 

Yeah, just like the mafia, eh? Don’t worry about it! Just like Bronco Bama’s Chicago gang-style politics. Just like Richard Daley and the Chicago cops at the 1968 Democratic Convention. 

As long as the public is held out of the conversations we will continue to have problems with our public safety salaries and benefits. It was the public safety departments that forced Vallejo and Stockton into bankruptcy. 

The contracts are the only important discussion on the agenda. The “work plan” discussion is just more crap, they keep mouthing the same things over and over and doing absolutely nothing. Right now, the only important issue we’re facing is what these salaries and the refusal of the management and public safety staff to pay more of their own benefits is doing to our local economy.  

I’m not putting aside my family dinner for one more of these meetings. I might watch on the box once in a while, but the daytime meetings are where it’s at.  If you want to have any effect, you need to watch the morning meetings and write letters ahead of the council discussion. 

In February the council will discuss the future of the Sustainability Task Force. City manager Brian Nakamura has been meeting  behind closed doors with members of the STF, who are desperate to keep their little trolley on the tracks. He and Linda Herman assure me nothing illegal or inappropriate has gone on at these closed meetings, but that’s what they say.  How are we supposed to know when we aren’t allowed in? 

We need to write letters to Nakamura and council now, telling them the STF is a giant waste of staff time.  Read the old reports available on the city website, and look at the waste of staff time – how many meetings were cancelled because members didn’t care enough to show up.   I have the e-mail conversations – Linda Herman, at $85,000 plus benefits, e-mailing for days, trying to get up a quorum. Some of the original members have quit – either frustrated with the lack of real action, or because they just got bored, I don’t know. One original member told me it didn’t take him long to figure that Ann Schwab wasn’t going to do anything “real,” like squash the college parking structure, or force people into new urban housing. He agreed with me – this is just about Ann Schwab’s resume, feel-good gestures with regulations that end up affecting private citizens without really fixing anything. 

Look along the highway next time you’re out – she’s banned certain plastic bags, what about all the other garbage you see piling up out there? 

The STF needs to go. We finally have a city manager who is trying to clean house – let’s help him! Write to Brian Nakamura and council and tell them the STF needs to go. 

That’s bnakamura@ci.chico.ca.us, and you can reach the council at dpresson@ci.chico.ca.us

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Segregating your phone bill – a sample Sprint bill

19 Jan

Sprint is another cellphone carrier I’ve found to collect Utility User’s Tax.  Notice, on page 5 of 5 of this sample bill, “Denver State-Community Service Taxes,” “Denver County 9-1-1,” and “Denver County-Comm Sales Tax.”  I’m assuming, if this bill were made out for a person living in the  city of Chico, it would say “City Utility User’s Tax.” 

This bill specifically refers to “mobile” service, with no reference to a landline.  

UPDATE:  Looking over these bills later, I couldn’t help but note – reread the arguments that Ann Schwab and Scott Gruendl made in favor of Measure J – they insinuate that the “average” cell bill is $50! Look at these “average” bills I’ve posted – these are based on real bills, for two to three users – $150 a month! 

Scott Gruendl is up for re-election in 2014. We need to call that little prick on his bullshit. 

Also, city manager Brian Nakamura keeps repeating, we “lost” $900,000 with the defeat of Measure J. But at last month’s Finance Committee meeting, Hennessy reported the loss for fiscal year 2011-12 was only $500,000, after  the N&R quoted her office boy Frank Fields as estimating it at $600,000 back in November.

Is our city manager just making stuff up?

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Segregating your phone bill – a sample AT&T bill

19 Jan

Here below is a sample AT&T bill I found online – looks exactly like my AT&T  bills, but it’s from Texas.

Notice, on pages 2 and 3, you see various amounts attributed to  “City District telecom tax”, “City Telecom Tax”, and “Texas Telecom Tax.”   Here in California we call that “Utility Tax,”  or “Utility User’s Tax”.   City of Chico residents will see, “City” or “Local” or even “City of Chico Utility User’s Tax.”  A turd, by any other name, will still stick to your shoe.

I know, it’s seems like such a mess – but notice this bill makes it very clear that these charges are for “wireless” or cellular phones. All the charges are scrupulously separated, or “segregated”,  out.

Wireless Statement Sample

Wireless Statement Sample

Wireless Statement Sample

Wireless Statement Sample

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Cell phone tax refunds now available, back to February 2012. Get ’em before the city runs out of money!

17 Jan

Before I head out to take the laundry down, I wanted to say, I got a note from Frank Fields over in the Finance Department that the cell phone tax refund info and applications have been put on the city website.  Here’s the application with all the information you need:

Click to access CellPhoneRefundApplication_011713.pdf

Yes, I had to bitch at him for it, and he put it up so fast I really don’t understand why it wasn’t up Wednesday by noon.

He also mentioned, they’re still trying to figure out how to notice it publicly. At what these people get paid,  they have to make everything they do look like rocket science.  I asked him to let me know, and I’ll keep watching it. 

That’s what it takes folks – gotta stay on it! 

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Time to chatter up 2014

13 Jan
Butte County Public Library, Chico Branch. Yes, it's humble, but public libraries are the silent guardians of Democracy.

Butte County Public Library, Chico Branch. Yes, it’s humble, but public libraries are the silent guardians of Democracy.

Today I think we had one of our most productive Chico Taxpayer’s meetings ever – thanks a lot to Bob Best for coming down to lead a very productive discussion about priorities for Election 2014.

A heavy frost greeted us at the library this morning, but thank goodness, the heater was on.

A heavy frost greeted us at the library this morning, but thank goodness, the heater was on.

We had a good turnout and everybody was up for a good discussion. We started with a brief update on Measure J – not much to talk about there, until the city gets around to allowing us to apply for our refunds. First they actually have to amend something in the charter to allow us to apply for our refunds directly from the city – the current ordinance says we have to try to get the money out of the cell phone carriers first. Yeah, that stinks, and all I can say is, they better slam-dunk that Tuesday night. I’m expecting a reply to that inquiry I sent to the Finance Dept. by Thursday.  I’ll keep you posted.

We spent the rest of the morning discussion the city’s “unfunded pension liabilities,”  comparing notes, and trying to come up with a plan of action.

‘unfunded pension liabilities,” is the money our council promised to pay our city employees in retirement but the city doesn’t  really have it. Council got talked into these crazy pensions (70 – 90% of highest year’s earnings, as early as age 50) by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), who promised that most of the money would come from the stock market.  In the beginning they let the city pay 18 percent of the total cost  (based on actual payroll).   Nine percent of that was deemed the “employer share,” and the other nine was supposed to be the employees’ share. In reality, the city pays most or all of the employee share. And now, CalPERS is raising the amount they want – currently the city is paying 26% and it’s going to go up to 31% within the next couple of years. Meanwhile, management (including $212,000/yr city manager Brian Nakamura) only pay 4%, the fire employees pay 2%,  and the POLICE PAY NOTHING. Only the classified staff – those making less than $100,000/yr, some of them in the $35,000 range, pay most or all of their share, at 8% – 9%.

The “employees’ share” paid by the city (“employer paid member contribution”) adds up to about $1.9 million a year.  Brian Nakamura has complained that the city lost about $900,000/yr with the defeat of Measure J.  He said that amounted to several cops, or a fire station. Just imagine (or get out your calculator) how many cops or firefighters you could hire with $1.9 million.

Bob Best reminded us that this budget deficit conversation has been going on for about ten years. I remember taking my son, now 17, to the morning meetings when he was about six years old. After one discussion he had asked me, if the city was in so much financial trouble, what was with all those brand new multi-colored Sharpie markers and that giant doodle pad Finance Committee member Scott Gruendl was waving around? Gruendl was trying to scribble his way through an explanation why a once-financially healthy city, with a budget surplus when Tom Lando took the helm back in the 90’s, had come teetering to the brink of bankruptcy. This conversation has gone on for all these years, and we are still poised on the brink of bankruptcy, with the same elected leaders who haven’t listened to us before. 

Today we talked about getting more people involved. So many times, people don’t hear about issues like the bag ban until they come before the council, and they’re already a done deal, one way or the other. The bag ban was in committee for a couple of years. The same tiny handful of people came time and time again, urging the committee members to forward a ban to council for approval, with the same little handful, including myself, knowing we represented a much larger group that was unable to attend these daytime meetings, but who weren’t going to like this ridiculous ban.  The meetings weren’t noticed, they weren’t covered by the newspapers, and they’re held at 8am on work days. So,  a lot of people, like the checker and bagger I talked to recently at Safeway, are only just now hearing anything about it. 

Jim mentioned today that a friend of his, hearing of the bag ban recently, asked how something like that could go by without a public vote. He had to remind his friend, she’d voted for the council members who’d said they would support the ban – hadn’t she done her homework?

Chico continues to elect leaders and then complain about the direction they are taking us, and then elect them again anyway. 

What motivates people to vote for a candidate? What issues are important to people? What are the issues that are important to you? We shouldn’t wait until Spring 2014 to sort our priorities out – we need to start thinking about this now. Bob also suggested we start finding the issues in which we share the strongest common interest,  try to focus our energy behind those goals, and get others to help us, spread the word.

What are your priorities for the 2014 election? What issues would you like to hear from the candidates on? Are you a candidate who is interested in running? Well, let’s hear about it. If you don’t want to use your real name or e-mail, don’t worry about it, just try to stay constructive.

Let’s start the chatter.

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California is Business Hostile

12 Jan

The KIST! thermometer says, “get your ass in the house before your feet stick to the patio – it’s 23 degrees out here!” 

The dog dish is frozen pretty solid, I had to take a little hammer to it so Biscuit could wet her whistle. Then she pees for like 10 minutes, having held out all night, while Max makes the rounds of all the shrubberies. He’s got a funny jingle in his step on mornings like this – if only he could fly, so his feet would not have to touch the frozen ground!

I watch my breath form a cloud while they have a quick snack, and then we all head back in the house – too cold and dark to stay outside, too cold to even light the chimenea. 

Sometimes I wonder if I should go back to bed on mornings like this, save PG&E, but instead, I make myself a cup of coffee and sit down in front of the computer to read the papers.  I don’t like to get all my news from the very limited Chico Enterprise Record, I like to scan a lot of the area papers – Redding Record Searchlight, Red Bluff Sentinel, Auburn Journal, Grass Valley Union, Orland Press Register, etc.  This morning I was looking over my hometown paper – The Willows Journal – and  read a story about a bunch of kids I grew up with in Glenn county donating $16,000 in rice receipts to the Willows High athletic program:

http://www.willows-journal.com/news/school-9579-rice-donated.html

I also read this interesting article in the Orland Press Register:

http://www.orland-press-register.com/news/labor-10515-brown-meeting.html

The ex-mayor of Orland and a couple of local business owners were granted an audience with Governor Moonbeam, given a chance to air their beefs with the state labor board. 

The owner of a small Orland business was nailed for $3,000 for hiring a high school kid through a school program – 4 years ago, and the case is still “in litigation.” I can only imagine the lawyer bill this man is toting after four years of dicking around with the state of California – that would be like swimming in a leech-infested swamp! This man met with state labor commissioner Julie Su back in July, said that was a positive meeting, but his case is STILL IN LITIGATION after four years and a meeting with the state labor commissioner? Please – you people are TOO EASY! No wonder you’re getting screwed over a barrel, Mr. Nunez. 

And now, Orland’s ex-mayor is saying of his meeting with Jerry Brown, “”The meeting with the governor was the most productive meeting I’ve ever been to in my life.” What an ass-kissing slut he is! 

Scuse my language, I get so sick of the liberals and their blood-sucking, I can’t keep it clean anymore. 

Like a business owner I know says about the city of Chico, “They think just because you own a business, you’re some kind of $ugar Daddy.”

The State of California is business hostile. Look at the deal they just made with Amazon.com, just to get more sales tax revenues. They paved the way for Amazon to take more business away from local California businesses, while further enriching themselves. They get to KEEP  sales tax they generate! 

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/amazon-com-taxes/content?oid=6231231

Sure, I love online shopping, but this deal, whereby Amazon gets to keep a giant portion of the sales taxes they generate while taking business away from local retailers is pretty lame. The state doesn’t care about small businesses, they just want ANY tax revenues to feed their salary and benefits machine.

Try starting a small business in Chico – take a look at this first:

http://www.chico.ca.us/finance/business_in_chico.asp

Don’t forget to pay that $48 fee for working out of your house! 

Yes, California is business hostile.  

This weekend we’re having a late “First Sunday” meeting, on “Second Sunday” instead. The CTA will meet at the library tomorrow, Sunday, at 9am. We’ll talk about the latest news on Measure J (still waiting for the Finance Dept to get back to me regarding the cell phone tax refunds), the “unfunded pension liabilities”, and we’ll also hear from Bob Best, who has been getting together with various local groups to discuss priorities for the 2014 election.

Hope to have a great conversation, everybody is welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It never ceases to amaze me the petty maneuvers they go through Downtown to drag as much $taff time out of the process as they can

10 Jan
Look what’s on next Tuesday’s council agenda:
 
2.1. ORDINANCE OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CHICO AMENDING SECTION 3.56.150 OF
THE CHICO MUNICIPAL CODE REGARDING REFUNDS FOR OVERPAYMENTS AND
ERRONEOUS PAYMENTS OF UTILITY USERS’ TAXES – Final reading and adoption
Adopt –  On December 18, 2012, the Council introduced an ordinance to amend the City’s claims
procedures regarding requests for refunds of overpayments or erroneous payments of utility users’
taxes. The ordinance is now being presented for final reading and adoption by the reading of its title
only.  
 
Unfortunately, the clerk purposely loads these reports in such a manner that I can’t cut and paste from them (she says she’s afraid I’ll edit it, I swear to God, that’s what she told me), so here’s that link –
All they’re doing here is changing the charter to allow people to get a refund without having to first try to get it from the cell phone carrier – that’s what the old law said. I guess we should be glad they’re taking it up at all, but it never ceases to amaze me the petty maneuvers they go through to drag as much staff time out of this process as they can. Look at the number of documents it took just to change this minor little thing. See how many $taffers were involved!
 
There’s no information about actually collecting your rebate, I’m still waiting for staff to get back to me on that. 

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Don’t forget about those cell phone tax refunds!

9 Jan

At the December 26 Finance Committee meeting, Finance Director Jennifer Hennessy and City Attorney Lori Barker reported on their efforts to notify cell phone carriers that they no longer need to collect Utility Tax on cell phone bills, given the defeat of Measure J. You might be sick of hearing this but I never tire of telling it – they’ve been collecting the tax illegally for years now, knowingly, and when they noticed that other cities around the state were being sued for perpetrating this fraud, they wrote a measure legalizing it and plopped it on last November’s ballot. As you may recall, WE KICKED THE CRAP OUT OF IT, thankyouverymuch. 

So, what’s the big hold up with telling these companies to stop collecting, you might ask. Any intelligent person might ask that. Any intelligent person might run screaming out of these meetings. I prefer to think of myself as not quite intelligent, maybe just “dog smart.” I may not understand exactly what’s going on, but I got a very suspicious nose. So I go to these damned meetings and ask these persistently annoying questions – if you think I’m  annoying, just try being  me! 

It was asked at the meeting, I don’t remember by who or in exactly what words, but something like this –  well, Jennifer, since you receive these payments from these companies, wouldn’t you know which companies are collecting the tax? 

I’m so glad somebody asks questions besides me – you only get so many pointy questions before certain people get all pissy on you. When that question was asked, all I could do was yell  “You GO girl!” in my head. 

The answer – they are having a hard time segregating (their word) the land line taxes from the cell phone taxes. 

Okay, I thought, that sounds reasonable. You know me, at 8:15 in the am,  “hand me your purse” sounds reasonable to me.  I’m not really awake until about 9:15, three or four cups of coffee down the gullet and a couple of loads of laundry. I come home from these meetings and realize I let all kinds of weird stuff go by without so much as a squawk. 

Have you looked at your cell phone bill? They not only “segregate” your cell phone charges from your land line charges, they segregate all your calls and the amount of time you talked and everything. I could track my husband around the city for the better part of a month using that phone bill.  

The measure was defeated in November and they’re still grappling with, as the News and Review put it, “the daunting task of how to repay local cell phone users the utility tax that is has been collecting under an outdated ordinance.“

They can’t even answer questions about it yet. I sent an e-mail to the Finance Department today:

Hi,  I understand the city will be refunding cell phone taxes taken as a result of the defeat of Measure J – could I get the details on that? When and where can we get it, what documentation would we need, etc.    I assume this information will be posted on the front page of the city website eventually, but I’m writing a letter to the editor about it, and I wanted to get the  facts right.  

 Thanks, Juanita Sumner

I received this response:

 

Hello Juanita, thank you for your request for information on refunding cell phone taxes as a result of Measure J.  We will be responding to your request soon.  Thank you!

 

Well, we can make it easier for them – sing out people – who among you has been taxed on your cell phone bill within the last year? Bring those bills forward, e-mail the Finance Department – that’s jhenness@ci.chico.ca.us or ltheisen@ci.chico.ca.us – and tell them you have your bills, and you’re wondering how to get your refund. Simple as that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mickey Harrington will cost Butte County $400,000

5 Jan

I get frustrated with the Butte county clerk’s website because it’s just not as good or as easy to use as the city of Chico website. It’s hard to find anything, you just have to click everything and see if it leads where you want to go. Then, if you find what you want, you have to write down how you got there so you can find it again.

One handy resource the county clerk used to have on her website was a link by which you could check to see if your mail-in ballot had been received and was ‘good”, meaning, it is going to be counted. I’ve used it in the last two elections to comfort myself that at least the damn thing got to O-ville.

You wouldn’t believe what Albert at the post office did with my Christmas packages this year – yes Felix, it was the clerk who put the wrong labels on the packages and sent them to the opposite destinations, please tell your mom I am not the incompetent here! 

You think I’m going to trust the post office with my mail-in ballot after their abysmal history at delivering my packages?  

Back to business here – it is already too late to mail your mail-in ballot. I mailed mine over a week ago, so I feel somewhat secure. Well, not really. I’m going to call Candy Grubb’s office Monday to make sure they got it. 

This election stinks. They blame Logue and even Nielsen for this run-off – why isn’t Mickey Harrington willing to wake up, smell the coffee and CONCEDE? With only 27 percent of the vote in the last election, he says this election is “doable.”  He honestly expected to get Dan Logue’s endorsement after the November election, even after Logue had endorsed Nielsen when he dropped out of the race in October.  Harringtons simple-minded refusal to accept the will of the people, to me, is a sign that this guy isn’t playing with a full deck. But of course, there’s a quality that always seems to attract the liberals like a big turd attracts flies. 

What really stinks about this election is the timing – scheduled at will by Jerry Brown, right in the days after the holidays, bad weather, school starting up soon – all three conditions that conspire toward low voter turnout. This election could have been held as late as April,  but Brown thinks Harrington’s pathetic 27% will look beefier in a rigged election. 

Try doing your homework on these two – you will find that Nielsen has spoken at length on the issues when asked by various media sources, like the Sac Bee, where Harrington’s answers are “still unavailable”.  Later, when interviewed by the Enterprise Record, Harrington said he didn’t feel there was a need for pension reform? Wow, that’s pretty gutsy of him – or crazy, whichever. 

I felt good about my vote for Jim Nielsen. The people who have criticized Nielsen to me have been completely ignorant of the real issues and Nielsen’s record on those issues. They’ve criticized him because they’ve “heard he lives in a trailer in Gerber.”

From Wikipedia: A question of residency eligibility arose during his bid for the Assembly in 2008, because Nielsen owns 2 homes, one in the district he represents and one near the capitol, which is the custom of most legislators. Nielsen won the case and even received a judgment for court costs in the amount of $7,400 against Plaintiff Don Bird. Plaintiff appealed to the Secretary of State who then deferred to the State Attorney General. After reviewing the case, the Attorney General issued a letter on December 22, 2008, stating there was no evidence to warrant further investigation and the matter was closed. The Attorney General was Jerry Brown, a Democrat and former Governor of California.

There’s the legal end of it, from 2008, but people still dredge it up, because it’s the only real criticism they have. It’s not a real issue.  I don’t think the reference has as much to do with legal residency as with the notion that only white trash hicks live in trailers, or in Gerber. That’s the kind of people that vote Harrington – people who feel uncomfortable with the lifestyle we appreciate here, and can’t come up with anything better than the cheap potshots that littered Obama’s presidential campaign. 

The good news is, from the Colusa Sun Herald, “The Tuesday runoff between Republican Assemblyman Jim Nielsen and Democrat Michael “Mickey” Harrington may not be on the forefront of the public’s consciousness, but turnout is expected to be higher than election officials first predicted.”  According to their story, Butte County had already returned 28 percent of it’s mail-in ballots by December 28, Tehama had already received 25 percent, and Colusa 30 percent. 

Thanks to all those voters who voted early and I hope the rest will either get over to the county clerk’s office today (Saturday Jan 5) or to their polling place on Tuesday. Contact me if you need a ride, and I’ll try to accommodate you or get somebody else to do so. 

UPDATE:  I called the county clerk’s office – that’s (530) 538-6366 –  and talked to a gal who gladly checked not only my ballot but my husbands – both received, and “GOOD”!  I believe they are still open today, until 5pm, and then you can get them during regular business hours Monday and Tuesday, if you’re worried. I checked because I would have felt stupid if it was a close race, not knowing whether my ballot even made it in there. 

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CTA meeting rescheduled – no First Sunday meeting this month – Second Sunday meeting instead!

4 Jan

I’m sorry to be a flake, Folks, but I will not be able to make the regularly scheduled Chico Taxpayer’s meeting, so the gang has agreed to meet Sunday after next – that’s January 13 – same time, 9am.

I’ve been wanting to talk over the unfunded pension liabilities, and our campaign to get city employees to pay their own “employee share”. We need to discuss the whole notion of who pays what regarding benefits/pensions. I believe the employees should get ready to pay more, a lot more, or get ready to give up this notion of 70-90 percent of their highest year’s salary at 50 – 55 years of age. 

A decent person would not expect others to pay these salaries and benefits, it’s just greed people. 

So, I hope to see hear some productive ideas on January 13, get a letter writing campaign going, try to get council to listen to reason. 

Plan B? There’s another election coming up in two years, and now’s the time to look for suitable replacements for Scott Gruendl and Mary Goloff. 

 

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