Archive | Uncategorized RSS feed for this section

Malls are turning into crime zones

6 Oct
Mangrove Plaza

My husband  and I spotted this big ugly tag from the parking lot in front of Bubbles laundromat at Mangrove Plaza.

I think the biggest problem facing Chico right now is increasing criminal activity all over town. I won’t use the word “homeless” – that is not  the right word for the transient street people that are ruining our town.

One reason this problem has festered into such a mess is the agencies that get funding for feeding, housing, and otherwise facilitating these people. They blame mental illness, bad luck, tough breaks – things that every human being has to deal with in life, regardless of station. One difference being, how we all cope. Do you cope by shitting all over the rest of our parade?

Another difference being, how we are treated. It seems the more responsibility a person shows in life, the less slack they are given when they have a little mental breakdown, bad luck, tough breaks. The suits come after your money, your car, your home, your kids.  But today I read about a consultant who will be speaking before “homeless advocates” next week who says we should spend $30 – 50,000 per person on no-strings-attached housing for transients.  You have to be a total loser to get compassion from the homeless advocates.

According to Butte County administrative officer Paul Hahn, we already spend half the county budget on mentally ill and homeless individuals. I’ve sat in meetings listening to members of county Behavioral Health staff talk about adding “bed” (a space in a shelter facility) after bed to the county’s various facilities, 10’s of thousands of dollars per individual. That’s not to mention the salaries and benefits at Butte County Behavioral Health.

http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Department.aspx?entityid=4&fiscalyear=2015&departmentid=1117

Wow, I was shocked this time, looking at the new information recently posted by the State Controller’s office. Can that be true? An administrative salary of $298,000? $54,000 in benefits? That’s – excuse me, I’m not a professional – fucking nuts!

So, get my point? A person who is yanking in that kind of dough to sit in meetings discussing the homeless problem

http://www.orovillemr.com/article/NB/20160411/NEWS/160419957

https://www.newsreview.com/chico/all-hands-on-deck/content?oid=20684307

would want to keep the conversation going as long as possible. By their own admission they enjoy a budget of over $57 million.

Click to access BehavioralHealthDepartmentOverview2013.pdf

Chico Police Department and Chico Chamber of Commerce also masturbate away a considerable amount of time and paid energy toward the homeless. Regular public meetings held in different parts of town have been worthless. The last time I had a complaint about an incident I witnessed at Bubbles Laundromat there on Mangrove, Katie Simmons simply told me she’s meeting with those business owners on a regular basis. But the problem not only persists at Mangrove Plaza, it’s getting worse – should I send Simmons, who is paid with money received from the city of Chico “Community Block Grants”, a copy of the photo posted above? 

Tuesday I realized there are certain businesses that continue to be part of the problem. Mangrove Plaza merchants could do a lot more to help themselves. Like, how about cleaning up the sidewalks in front of your store Folks? Tuesday afternoon, my husband and I strolled by one pile of dog shit after another, stuck to the sidewalk in front of businesses like Sports LTD and Heel and Sole Shoes. You really have to watch your step on that sidewalk, all the way around toward Safeway, or you will get shit on your shoes.  And the general appearance of the sidewalk looks like Downtown San Francisco – looks like it’s never had  a broom to it. It gets worse as you wind your way toward the sandwich shop, Bubbles Laundromat, and then Rite Aid. The filth continues right into Rite Aid, where the smell of human excrement will take you a step back.  Not even the perfume and cigarettes stench of the dry cleaners covers up the scent of human filth that is starting to pervade that section of Mangrove Plaza.

The public sector is not going to do anything about this problem.  It’s time for property owners and citizens to step up.  I think we need an ordinance that says malls like Mangrove Plaza need to hire their own, on-site security patrol. I don’t believe the police department should have to patrol private property.  When you have a piece of real estate where no one is going to be at night, you are inviting creeps to do whatever they want. It is a crime zone, and it will get worse.

I know the management at Safeway cares. I feel for the employees at Safeway – they have to park in that parking lot at all hours. We don’t go to Safeway after dark if we can help it and neither do our adult children. Remember when Mangrove Safeway was considered “The Nice Safeway”?   One afternoon  we ran into a friend of ours at the check out, and we were discussing some ne’er do wells at the south entrance. They’d tried to start something with our friend when he didn’t respond to their request for a hand-out – he’s a big man, he’s used to people making remarks. He’s always telling us what a trial it is to live in his Chapmantown neighborhood with them walking right past his gate, sometimes tossing cigarettes into his grandson’s play yard.   He says he’d like to rip their arms off, but he knows he’d get the shit end of that stick from the cops, so he holds his temper.  The manager happened to overhear our conversation, and asked our friend about his encounter,  then went immediately out the front door and confronted the creeps, telling them they had to leave. 

Safeway Corporation doesn’t care, they don’t have to work there. Same with the owners of the malls at the south end of town, where the cardboard signs and shopping carts are stored in the bushes along the road. 

Chico PD should be patrolling Bidwell Park, but that’s another post.

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,

CARD needs to do a cost allocation study on their programs, find out the real costs of running private businesses under the bus

2 Oct

Off The Wall Soccer owner Mario Sagastume wrote a letter to the paper last week regarding their complaints about Chico Area Recreation District (CARD).

Regarding the recent article by Laura Urseny, understand the owners/management of Off The Wall Soccer (OTWS) are not Anti-Soccer.

To the contrary, all of us have supported, organized, promoted, played, coached and enjoyed the game.  Furthermore, we continue to encourage youth/adults to play the game, indoor and outdoor.

We have not requested CARD to reduce or eliminate their soccer program.  We simply asked them to honor an agreement made with OTWS in 2006.  OTWS opened in 2000 to provide year round soccer.  At the time CARD ONLY offered 11-aside in the Fall.

We were successful for a few years until CARD began offering 7- aside soccer in the Fall/Spring.  This had an immediate impact on sign-ups.  Any small business would struggle to compete with a government organization receiving about 60% ($4,000,000.00) of their annual funding from property taxes.

In 2005 we approached the CARD Board with our concerns and were directed to coordinate with management.  In 2006 the CARD General Manager agreed to only offer 7-aside in the summer and 11-aside in the Fall/Spring.  This was a fair compromise.

In 2013, after experiencing falling participation, we learned CARD had been offering 7-aside in the Fall/Spring for several years.  When we again met with CARD management they apologized and assured us they would abide by the agreement in the future.

Foolishly, we took them at their word, their commitment lasted less than a year.

Last week we approached the CARD Board and requested they have management honor their commitment.  Other than Tom Lando, THEY DECLINED.

Mario Sagastume

Partner, Off The Wall Soccer

Most members of the CARD board wrote off OTWS complaints as sour apples. They ignored the well-made point that they are using taxpayer money to subsidize their efforts to undercut private businesses all over town.

Here’s my suggestion – have CARD do a cost allocation study on their soccer program. When Chris Constantin did cost allocation for the city, he figured in all the salaries involved, which in this case would include director Ann Willman’s $100,000 plus salary and benefits, and even the air conditioning charges in the room where they discussed the programs. I’m telling you – they don’t price these programs for cost, they price their programs to run private businesses under.

Their costs are enormous. They spend about 90 percent of their more than $6 million budget on salaries and benefits. Only recently were CARD management asked to contribute to their own pensions – yeah, that’s right – none of the previous management, not Steve Visconti nor Ed Seagle nor Jerry Hughes – paid one red cent toward their own pension. Visconti recently retired at a salary of over $120,000/year – he will received 70 percent of that, with cost-of-living-increase, for the rest of his sorry life.

Now Jerry Hughes expects to be elected to the board. Let me tell you a  story I heard Hughes relate to Enterprise Record reporter Laura Urseny at a meeting. He was building his new house in Tahoe – that’s right, Tahoe – when his neighbors informed him that his plans trespassed over the property line onto their property. They were trying to tell them he couldn’t do that, and he was telling Urseny that he had got a lawyer to settle the matter. He was telling her, his trespass was just a silly thing, and he didn’t understand why the neighbors were making such a big deal about it. He had trespassed on them, admittedly, and he was making them get a lawyer to get him off their property.

That’s Jerry Hughes. Let me tell you another story about Jerry. When CARD paid three consultants a month or so ago to give a presentation about how to pass bond measures, Hughes asked them a question Michael Worley had already asked (because he’s either deaf or doesn’t listen).  Worley  wanted to know if the city of Chico could run a bond for them, and the consultant said the city would control the money, which might not work out so well for CARD.  When they repeated the same answer to Hughes, he actually turned his back on the consultant while the man was talking and grumbled his way back to his chair. Hughes is not fit for office.  This is how he treats a consultant who is paid with the taxpayers’ money.

And then we have candidate Dave Donnan.  Read here.

Donnan tries to clear up my accusations that others tried to bully him out of running in 2012, but only adds more mud to the water

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make fun of a man’s problems, but this man is an idiot. I would bet you $5, he hasn’t attended a CARD meeting to date, and he’d admit that, but try to excuse himself with his myriad of personal problems. If he has so many personal problems, I would suggest he keep his dick out of  the public mousetrap.

They’re both horrible. Which leaves us with Lando and Worley.  They’re weasels, but (heavy sigh), they’re weasels we know.   They are professional and businesslike. I wouldn’t expect that out of either Donnan or Hughes.

Three CARD board members will be up in 2018 – Sneed, Mulowney and Ellis. These people need to go. We must come up with at least one viable candidate to run for 2018. I would nominate either Dave Stahl or Mario Sagastume, or both. They’ve been in the recreation business all these years, I’d say it’s time to get some people on the rec board that actually know about recreation.

Tags: , , ,

There’s no more time for “civility” in the “homeless” conversation – let’s just say it like it is – too many of us are enabling the bums

25 Sep

 

Texas consultant Robert Marbut spoke to local “homeless advocates” the other day and told them that Chico/Butte County is headed for trouble if we don’t quit “enabling” transients.  This is a message that has played across the pages of local newspapers and been the subject of too many meetings, but this guy is an “expert” so heads were turned.

http://www.chicoer.com/general-news/20160923/consultant-gives-to-do-list-for-chico-homelessness

 

It’s about time we had a real conversation about “the homeless problem.”  But, there are too many people in our community who stand to benefit from keeping the status quo. 

http://www.orovillemr.com/article/NB/20160411/NEWS/160419957

https://www.newsreview.com/chico/all-hands-on-deck/content?oid=20684307

Meanwhile, League of Women Voters hosted a symposium on “civility.” I’m sorry, civility is a shield that bureaucrats use when the taxpayers ask too many questions. I’ve sat in meetings asking, why so much money for county behavioral health, why so much staff time and money going to the benefit of these criminal transients, arrested and released back into our community time and time again?  I’ve used the words “enabling behavior,” and I’ve been treated like a skunk at a garden party. I wish the LWV observer would show up at one of those Local Government Committee meetings, where Stairways manager Mike “Trucker Hat” Madeiros tries to glare down anybody who questions the spending or the salaries. According to Butte County Admin Officer Paul Hahn,  over half the county budget goes to programs for mental health and indigent “residents”. 

When I’ve complained here about policies and money given to the Torres Shelter, I’ve had shelter director Brad Montgomery up my ass. He tried to tell me the Torres doesn’t get tax money.  This post sure shut him up.

Chico a homeless Mecca? Butte County funds the programs that bring them flocking

Go out around town sometime. Try riding your bike through Bidwell Park. Go Downtown in the wee hours. Walk your neighborhood at 5am.  I’m tired of being civil. 

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Oroville puts sales tax increase on the ballot – is their retail sector ready for this?

20 Sep

 

A few years ago I did a post about how great it is to shop in Oroville.

https://worldofjuanita.com/2013/11/22/shop-in-oroville-nice-clean-streets-plenty-of-parking-friendly-folks-and-great-stuff/

Well, forget that – Oroville city staff is bent on raising their sales tax – a full cent!

 

For what? Bill LaGrone’s $158,000 salary and $73,000 benefits/pension package.  A couple of years ago, Oroville police chief Bill LaGrone talked Oroville Silly Council into making him “Public Safety Director”, giving him both the police and fire departments. They might have thought they were saving money – did any of these people do well in math? They’re paying this guy the equivalent of two salaries anyway.  And holy freaking cow – what kind of benefits does a person get for $73,000/year? Retirement in a palace in Dubai?

Oroville police department salaries are on par with Chico, even a little higher. Because? You got me – a town of 18,000 residents? Here’s something I forget – the incorporated city of O-ville does not include Thermalito or Palermo, who have no police department, and are under the jurisdiction of the county sheriff.  In fact, a lot of what we think of as “Oroville” is actually county, the city of Oroville is a very tiny little burg.

Small, and too poorly run to justify salaries like this:

http://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=81&fiscalyear=2015

City-Data reports that Oroville employs about 23 police employees – including dispatch, but not including LaGrone – at an average salary of $66,000. That stacks up well against Chico police salaries, for a town about four times as populated.  The average employed Orovillian makes about $30,000, which is about half the state average income. The median family income is reported between $36,000 – $47,000/year, with about 20 percent of the residents living on $20,000/year or less.  Knowing that, you might predict – the crime rate in Oroville is high for California,  alarming for such a small town, with such a well-paid police force – see for yourself here –

http://www.city-data.com/city/Oroville-California.html

more here

http://www.bestplaces.net/economy/city/california/oroville

Oroville is our county seat, so I read on one website that the population goes up by about 7,000 during the day due to the influx of employees working at the county, city and schools. These people are most likely the folks who take the high salary county and city jobs and drive back to their homes in Chico – drive to Oroville some morning, see the conga line.  See the brand new cars.  Then drive home about 5 pm – see the same conga line, same people, driving their expensive cars back to Chico.  I’m guessing they don’t even slow down in the retail district, or even gas their cars in O-ville.

I’m shocked that the city council could  be stupid enough to put this tax on the ballot. Only one  councilor opposed it, and only because he wanted it pegged specifically  for public safety.  The rest of the council went the general fund route, because it would require only the simple majority – 51 percent of the voters who actually show up at the polls. Sounds like a slam dunk.

And it also seems pretty obvious that they aren’t shaking down their own residents as much as the outer lying folks who drive in to shop there. 

Well, that’s okay. I’ve already become very adept at internet shopping.  Farewell, O-ville, City of Fools. 

 

 

Tags: , ,

Oroville seeks to increase sales tax by a full cent – letter writer does the math

13 Sep

Thank you Steve Christensen for writing the following letter to the Enterprise Record. We need more people like Steve.

Oroville’s tax proposal would be far above norm

Chico Enterprise Record 9/13/16

In November, Oroville voters will decide whether or not to approve Measure R, a $ 3.6 million tax increase ( 1 percent added sales tax). Mayor Linda Dahlmeier said Oroville has fallen behind because we’ve not yet raised sales taxes. I’ve researched cities in Butte County and the six adjacent counties that surround us. Only four cities in this neighborhood of seven counties have already imposed an added tax by increasing sales tax ( Red Bluff one- quarter of 1 percent, Paradise, Wheatland and Williams one- half of 1 percent).

None of these four collect the other added tax, the utility tax. Oroville does. Utility companies in Oroville are required to add 5 percent to our utility bills and send it to the city. Annual revenue is $1.6 million, which averages $100 per citizen. The total population of the four cities with the added sales tax is 50,000. The total added sales tax revenue is $2.5 million, which averages $50 per citizen.

We’re already paying twice as much in added tax as our neighboring similar cities. If Measure R passes, Oroville’s added tax revenue ($ 3.6 million in new tax plus $1.6 million in existing tax) will average $ 325 per citizen. That’s 6 1/2 times more than any city in our circle of counties.

Measure R calls for a full 1 percent increase, twice the amount of the other cities. Measure R does not repeal the utility tax, which none of the other cities have. Oroville wants way too much from us.

Vote no on R.

— Steve Christensen, Oroville

Tags: ,

CARD practices predatory pricing – this is a risky ploy in the real world, but not when you have guaranteed taxpayer funding

12 Sep

The story about Off The Wall Soccer and CARD has been bothering me. I sat in a board meeting last month and listened to the owners describe how CARD is putting them out of business, and it just pisses me off.

I remember when they opened that business, in a 20th Street warehouse that had been left empty for some time – what a good thing that was for that entire neighborhood. Sixteen years later, it is shocking to see a government agency go toe to toe with a viable business, pirating revenues to pay their burgeoning pension debt.

When I blogged this previously I heard from owner Dave Stahl and asked him for more information. He showed me the stream of written communication, as well as minutes from a 2006 board meeting which included a record of the conversation. At that time, staff acknowledged having made a spoken agreement with the owners of Off the Wall Soccer, and the board directed them to honor the agreement.

In my conversation with Stahl, he reported they reneged on their own agreement so many times, I can’t recount it.  All I know is, you better get it in writing if you are dealing with CARD. In a letter dated  August 10, 2016, CARD Director of Parks and Rec, Terry Zeller said, “I understand your description of past events in regard to your business and what you feel has and has not transpired as a result of conversations and meetings with CARD and its Board. As I mentioned before, without a policy or agreement created from these past discussions, I can only work from the present and your current concerns.”

What I hear Zeller saying is, OTWS made their deal with ex-staffers Steve Visconti and Jake Preston, and they’re gone now, so the deal is dead. Furthermore, says Zeller, “we cannot eliminate programs based on perceived competition. Local competition is present in almost all of the programs we offer.” He goes on to list programs from daycare to art lessons, programs that are also “offered by many private businesses, churches and non-profits.”

Zeller just ignores his own predatory pricing scam. Defined as “the pricing of goods or services at such a low level that other suppliers cannot compete and are forced to leave the market,” this method of eliminating your competition is risky for a private business. But CARD gets almost $4 million a year in tax money, getting less than half their revenues from program fees. In private business, if a service or product can’t pay for itself, you dump it. But CARD is subsidized by the taxpayer – they don’t have to support themselves.  They can undercut, undercut, undercut – until their competitors in the real world fail. And then they have a monopoly, and they can charge what they want.

They don’t have to play by the rules, either, because people rarely call them on their bullshit. Thanks to Dave Stahl and his partners at Off The Wall  Soccer, for calling this out in the open.  Their business is in dire straits, most of their clients having been lured away by CARD’s half price scheme. As teams defected, others were fairly well forced to go along – you can’t have team sports without a few teams, after all.  While CARD board member Jan Sneed admitted to having made the agreement with OTWS, the staff has gone ahead and scheduled exactly the programs they promised not to schedule.

This is exactly the treatment I got from CARD board and staff when I tried to find out more about their efforts to build a new aquatic center.  I had attended an early, publicly announced meeting – they said they were looking for people to sign up for a committee. I signed  up. I never got any notice of any meeting, although time and time again I’d see reports from the committee scheduled on board agendas. Former CARD general manager Steve Visconti played me like a pro – at first he apologized, my name must have gotten lost… it just went on like that.

It is imperative this agency increases funding, because their salary and benefit costs are going up all the time. While they are budgeting less than $500,000 this year for capital improvements, they continue to spend almost their entire budget on salaries and benefits – this year $5.5 million, last year $5.1, the previous year, about $4.9. This year they budgeted over $420,000 for pension premiums, and that amount increases by about $10,000/year.

They say they can’t maintain their facilities without more money. Please! Of their $482,000 capital improvements budget, $250,000 goes to fix rot at Park Pavilion. What were they thinking when they bought that thing? They wanted to rent it out – compete with local businesses.   Rotten from top to bottom, but they paid over $1 million, before interest.  Meanwhile, they deferred a $500,000 fix-it for Shapiro Pool in 2006 – that was 10 years ago. Today they say Shapiro is beyond repair.

After I talked to Dave Stahl I attended a special “informative meeting” with CARD board, staff, and three consultants who detailed CARD’s options for more funding. I’ll get back to that another time.

 

 

Tags: , ,

Time to write letters

8 Sep

I know some people think I’m just a broken record, that I hate taxes and have no use for any tax.  That couldn’t be farther from the truth. I know our community depends for many services on  a steady revenue of taxes from “users” like me.

But, our entire country is on a dangerous path to insolvency because of the pensions of public  workers. I didn’t make that up – google it, and you’ll find intellectuals across the country voicing the same concern.

I don’t consider myself an intellectual, I consider myself a person with common dog sense. There is nothing sensible about the public pension system. The CalPERS system is consistently underfunded, and we just found out why – the guy who was in charge of investing for the fund was nailed for accepting bribes to buy bad stocks. That’s apparently why CalPERS has lost money for years and depended on one bail-out from the state legislature after another. They’ve also been making demands of their participating agencies – pay up on your pension liabilities now, or face high interest on your debt.

Those agencies – from small agencies like Butte County Vectors to huge agencies like City of Chico always turn to the taxpayer to pick up the slack. This time it’s Chico Unified School District, with Measure K. They say they want money to fix their facilities – they said that with Measure A, and they said  it with the refunding bond, E. And here they are again, hand out for $152 million they predict will be $270 million in pay-off.

It’s been in the newspaper.  The district notices their meetings quite loudly.  But I don’t go – the district is a machine. They have so much money – they’re like blue jays. Blue jays take over your back yard feeder,  because they’re loud and obnoxious. As soon as they get the leg up, they eat all the food, way more than they need. They grow very big, and then they take over your entire back yard. Next thing you know, all you got is blue jays.

That’s why I don’t feed wild animals, and for the same reason  I am suspicious of new taxes. Lately all the public workers seem to be  hands out for us to fund their crazy pensions – for most public workers, it’s 70 – 90 (“public safety workers”) percent of their highest year’s salary, available at age 50 – 55. Teachers must wait til 60 – 62 years.  A paycheck  for life, with cost of living increases, health benefits, even life insurance paid in full. For this teachers pay 9 – 10 percent of their pension contribution.

Non-certified employees pay only 7% for employees hired before 2013 / 6% for employees hired after 2013. What? It went down?

According to assistant superintendent Kevin Bultema, “Administrators with a teaching credential usually participates in STRS and administrators without a teaching credential usually participates in PERS at the same rates.”

The district retirement is handled by both California Teachers Retirement System and CalPERS – obviously the teachers pay into CalSTRS.  CalSTRS did not have a guy accepting bribes to make bad  investments, so they are doing okay. But of course, both are demanding more money all the time. And, the taxpayers still pick up more than twice the employee “share.” 

Am I wasting my time fighting this bond? No, but I know what I’m up against, and I need other people to wade in here. Please write letters to the papers, let other voters know what’s going on. Don’t take my word for it – go to the district website and look for the budget – it’s not there. I had to ask Kevin Bultema for it – that’s kbultema@chicousd.org

Read the  budget, see for yourself, the administrators are lavishly salaried, and pay the same percentage for their pension as the teachers. Hey, teachers don’t do too bad. Full time teachers are making in excess of $65,000/year, some of them tipping in close to $100,000/year, plus benefits. And, if you look  at the publicpay.gov website, you’ll see, they list their overtime pay (which  I have been told includes subbing for another teacher or even playground supervision) separately, anonymously, so you don’t really know how much these teachers are yanking in. 

For their average salary, they figure in everybody – including part time workers making less than  $1,000/ year off the district. Blue jays cheat and play dirty, you can  expect them to bend the facts any way they want. Read it for yourself. 

And then write a letter to the editor of the daily or the weekly, or both if you want. If we fight this thing, inform the other voters, we have a rat’s ass of a chance of beating this bond. 

Do you want to pay $60 for every $100,000 assessed against your house? For what? 

Here’s my first volley:

In 1995, Chico Unified School District placed Measure N on the ballot, a $32 million bond specified “to acquire land and to construct new high school facilities and to construct new and renovate existing facilities on the Pleasant Valley High School Campus.”  The measure failed.  

In 1998,  Measure A specified $48.7 million would be used to “acquire land and to construct new high school facilities.”  This measure barely received two thirds approval.  But, the district reneged on the new high school, instead using  Measure A money for many uses not specified in the original measure. The Grand Jury investigated, but declared the school board was allowed to spend the money however it saw fit. 

In 2012,  complaining about aging facilities in disrepair, Measure E asked another $78 million, promising “local Chico  school  facility improvement.” This bond passed because the threshold had been lowered to 55 percent. 

Four years later,  the district still has the same complaints – schools over 50 years old, failing roofs, sub-par playground equipment, etc. Measure K asks for $152 million, $270 million with interest. 

While they say they will fix facilities, yearly budgets show a pattern of increasing employee costs and decreasing maintenance expenditures. The  district practices “deferred maintenance,” spending less than 8 percent of their total budget on maintenance while spending roughly 90 percent on salaries and benefits. 

If they really care about the students, they would have been maintaining the facilities instead of padding their pensions.

Juanita Sumner, Chico

CARD board and staff show a pattern of thumbing their nose at the public and the rules

20 Aug

I didn’t get to tell everything I saw at the CARD meeting Thursday evening. Everything I saw that night fit a pattern that’s been catching my eye for the last couple of years.

When Chair Bob Malowney opened the meeting, he offered the floor to public comments “not related to items on the agenda”.  Chico City Council does that at the end of the meetings, calling it, “Business from the Floor”.  You can bring up concerns you think need to be addressed, either by the board or by staff, and they can vote to take action at some time in the future or just sit there like stone monkeys staring at the speaker until he/she goes away.

Two men identifying themselves as owners of “Off The Wall Soccer” on 20th Street came forward to air a gripe that sounded so familiar it brought me forward on my chair. Essentially, CARD had made an agreement with them and broken it, acknowledged it had been broken and promised not to break it again, and then proceeded to do so. Over and over.

Off The Wall offers indoor soccer year round, for people who want to be able to play no matter what the weather, and be able to depend on consistent “field” conditions. It’s a smaller venue, so they are restricted to 7 member teams instead of the standard 11, but this created a niche for Off The Wall, one of the owners acknowledging, “we were making a lot of money.” 

A business that is making money is always a good thing to have in your town. Private businesses make money by providing a service the public wants at a price they can afford, and that’s always good for the consumer.  

Until 1995, when CARD started to offer a 7 member team program in addition to their 11 member teams.  This created a drain on business for OTW. The owners finally went to CARD, accusing them of unfair competition. CARD was offering their programs at much lower fees, undercutting OTW by half. 

I don’t think it’s right for an agency that is subsidized  by the taxpayers to play price wars with private business. CARD should provide programs that are not provided privately, instead, they see a private business making money and try to cut in on the action.

CARD agreed to cut the number of 7-member teams they offered, and this was fine with OTW, so a “settlement” was made. I don’t know if that was on paper, but it was with Steve Visconti and Monica Jameson, both of whom have left within the last couple of years. 

“Within a year and a half “ CARD was violating the agreement. In 2006 Visconti acknowledged they were violating the agreement and promised they would stop.

Again in 2013, OTW “started to see a big slide in participation… we found CARD had added programs beyond  the agreement…”  Owners of Off the Wall again complained, and Steve Visconti acknowledged CARD had violated the agreement, and that they would stop. 

But, the two men reported, “this lasted less than a year.” 

Here’s the pattern. This is exactly how Visconti and other staffers treated me when I asked to be put on the notice list for the Aquatic Facility Committee. Over a two year period, Visconti alternately promised to include me on the list, denied the existence of the committee, denied that there had been any meetings, constantly contradicting himself, as well as agendas posted on the CARD website. 

Ann Willmann isn’t any better, having kept her communications with Every Body Healthy  Body like a state secret. I knew something stunk, and finally former county supervisor Jane Dolan and husband Bob Mulhullond had to point out to CARD that they were not running their meetings properly and were playing fast and loose with the entire aquatic center conversation.

Every Body Healthy Body, despite their 301-C yadda yadda, is a private corporation that will build a privately-owned facility.  Whether or not they get public funds, this facility will be run for a profit and anybody who wants to use it will pay fees well beyond the donation they make on their property taxes. 

So here’s the irony, just in case you didn’t see it – CARD competes with successful business Off The Wall Soccer, undercutting them by 50 percent, but they’re ready to go to the county supervisors to ask that a huge parcel of land be taken off the protected register so a private development company can develop the shit out of it for their own gain. 

The owners of Off The Wall say the situation is getting pretty desperate. “If we don’t have the Fall, if CARD keeps registering (beyond the agreement), we’re out of business,” said partner Mario Sagastume.

Longtime board member Jan Sneed admitted “I was on the board when we agreed to this…” but trailed off without a suggestion. Tom Lando claimed, “we did agendize  this and asked you for further information…” but he trailed off – the owners had already handed the board a packet detailing communications over the years, it was all right there.

Bob Malowney seemed unrepentant, saying that “people want to play soccer…” . 

 I think CARD has way overstepped it’s purpose. They are a district that is supposed to offer facilities for people to play sports. I think they go too far when they try to run programs too. They compete with a number of private businesses –  from weddings to fitness to daycare – all subsidized by the taxpayers so they can undercut their competition out of business. And they do it badly, cutting programs that people come to depend on as soon as there is not enough money in the kitty to pay their pension.

CARD pays more than $400,000/year on pensions, and more than $300,000 on health benefits, all for about 30 management employees.  They are pursuing an assessment because enrollment in programs is dropping and they need money to bring their facilities up to code and up to Americans With Disabilities Act requirements, neglected since 1990. 

Recently the board voted to make management pay some of their pension – they have previously paid NOTHING toward retirement at their highest year’s salary at age 55. They’ve paid their own pensions while neglecting facilities all over town. 

CARD has already signed up 7-member teams beyond the agreement for Fall 2016, but promised to agendize OTW’s complaint for an upcoming meeting. 

Tags: ,

Hey Bob! I need a proof reader…

4 Aug

No, dammit, I did not attend that “Local Government Committee” meeting yesterday. I had wanted to find out if the county had come up with a plan to close the poo ponds at the dump yet, but I guess I’ll have to write a note to staff and ask where that discussion has gone.  They’ve already admitted that if they close that facility to enlarge the dump, as planned, septic service companies will have to truck their cargo out of the county. One staffer reported that would double the cost of having a tank pumped.

I don’t know how many people on the committee or staff have septic tanks, but they should know, almost all of unincorporated Butte County is on septic as well as quite a number of homes in Chico. A lot of people already don’t get their tanks pumped often enough – now what? Staff has been working on “alternatives,” including a new facility at Chico Wastewater Treatment Plant and Fly Factory, out there west of town. I don’t know about that, I think that would also prove to be cost prohibitive for homeowners. Given that our sewer fund has been in the red for years, pilfered by “cost allocations” to different funds to pay salaries and benefits, this just sounds like another opportunity for the City of Chico to put their thumb in our pie. Or in this case, our septic tanks.

There were a few interesting items on that agenda, but things pile up on me by 3:30 in the afternoon, it was 105 on my patio, didn’t seem like a good idea to mount the old three-speed and go gallomphing out into the 3-digits.  Oh well, I’ll have to check in with staff and see what they’re up to.

Instead of going to the meeting, I decided to stay home and work on another project. I’m looking for proof readers – Hey Bob!  Can you contact me here, I need you to read something over for me, see what you think.

 

Chico a homeless Mecca? Butte County funds the programs that bring them flocking

25 Jul
 
 
See the little orange tent pitched there behind the hotel? I see people camped out here almost every time I go to Walmart.

Look hard, just a little to the right of the dark SUV – see the little orange tent pitched there behind the hotel?

Again, I’m noticing an uptick in the number of “street people” around Chico – including these pictured, camped illegally there behind the Oxford Suites. I often see signs of illegal camping on that lot – an old mattress sat against the back of a dumpster for a couple of weeks,  the usual trash accumulating on the ground nearby.  

As my husband and I drove out to do errands the other morning, we came across Chico PD rousting a camp at the Intersection of Pine and Mulberry, at the tiny green triangle bounded by Little Chico Creek.  There always seem to be camps there, the trash piles grow, until some local feel-good group goes in to clean it out. Then the bums just move back in.

Hey, Brad Montgomery – look at the agenda for the June 28, 2016, Board of Supervisors meeting:

3.03 * Agreement with Chico Community Shelter Partnership – The Chico Community Shelter Partnership is a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting individuals in their efforts to achieve self-sufficiency and a more stable lifestyle. The Chico Community Shelter Partnership has operated the Torres Community Shelter, providing shelter and related social services to those experiencing homelessness in the community for over 13 years.  Approval is requested for an agreement with Chico Community Shelter Partnership to provide peer-based services to homeless individuals through client support and mental health outreach services, and to shelter guests experiencing mental illness. The term of this agreement will be July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017. The maximum financial obligation under this agreement shall not exceed $108,000 – action requested – APPROVE AGREEMENT AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIR TO SIGN.

 Care to comment on that Brad? Where’d that money come from? 

Read the rest of the consent agenda here:

http://buttecounty.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=330

One handout for the indigent, mentally ill, badly parented, and filthy after another. Maybe that’s what this lady was talking about in this letter to the Enterprise Record:

POSTED: 07/17/16 Chico Enterprise Record

 It seems city managers, planners, stakeholders and social, nonprofit agencies have found the world of zero redevelopment dollars is like navigating a three-mast schooner without sails.

HUD’s 20 percent of redevelopment’s entitlements for low-income housing and services has introduced a criminal and dysfunctional population that is overtaxing police resources and skewing crime statistics for Chico. The city, having used redevelopment funds for acquiring “blighted” properties for years, is now in the process of using Community Development Block Grants for distributing their debt-imbued booty, including that low-income gift card to the nearest hedge fund.

And this brings us to the greenfield developments in southeast Chico. HUD, preferring to partner with intact redevelopment agencies and planners, is the wild card in this cold deck, with the added risk factor of direct foreign investment as a possible player in this backroom game.

The future of Chico is bleak and dangerous, because the mordant legacy of redevelopment and its partnerships has been a secreted and cynical, as well as delusional, belief in economic devices to promote land use policies for a “clean and safe” Chico that have failed spectacularly.

A trip downtown to coffee shops or walking city streets exposes one to a gauntlet of miscreants and mentally ill individuals, with no apparent boundaries, dumped daily into public domain by their agencies’ betters. Why would anyone believe the City Council, planners, or economic partners of finance schemes care about anything but their spreadsheets and pocket books? I don’t.

— Carolyn Hana, Chico

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →