Chico Taxpayers Association

As the end of Summer rolls around, I’m looking back at 2023, having made some big changes in my life.

My husband and I have downsized to a tiny apartment, having rented our old lifestyle to some other folks. We found living in Chico was not only more expensive these days but the atmosphere of crime and general “scuzziness” isn’t good for old people. So, we have our simple living space, but we hit the road a lot. Mostly we drive to other towns to buy groceries and enjoy their coffee shops and other amenities.

So no, I don’t have much time for city business anymore. I try to read the agendas the clerk sends me, but I don’t attend meetings very often anymore.

Last time I attended a day meeting, I swear to Gawd – Sean Morgan tried to start a fight with me. It was very weird. At one point Katy Thoma (now Chico Chamber CEO) asked me, did I respect Sean and I said yes, agreeing that I felt he had “integrity”. All the sudden Morgan got kind of nasty, saying he thought I was being sarcastic. I told him, “sometimes you’re not very nice…” I was trying to tell him that while I agreed with him on certain things, his style – which on at least one occasion resulted in the city paying out on a lawsuit – left something to be desired. He looked at me with a really nasty expression and said, “it takes one to know one…”

Really? I was knocking myself in the dirt to be nice to that guy – I realized, he was trying to get me kicked out of the meeting. I know I have to be careful what I say in those meetings. Mark Sorensen has warned me several times, and I believe he’d kick me out for making a joke. So I just don’t go. I can’t sit there and listen to their total bullshit and not make a remark. You’re not allowed to ask questions unless you fill out a card, and then that’s it, one question. No remarks, no further questions. So I skip the meetings these days, in fact, I’m going to have to get around to asking the clerk to take me off the mailing list.

To tell the truth, Chico has become so nasty, all the way around – have you read the letters section of the ER lately? Is Jorge Smirnoff on crank or what? Why is Editor Wolcott allowing people to go on full-tilt personal attacks? It’s not an opinion page, it’s a dirt clod fight. I’d like to continue participating, but there’s no real discussion. Ukraine? Global warming? Well how about a conversation on something we can actually DO SOMETHING ABOUT, like city of Chico public worker compensation and the burgeoning pension deficit? That may be too intellectual for ER letter writers, not sure.

Now that Evan Tuchinsky is taking the reins I’m not sure which way he will take the paper. Evan is a good writer but I believe he has an agenda that colors his reporting. At least with Gascoyne you knew who you were dealing with – you could walk up to Tom on the street and hear what he thought. Tuchinsky is kind of passive-aggressive, I frankly just don’t want to deal with him after being dicked around by Dave Little and Mike Wolcott for years. I’m done with the paper.

So I guess I’m saying, I’m done. Frankly, I don’t want to end up like Rob Berry.

Read it here – the city of Chico decided at Tuesday’s meeting to penalize businesses for being victims. That means they are penalizing anybody who shops at these businesses because these new fines will just add to the cost of securing and retrieving these carts. Just another reason I’m not shopping in Chico anymore.

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/chico-city-council-takes-first-steps-in-approving-shopping-cart-ordinance/article_d5282e0c-4ce5-11ee-a08d-f75a905b0ab4.html

I told you that the county Behavioral Health department has sought out landlords to house county patients in past – now current director Scott Kennelly is asking “homeowners” to apply for licensing to house people who “need supervision” because they are not able to live by themselves, supervise their own meds, or get to their appointments. He is looking for single family housing because he says these people are “very paranoid” and need a “family setting” in order to bridge their way to a normal lifestyle in their own home.

The county has been offered a grant to pay for four years of this program – as a landlord, I’d have to ask – what happens when the money dries up? I just have to kick them out?

The budget only cover four employees to supervise the whole operation, including getting these people to their appointments. Staff will be responsible for teaching these people how to cook their own meals and do household chores, including their own laundry. This sounds like a job that should require some intensive training and education for the caregivers, but it doesn’t say anything about that in the article.

I’m not sure the licensing of these homes requires any neighborhood notification or public hearing. If you have single family rentals in your neighborhood you better keep an eye on them.

In 2017 a man who had been taken in off the streets by a Chico State professor turned on his host and beat him into a coma. Last I heard, the victim, a 59 year old man, is still living in an assisted care center, and will probably never be able to function alone again. I wrote a post about it then.

Don’t tell me the transients are “locals” – this man already had a criminal record in Orange County – a felony count of robbery. Robbery, by legal definition, involves force and/or intimidation. Would you have let this man in your house? Apparently, the victim was talked into it by a friend. “Ramsey said in the release that the assault victim was a 59-year-old CSUC science professor who had rented a room in his home to Muscat as a favor to a friend who was an employer of Muscat. The professor had begun to evict Muscat for his alcohol and drug use when Muscat attacked him during the early morning hours of Oct. 29, 2017. The professor suffered severe and permanently disabling injuries to his face, shoulder and brain.“

The attacker, Ryan Muscat, was finally sentenced to 18 years – the DA having asked for 28 – but that story didn’t say where, or under what conditions, or if he would receive much needed mental health treatment. It does say that while he was awaiting trial in Butte County jail, he was caught with a concealed knife and assaulted prison guards with his own urine.

In that old post, I talked about efforts made by the Butte County Behavioral Health Department, then under the management of Dorian Kittrell, to get citizens to “take in” mental patients, even supervise their meds for them! He has since left the position to Scott Kennelly. Neither of these people have made real efforts to increase supervision of the mentally ill that are brought here by county transfer, to provide supervised housing, or force these people into a hospital.

In fact, Kennelly is currently resisting the governor’s order to provide housing for these people, he says there’s no money in the budget. Let’s face it – he’s worried about his $150,000+ salary and corresponding benefits. At the time I made that old post, most of the department’s funding came from the transfers – one old figure, $63 million in one year, for taking other counties’ problems. But Kennelly says there’s no money in the budget to take care of the people who bring in the money – has anything ever been more blatant than that?

So, when Ryan Muscat was sentenced for his horrible crime, he ended up in yet another over-crowded, under-staffed institution. Now a judge has reduced his sentence by five years. A guy who went into a sleeping man’s bedroom and beat him into a coma.

I found this story in the Chico State Orion, no mention of this in the ER. I couldn’t get the link, so just cut-and-pasted a few paragraphs. Check the Orion for the full story.

District attorney: Sentence reduced for man convicted of 2017 attack on Chico State professor

Ryan Muscat, originally convicted of felony assault causing serious bodily harm in 2019, has had his sentence reduced by five years

by Ariana Powell, Chico State Orion

The sentence of a man convicted of attacking a Chico State mathematics professor in 2017 has been reduced from 18 to 13 years on Thursday, according to the Butte County District Attorney’s Office.

Ryan Muscat was sentenced to 18 years in state prison in 2020 after being convicted of felony assault causing serious bodily harm by a Butte County jury in 2019. Muscat attacked the 59-year-old professor, name unreleased, at his home in 2017.

According to the DA’s office, due to “recent legislative changes in the law which are designed to lessen the punishment for violent offenders” Muscat was able to appeal to have his sentence changed. Muscat said under these new laws his bad childhood should mandate a lower term...

Be careful out there Folks!

Evan Tuchinsky wrote another story about the Downtown parking kiosks, downtown merchants complaining they’ve seen a drop in business since those were rolled out. No, I don’t like the kiosks – the main reason – who wants to fumble around with their phone Downtown, especially after dark? Sure, Downtown regulars, mostly employees, business owners and students these days, are fine with it, but the folks who used to drive in from Gridley, Willows and other outlying areas to have their hair done, have a cup of coffee, do their Christmas shopping, etc, are not going to deal with it, they’re going to go to the malls. Shit, I buy everything on line these days, screw shopping.

My family did a lot of business in Chico when I was a kid. My grandfather was a farmer, my grandmother was a Glenn county teacher for over 50 years. My grandmother drove us all the way from Princeton/Butte City very regularly to shop in Chico. The mall was new and seemed out-of-the-way. We mostly shopped Downtown, at stores like Oser’s, where she bought her dresses, and Richardson furniture – did you know, they had business equipment at one time, she used to bring her typewriter in for repairs. We’d always hit the frosty on the way out – yeah, Mark Abouzeid tore that down. My grandfather would take us to Northern Star Mills to sell nuts and buy sacks and other equipment, then maybe Colliers for some screws, then hit one or another of the downtown coffee shops for a sandwich or some ice cream. He could have done his business in Colusa or even Woodland but he liked coming into Chico once in a while. The streets were friendly, we’d see people we knew every trip.

When I grew up my family shopped and ate Downtown as we could afford. I enjoyed taking my young children Downtown and to the campus for outings. That all ended with the transients. Night time turned nasty right away – I’ll never forget the guy who used to stand in front of Duffy’s with his pitbull, we encountered him one night and never attended another Thursday Night Concert. Then daytime turned nasty – Mayor Ted Shred was deposed by the nasty army of the night. That’s a nail I didn’t add to my letter below – the street people used to be friendly and fairly harmless, they were scared away by the crankster criminals who come in with every wave of transfers.

Can you imagine what it’s like to be a truly homeless person, down on your luck, just need a safe place to go? I can’t think of anyplace I’d recommend after dark in Chico outside your own home.

What are the transfers? If you’ve read my blog you know – the county gets money for accepting mental patients and criminals from counties all over California that don’t offer “beds” or services for these people. Shasta County regularly empties their jails due to overcrowding – where do you think these people go? I’ve documented this so many times here, I’ll say, either read the blog or read the county board agendas, look at the budget. F-search the words “governmental transfers” – the Behavioral Health Department, fat with salaries, is largely funded through these transfers, the jail also gets money from transfers. They take money, millions a year, and then they turn these people out on the streets, mostly Oroville and Chico.

In other words, our county is so overwhelmed with the transfers, they can’t serve the people that actually live and pay taxes here.

I’m tired of talking around this big elephant turd, let’s get to the point – the transients are why nobody goes Downtown anymore. So I wrote a letter about it.

While the parking kiosks may be another nail in the coffin, the current state of Downtown is the result of a long history of bad planning. How many nails does it take to close a coffin anyway?

One of the first nails in my memory was when Robin Wilson shot Spuds MacKenzie in the head, ending a 70 year old community tradition.

Another was the heavy-handed police response that ended family-friendly Downtown Halloween.

Followed by a shower of nails in the form of generic festivals like Chico Palio and Shakespeare at the Plaza, aimed to attract “the right kind of people” – tourists. Now the quarter million dollar skating rink – city management has never really showed any direct benefit to sales tax or TOT revenues from the use of taxpayer money to fund these boondoggles.

The COVID shut-down was a screw, not a nail – we’ll live with the consequences for years to come. Misspending of COVID relief money gave it a good twist.

But I think the most profoundly bad decision the council has made in the last 10 years was the declaration of the Shelter Crisis that has put our town in a legal mousetrap. It’s a frightening atmosphere Downtown, especially after dark, and sales tax transactions are falling as a result. Let’s admit that and get on with the real conversation.

There are towns all over California who don’t take transfers of mental patients or inmates, they send them. Why is Chico on the receiving end?

Juanita Sumner, Chico (for how long, I can’t say)

I had a very discouraging conversation with a city council member over the condition of some of our neighborhood streets. You know, I was complaining about the area we’ve always affectionately referred to as “the college ghetto,” but I live across town, in a neighborhood full of property tax paying homeowners, and the same could be said about the streets, sewer, and drainage in my neighborhood. In fact, the houses across the street from me are in a designated flood zone, and those with mortgages are required to buy flood insurance, simply because the city has never installed drains along that section of our street. We were annexed in the early 1990’s, with promises of “services,” but only the new subdivision down the street has drains.

Oh yeah, and my neighbor Phil’s house, because he complained about flooding caused by a nearby new subdivision. And because he was a drinking buddy of the late Tom Nickel. Tom literally made that happen – don’t call me a liar, just drive over and look at it – they came over and put sidewalks and drains just in front of Phil’s property. I love Phil, and God bless Tom – of course that drainage was necessary – but just that section?

That’s how stuff works in the City of Chico, as you’ve seen with the new paving program – the squeaky wheel that knows who to squeak to gets the pavement. You read the news stories – at first they were going to “repave” in newer, high-end neighborhoods, but somebody pitched a howl, so they started looking for poor-people neighborhoods to slop their slurry. It’s all just bullshit anyway, they are not doing the type of work that is needed, just band-aid repairs on streets that haven’t been maintained properly or updated since people were still using horses and buggies.

I know at least one council member who has done a lot of tongue wagging on the subject of providing housing for low-income residents, but when I pointed out the fact that we have square miles of low-income housing that is in third world condition, his response was very discouraging. I’m not really blaming this person, I’m just saying, this is discouraging.

“The City definitely doesn’t do any inspections and is pretty hands off. We are updating our nuisance code with the goal of improving the look of downtown buildings, but there isn’t the political or administrative will to target slumlords.”

There it is, what I’ve said for years – Downtown gets a disproportionate amount of attention. How can they justify that when Downtown businesses don’t generate a fraction of the total city sales tax receipts? They used American Rescue Plan funding for parklets for Downtown bars – our city council has been hitting the bottle.

And of course, the new subdivisions going in around the outskirts of town are all getting new streets, while the center of town is sinking faster than Mexico City.

“the will to target slumlords…” This council member is quick to blame landlords. The worst slumlord around here is the city of Chico. The streets, sewers, sidewalks, street lights (or total lack thereof) and street trees are all the responsibility of the city of Chico.

So it’s time to go after Measure H. That was a total scam, and we all know it now. The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, which has made the 2024 ballot, will overturn Measure H. You know that’s true, because a group of legislators has mounted a campaign to require measures like the TPGAA to get 2/3’s of the vote. That means they’re scared, and they better be. More next time, on This Old Lady Needs a Better Bra to Drive the Streets of Chico.

UPDATE: Since this post is getting hit again, I’m going to ID the council member – Addison Winslow. Winslow has been a big disappointment so far .

Today I saw something I’m going to describe as “Stockton”, right here in Chico.

You probably saw the man on the viral video, threatening the owner/operator of a mini-mart as he rifled cigarettes into a borrowed trash can. He was either on something or giving an Oscar worthy performance of a drug addict. An employee came out of a back room and subdued the man, took him down to the floor, and held his arms as the owner came out from behind his counter with a broom stick and started whipping the man around his legs and feet.

I know a lot of people cheered that store owner as he had what amounted to a mental breakdown. I believe he had put up with so much of that kind of abuse at his job, that he just snapped.

As I watched that video, I wondered, what would I do, if I’d been in that store? Would I have stood by and taped it? Would I have encouraged the owner to step back and call the police later (knowing they wouldn’t do anything)? Would I just tell the owner to put in a claim on his insurance (the rates for which are already obscene)? Would I have tried to stop the thief, who was threatening the owner with a knife? He tried to produce the knife but his pants started to fall off.

Here’s what I know I would do – I would never go near that store again.

I’ve said it again and again, I’m not going to be the victim of a crime just to shore up Chico’s sagging retail and public finances. It’s business, not charity. So, here’s why I’m not buying gas in Chico anymore.

Just this morning, Dude sent me this story from Action News –

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/chico-police-looking-for-suspect-accused-of-carjacking-at-the-safeway-gas-station-on-mangrove/article_8fe88a8c-3df7-11ee-8b53-a7643714d158.html

I’d heard this story and it made me sad for Chico. A person carjacked as he gassed his car at the Mangrove Safeway. My family used to live in a house just down Palmetto from that shopping center, we knew the employees and they knew us because we rode our bikes down there almost every day to pick up groceries and snacks. We used the gas station there almost exclusively because it was so close to our house, a nice lady we know still works there. We used several other businesses in that shopping center for years.

We moved a few blocks away about 6 years ago, and I’ve noticed a distinct change in the old neighborhood, namely, more transients and druggies. As I’ve reported here before, the Mangrove Safeway parking lot started getting so dicey, I started staying in the truck to watch our tools while my husband would go into the store. I’d see transients circling the parking lot, either on foot, or on bikes, and very deliberately look in car windows. I even spotted people jiggling car door handles.

Finally a friend tipped us to Winco, where the prices are lower. We started gassing up at a gas station nearby. I’ve watched that station go downhill since new ownership, it doesn’t look as tidy as it used to. Today as my husband filled up our tank, I noticed a guy come out of the attached store, and walk directly to the trash bins. I knew he was going to go through the trash, sure, looking for half a cigarette, or maybe some aluminum cans. I wasn’t quite surprised – I’ve seen it before – when he pulled two empty drink cups out of the bottom of the can, turned and walked back into the store. I watched him disappear toward the drink dispensers, and I realized, he’s getting a free refill. I wondered why the store would put up with that, free drinks?

Then I witnessed something I’d only seen in viral videos and news stories. The man took his full cups and approached the door, opening it partially. But he turned and went back inside, approaching the cashier. I could see him become angry, and suddenly he tossed the contents of the cups over the counter at the cashier.

I guess the cashier had told the man he needed to pay for the drinks, and that was the man’s response. And then here’s what really surprised me – the cashier came right out from behind the counter and engaged the man, shoving him toward the door. The man grabbed the cashier and the struggling pair meandered across the room and out of my sight.

Meanwhile my husband, with his back to the action, was busily filling our car. When I saw the man throw the drinks, I yelled out loud, “Honey, oh my god, call 9-1-1!” He turned to see what was going on, reminding me that I was holding his phone. My hands were shaking so badly I smashed at the icons on the phone. I couldn’t remember the number.

As I smashed at the keys, I looked up to see the cashier ejecting the man from the store. The man was making threats, but he was walking away. I knew the cops wouldn’t do anything, so I closed the phone. The cashier glared at me as I stared open mouthed at him. I didn’t know what to say. My husband had paid for the gas, and we saw there was nothing more we could do, so we left.

So there it is, I wondered when it would happen – I just witnessed a crime in broad daylight in my own town. These criminals are emboldened by law enforcement policy not to press charges for less than $900 worth of theft/damage, just “counsel and move along”.

Until this policy changes, I won’t shop in crime prone areas, and that’s becoming most of Chico. I’m not going to risk my safety and I’m not going to risk being charged with a crime for protecting myself. I do most of my shopping online these days, or out of town.

I do know of a gas station in a nice, clean, safe, not-so-far away town, it’s worth the drive.

POST SCRIPT: This post was picked up by NewsBreak, and a man offered this advice:

Edward Phillips, 7h ago, Don’t stop giving your business to Chico stores. Just make yourself more aware of your surroundings. Keep your eyes open and don’t let yourself be a victim. When you let them push you out, they win….

Ed did not get the point, let me make myself more clear. Ed, the problem is not actually the criminal element, it’s the City of Chico and Chico PD that are causing and allowing this mess to pile up. The city declared the Shelter Crisis Designation, for which they received over $4 million to spend on the “homeless crisis”. Where that money went is your guess. You see we still have an out-of-control criminal population – many of them felons from other states – living in the streets and parks of our town. The police roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders. They will take a report, if you insist, but they won’t arrest anybody, even if you point out the perp laying in the bushes across the street. The local DA will not investigate or prosecute for crimes under $1,000, so these people are let loose on the streets of our town, our retail areas, and our neighborhoods.

The city of Chico has had the nerve to institute a one-cent sales tax measure, with a simple majority vote of 50+1. I’m guessing Ed has already stopped listening. The city used “safety” as a carrot for that tax, said they would clean up the streets, hire more cops to deal with the ever-increasing number of criminals attracted to our town by services offered by the county and state.

Ed, it’s time to reach into your pants and find your gonads. I found mine, and I’m not giving any more money to this town in the form of sales tax. I still buy groceries in town but we’ll see what happens next.