I would have been comforted by this room full of people but I found out most of them were there under false pretenses.

Busy little bees – my husband and I went out last night to the California Water Commission hearing on their “Water Storage Investment Program” – or, more suitably, “How should we divvy up the Prop 1 pie?“

Dammit, I told you  guys to vote NO! on Prop 1 – who got us into this $7.5 billion hornswaggle?  Well, I do remember District 4 Senator Jim Nielsen and Assembly District 3 representative James Gallagher being strong proponents of this tax grab, as well as strong proponents of the Sites Reservoir. When I read the proposition, I didn’t see any guarantees how the money would be spent, even directly on water. As was driven home by board representatives last night, “before bond dollars from Proposition 1 can be disbursed for actual projects, each state agency tasked with administering a competitive grant or loan process must develop and finalize guidelines for soliciting and evaluating project proposals.”

So, they haven’t even ironed out the guidelines by which they will divvy up the money, much less made any promises. Nielsen and Gallagher said they’d asked all of us down there last night, as Gallagher put it, “to ensure we have water for our future…”  Nielsen insisted that “This bond was clearly represented to be  about water storage…” Well, while that’s what he and Gallagher said when they were selling it to the voters, I never saw that in the text of the proposition. 

How soon we forget – about four years ago we were all screaming for FLOOD CONTROL. There’s roads in Glenn County that are never paved because they routinely wash out, truckloads of gravel being brought in once the water goes down to connect rural families back to civilization. In Tehama County last year, a whole subdivision was turned into a chain of islands and children were stranded on a school bus when their driver rightfully balked at the flooded roads. Now Nielsen and Gallagher say the words “flood control” as though it’s some plot to steal our money. They also act as though the Sites Reservoir will directly benefit the residents of our area, of Chico even. Nielsen said such a reservoir at Sites would “take pressure off Folsom Lake…” for water transfers. What does that have to do with Chico? And yeah, as Nielsen said, it will take pressure off Folsom Lake – with our Sacramento River water.

The discussion was loaded in the wrong direction. Nielsen and Gallagher got a huge crowd, dozens and dozens of farmers from towns like Gerber and Orland and Arbuckle, all over the region, riled them up to believe they were being ripped off, and Sites was the way to secure “our” water. The exact opposite is true – Sites is the very mechanism by which they steal “our” water, and we’ll pay, as Prop 1 specified, 50 percent of the cost of rounding it up and transporting it south.  Here’s the map showing how they will use the existing Glenn/Tehama canal to take water from Red Bluff diversion dam to the proposed  Sites reservoir, cutting out farmers and other users all the way down the Sac River. 

http://www.water.ca.gov/storage/docs/NODOS%20Project%20Docs/Project%20Map&Features.pdf

One user is City of Chico. We use the river to discharge our sewer water. Several times in past, changes in the river flow, particularly M&T Ranch taking huge volumes of water for irrigation, have left the Chico sewer pipes high and dry, dumping “treated” sewer water right on the beach. They are supposed to be located, like leach lines, on the bottom of the river.  It’s cost Chico millions each time to fix, and there’s no permanent solution, it happens every time there’s a change in the flow of the river.   How will Sites Reservoir, with it’s emphasis on “securing municipal water supplies”, affect the Chico Sewer plant operations? 

The whole  hearing was a real disappointment – they were not prepared for any kind of turnout, didn’t put out enough chairs, big snafu getting the crowd of 300 or so into the huge and perfectly capable building. They set this thing up as though they didn’t want us to come. 

This board, by the way, is made up, essentially, of developers, legal insiders, a water district shill, and a couple of corporate farmers from the Fresno area. There are no representatives from North of Sacramento. 

I’m sorry I don’t have a better report, we left when we realized the presentation covered stuff I’d already read about on their website, and the public would not be allowed to comment until the last 45 minutes of a three hour presentation. We had already realized, by attending, we gave the impression that we support Jim Nielsen, James Gallagher, and the Sites Reservoir. 

Of course I was really happy to see my county supervisor Maureen Kirk present, as well as Dist 4 super Larry Wahl, Mayor Mark Sorensen, Vice Mayor Sean Morgan, planning commissioner Bob Evans, and others. I will also say, Maureen stood in line with everybody else to get in and she sat in the audience talking to people while waiting for the start of the program. 

I had a glitch in that last post – wouldn’t accept comments – so I’ve brought Bob’s comments over to a new post. I’ve heard other stories like Bob’s, I think his experience is all too common. 

I have been the victim of crime several times and the police were absolutely useless.

It’s not that they were rude or anything like that, just useless.

The last time I had some valuable property stolen on two separate occasions about a month apart. The police made no effort to recover the property or even apprehend the criminal. Assuming they would have arrested the criminal but not recovered the property (assuming it had been destroyed, lost or was long gone, probably sold to someone else) the criminal justice system would have done nothing to make me whole again, i.e. restitution. I would have had to go to civil court on my dime and of course most of these criminals haven’t a penny to their name so lots of luck with that.

Instead I would be a victim twice: first my property is stolen and then I have to pay taxes to incarcerate the criminal where he/she just becomes more hardened to a life of crime. Is that insane or what? The criminal should be required to make the victim whole again as much as possible while being rehabilitated assuming he/she is not too far gone.

But consider this and the fact that police are under no obligation to protect you from crime according to the Supreme Court. (Like I said before the function of the police is to protect the state, NOT you. Just look at Ferguson where the police were protecting the government buildings and letting private sector buildings and homes get looted and destroyed.) Can you imagine a business in the private sector lasting a month like this if this was how it treated its customers? Yet we are expected to continue paying ever more for police “protection.” We are expected to make police officers multi-millionaires when you factor in their lifetime pensions, other benefits and earnings. The entire system is immoral and should be called the criminal injustice system and we are its victims.

I have a friend who owned a retail and service shop in town for over 20 years, very popular business. Shoplifters would walk in while he was with a customer and walk out with merchandise. It was a small shop, so most times he’d see them run off with the goods, and call the cops immediately. He never got any satisfaction from Chico PD, and one time they were especially annoying – they didn’t come for hours – a quick response very well could have nailed the perps – but by the time these fatasses showed up, forget that. They were just making the rounds, filling out useless reports. These two fat, plain clothes guys came in carrying their fast food – burgers and sodas – and just slopped them right down on my friend’s glass counter top. The one guy kept taking bites as he was asking my friend questions, as if they cared, and left grease all over my friend’s counter. He never heard another word out of them.

Another time it was his bike – they did nothing but take a report. A friend told him, I saw your bike at Mike’s (an old used bike shop where the cops were always finding stolen bikes but did nothing about it), so my friend called the cops and asked them to meet him at Mikes. There was the bike, serial number and everything, and right in front of the cops Mike tried to tell my friend he had to buy the bike back. The cops talked Mike into giving my friend his bike, but they did nothing to Mike for having a stolen bike. My friend’s only proof was that serial number that he had a copy of. They told him they couldn’t have done anything without that serial number – make note of that folks.

Before that it was Del’s Bike Barn – that went on for years, until Del finally folded up his legs and left.

It is obvious we can’t depend on the cops to take care of us. I’ve just about convinced my husband to put up security cameras – hey, I’ve had some weird experiences with Chico PD, I want that on tape too. 

Whew, what a day. Like most of you, I have my routine, and that’s just another word for rut, so this morning I broke out of the house to a 9am  special meeting at Chico Area Recreation District HQ on Vallombrosa.  I have a bunch of time sensitive chores today, but I just decided, somebody has to watch these people. So, I got up early to do my house chores, I bolted my breakfast, and I mounted the old Raleigh Superbe and beat it for the CARD Center.

I was happy to see Rose there, and I’m looking forward to hearing her take on it. 

This meeting was noticed in yesterday’s Enterprise Record. According to Susan Wilson, the lady who spoke at League of Women Voter’s Brown Bag the Brown Act presentation, a special meeting can be called with 24 hours notice of the public, and notice only needs to be, literally, a notice pinned to the door of the building in which the meeting is to be held, 24 or more hours ahead. They noticed the newspaper, and Urseny decided to do a front page story about it. Wonderful! But, still woefully inadequate.

And I’m pretty sure Ms. Wilson said special meant emergency. The emergency nature of this meeting was not explained by anyone on the board. I’m sorry I didn’t ask – they don’t really answer my questions – like when I asked Jennifer Mariciales why the board meetings had been previously switched to Lakeside Pavilion, and she just said, because the board wanted them there. No reason, just, the board wanted them there. I think that’s evasive, but maybe I’m just a turd in the punch bowl.

This meeting was called by General Manager Steve Visconti. Maybe he really thinks there’s an emergency, but I don’t think it’s the kind of emergency, like a leaking pipe, that has to be discussed within 24 hours. This could just have easily been discussed at last months’ general board meeting, or at the meeting scheduled for later this month. They just went over a list of proposed projects, and talked about how they felt about each one, what priority, if any, to give each project. Turns out, this board has been entertaining a list of wants instead of paying attention to the district’s true needs. 

Visconti said, “with day-to-day operations, and all these projects, it’s really hard for staff, they are spread so thin…” He seemed to be trying to get them to come to their senses.  They seemed to be completely oblivious – is this why Jerry Haynes left?

The first wish on the list was the rose garden proposed for some years now by local resident Marilyn Warrens. Mrs. Warrens has put up $100,000 toward the project, and a couple of years ago, I actually thought that was adequate to dress the entire CARD center and half of Downtown Chico in rose bushes, but today the board unanimously approved (Lando absent) a $302,000 budget for 50 less rose bushes than originally planned. I think most of the money will go into the wrought iron fence that will eventually be used to keep the public out. This garden is meant to be a revenue source for CARD – pay to have your wedding or event in what used to be open to the public. I realize, the inside of the center has always been For Rent, but the outside has always been open to the public, who owns it and pays for it’s maintenance. Get ready for this.

If you enlarge the picture you see plans for 6 foot high fencing, with a 20 foot seat wall, enclosing the CARD center lawn, including part of the creek. where the design calls for removing trees.

The board listened to contractor Greg Melton and the unanimously approved this project. 

Next item on the list is a “pump track” – my kids built one in our back yard. It’s a dirt bike track. I was interested in this project, because it seems to have been given the go-ahead by the board, but as they were discussing it, aquatic center proponent and former CARD general manager Jerry Hughes motioned consultant/contractor Greg Melton to the hallway outside, asking him to talk about the aquatic center. I immediately grabbed my stuff and followed. This is the kind of meetings they’ve been having about this center, and I wanted to hear  what was really going on instead of what they were discussing in the board meetings. 

but now I’ve got more chores around the house, I’ll have to get back to you.