Lou Binninger: CPUC and utility companies “sleep together” – “there is no protection for the consumer”

7 Jan

I enjoy reading the Territorial Dispatch out of Marysville, a very good local weekly with a local staff. Writer Lou Binninger is always worth a read. Here he takes on the California Public Utilities Commission over inappropriate favoritism toward Cal Water and other for-profit water companies.

You can also catch Lou on 1410 am, KMYC, Saturday mornings from 9am to noon:

http://kmycradio.com/

by Lou Binninger, for the Territorial Dispatch

Obamacare shaman Jonathan Gruber said he purposely disguised the intent and impact of the national health insurance scam to ‘deceive stupid voters.’ He was right and wrong. Citizens trusted the word of an institution they once considered trustworthy, but now defrauds them. Since Gruber knew he was a liar he despised his victims as weak. Their stupidity was in trusting those who rule over them.

Gruber’s technique was neither novel nor original. In 2014, Marysville resident Connie Walczak found this out the hard way.

She filed a ratepayer complaint against California Water Service with the CPUC (California Public Utility Commission). Cal Water had raised rates 121% in 10 years. The last increase in 2011 was 55.3% and now they were requesting the CPUC grant another 47% hike.

Prior to resorting to a formal complaint, in 2013 Walczak called and wrote the CPUC multiple times with no response. It was clear that the state commission created a complaint process that would forbid most citizens to survive its legal gauntlet. Complaints could not be submitted on line but had to be handwritten. The procedures were akin to filing a 1040 long form in a foreign language. It gets worse.

Cal Water attorney Natalie Wales violated legal procedures by serving notices and documents to listed Marysville complainants late or not at all. The judge excused the attorney’s miscues by email but would not return Walczak’s emails protesting his double standard.

The CPUC mission statement says it “serves the public interest by protecting consumers and ensuring the provision of safe, reliable utility service and infrastructure at reasonable rates, with a commitment to environmental enhancement and a healthy California economy.” Walczak found this statement absurd and the utility-oversight system a mirage.

Recently, PG and E emails surfaced between the company and former CPUC President Michael Peevey’s office revealing CPUC’s collusion with PG and E to obstruct the investigation / lawsuit involving the 2010 San Bruno gas line explosion. The disaster killed 8, injured 58 and destroyed 38 homes. Federal investigators found fault with PG&E for the incident but blamed the CPUC for not holding the utility accountable to replace gas lines that they requested rate increases to fund. Investigators said the CPUC “placed blind trust in operators.”

PG&E fired Vice President Brian Cherry, his boss Tom Bottorff and another vice president after e-mails showed Cherry had lobbied Peevey’s chief of staff Carol Brown to help appoint a preferred administrative law judge to a rate case. Cherry’s choice was eventually given the $1.3 billion case, but it was reassigned after PG&E released the judge-shopping emails.

 

CPUC’s Carol Brown, who told PG&E’s Cherry she would try to help him, resigned. Federal prosecutors are investigating the e-mails.

 

Emails also showed CPUC’s Peevey soliciting contributions from PG&E. Peevey leaned on PG&E to contribute at least $1 million to oppose a ballot measure that would put a hold on a California law limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Peevey asked PG&E to contribute $100,000 to help fund a Centennial Anniversary celebration for the CPUC, and Peevey appeared to link the request to a PG&E rate-setting case before the commission.

 

Consumer-oriented Loretta Lynch, whom Gov. Gray Davis replaced with Peevey as President in 2002, says that the state regulators no longer regulate. The real business of resolving rates unofficially takes place on cruises, on junkets to Hong Kong, over cocktails and at industry sponsored seminars. Lynch claims utilities regularly ‘doctor’ their documents to support rate increases. Testimony under oath about costs etc. is a thing of the past according to Ms. Lynch.

 

Walczak’s rate complaint was rejected, but she was right about the CPUC and the Cal Waters of the world. They sleep together. Walczak now refers to the state agency as the California Utility Commission (CUC). It exists to benefit monopolies. There is no consumer protection.

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Thanks Paul – reader reminds me to wake up and smell the deficit!

5 Jan

A reader sent me  a note today, telling me to read the Enterprise Record, “another deficit of $2 million…”

Thank you for the head’s up, kind reader – I had quit reading the ER, except for an occasional foray to the letters section. I’ve sat through so many meetings, seen so many “power point” presentations and read so many slanted news stories about our local finances, it’s all starting to run together in my head. When I was forcing myself out to meetings, I’d hear something, and then bitch about it, and then get distracted with the next annoying thing, and then about a month or two later, the ER might do  a story about the thing I was pissed about but already forgot. I’m always asking myself, “have I been pissed off about this already?”

Then I remembered, I already read this report in the agenda I got last week! I did already get pissed about this, I’m not senile!  And, I’m saved from having to read the ER! Thank goodness!

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2015/01/01/2015-will-be-the-year-of-living-dangerously-2016-will-be-the-year-of-the-tax/

If you don’t believe me, read the financial reports in Item 4.1. Read it! Written so flat and boring – pay attention – this is the story of our bankruptcy – the emergency fund is empty, and there’s no money in the General Fund to pump it back up. The General Fund has been put on life support, having bottomed out the Development Fund. They’re hooking people up to an inadequate sewer system so they can steal more money from the Sewer Fund – before he was Mayor, Mark Sorensen used to complain that Ann Schwab was stealing from the Sewer Fund, but we don’t hear anything about that from him anymore.  We’re broke, but we’re still raising salaries, and hiring more people to “manage” stuff. It doesn’t seem to me that anybody is managing anything but their own bank accounts.

It’s January, I got drunk with liberals last night, and my youngest is getting in his car today to go back to school, six hours away. Me and Bob have been rubbing salt in our bag ban wound.  The fee increases and tax proposals are coming at us from every direction lately. Pardon me for being distracted. This stuff gets circular after a while. 

I been talking to my friend Connie in Marysville – she sent me an article about Cal Water yesterday that I am having to read a paragraph at a time, and then go walk around the yard a couple of times before I get so mad my head turns into macaroni and cheese.

PG&E is rolling in a rate hike of 6 percent this month, but this isn’t the “adjustment” we just protested – that doesn’t kick in until 2016.  The one we’ll be feeling next was wheedled through the system a couple of years  ago, to address infrastructural inadequacies in the wake of the San Bruno disaster – yep, we will pay the fines that were levied on PG&E for killing eight people and leveling almost an entire neighborhood. 

Don’t you wish your head really was made out of macaroni and cheese?  Then this stuff wouldn’t matter, all we’d care about would be keeping the birds from eating our heads.

But, we are rational  creatures, and we must stand up to this kind of irrational bullshit. Write to your mayor and vice mayor now, and tell them they have to rein in public safety costs and stop deferring developer fees. 

Mayor Mark Sorensen – mark.sorensen@chicoca.gov

Vice Mayor Sean Morgan – sean.morgan@chicoca.gov

And, write to Debbie Presson at debbie.presson@chicoca.gov and ask her to put you on the council agenda notifications list – you will receive the agendas via e-mail by Friday of the week previous, so you don’t have to wait for the ER to run a story the day before, sometimes the day of the meeting. And they don’t usually tell everything, they slant it,especially now that Dave Little’s buddy is mayor. 

Don’t be a fed pig, be a mad pig.

 

California “single-use” bag ban opponents gather enough signatures to qualify a “bag ban ban” for 2016 ballot

2 Jan

Here’s the latest on the effort to overturn the statewide bag ban:

http://patch.com/california/northridge/bag-ban-opponents-submit-petition-overturn-law

Here’s an interesting website with more information:

http://fighttheplasticbagban.com/tag/initiative/

Here’s my prediction – wait til they find out, people don’t re-use the new bags, they accumulate them, forget to take them to the store again, and then when the space under  their kitchen sink is full to overflowing they will dump them in their garbage cans – they aren’t recyclable! 

This bag ban is a bigger scam  than The Interview!

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2015 will be the year of living dangerously, 2016 will be the year of the tax

1 Jan

You know what they say – No Rest for the Wicked! Bright and early this morning I received the agenda for the next Chico City Council meeting, available here:

http://chico-ca.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=2&event_id=95

Here we have the first session of our new “fiscally responsible” council, interesting. The feature that caught my interest is at the bottom – they’re “sunshining” the proposal for the Management Employees Group. From what I can tell, this group includes “mid-level management”. This agreement does not cover the City Manager or any of the department heads, who make over $180,000 in salary and still only pay 9 percent toward their benefits.

Mid-level management employees enjoy salaries running from about $80,000 to $100,000 a year. Why they need this extra layer of fat, is beyond me. The actual “workers” get paid anywhere from $35,000 – $70,000. Why two layers of management that get paid so excessively?

And I’ll tell you what I really don’t like about these contracts – instead of reining in the salaries, they guarantee the salaries through “steps.” Just stay in that chair, don’t steal from your boss or screw  his or her spouse, and you will get a raise upon raise upon raise, within 5 years you will be making at least $100,000/year. And all your problems, healthcare and old age planning, will be taken care of by the taxpayers, who will fit you with 70 percent of that salary into perpetuity. 

If  Mark Sorensen and his fist puppets sign this contract, they’re selling us into bankruptcy. 

If you don’t believe me, read the financial reports in Item 4.1. Read it! Written so flat and boring – pay attention – this is the story of our bankruptcy – the emergency fund is empty, and there’s no money in the General Fund to pump it back up. The General Fund has been put on life support, having bottomed out the Development Fund. They’re hooking people up to an inadequate sewer system so they can steal more money from the Sewer Fund – before he was Mayor, Mark Sorensen used to complain that Ann Schwab was stealing from the Sewer Fund, but we don’t hear anything about that from him anymore.  We’re broke, but we’re still raising salaries, and hiring more people to “manage” stuff. It doesn’t seem to me that anybody is managing anything but their own bank accounts.

Happy New Year folks – hang on tight! 

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Mike and Laurie Maloney suing the City of Chico?

29 Dec

Can anybody explain this?

Case Information
Case Number: 159887
Case Title: HENDRICKS, PAUL M VS BLADORN, HERBERT
Case Type: EMINENT DOMAIN
Filing Date: 06/24/13

Parties
Name Type Attorney
HENDRICKS, PAUL M PLAINTIFF FERRIS & SELBY
  TRUSTEE OF: PAUL M HENDRICKS & MARY L HENDRICKS REV TRUST
HENDRICKS, MARY L PLAINTIFF FERRIS & SELBY
  TRUSTEE OF: PAUL M HENDRICKS & MARY L HENDRICKS REV TRUST
MALONEY, MICHAEL R PLAINTIFF FERRIS & SELBY
MALONEY, LAURIE A PLAINTIFF FERRIS & SELBY
BLADORN, HERBERT DEFENDANT  
BLADORN, CHARLENE DEFENDANT  
LINDA D HALBERT TRUST DEFENDANT  
MOORE, JEFFREY DEFENDANT  
MOORE, SHANNON DEFENDANT  
WEILEIN, DAVID DEFENDANT
CHICO, CITY OF DEFENDANT EINHORN, GREGORY P
WEILEIN, JANET DEFENDANT  
GORMAN, MARY DEFENDANT  
KRATZ, ARTHUR DEFENDANT  
SORENSEN, RICK DEFENDANT  
SORENSEN, PAMELA DEFENDANT  
WILLINGHAM, SYLVESTER DEFENDANT *DEFAULT TAKEN*

Where’s the accountability? Public Utilities Commissioner Michael Peevey, criticized for inappropriate relations with utilities companies, leaves the commission with $80,000 ratepayer-funded pension

24 Dec

There is just no accountability anymore. The fox is not only in charge of the hen house, he’s in charge of the entire farmyard nowadays. There’s nobody for the public citizen to call when they are having their pockets turned inside out by corrupt government and quasi-government agencies, like the utility companies. 

The utility companies are supposed to be supervised by the California Public Utilities Commission, but if you’ve been following the conversation here you know that is a Pollyanna fantasy. Those who have been following the CPUC longer than I have point to Governor Gray Davis’ 1999 – 2003 term as the beginning of a general takeover of the commission by Davis’ utility company cronies, starting with the installment of Southern California Edison president Michael Peevey to the very commission that was supposed to keep people like him in check. This all happened right under our noses, but I think we were probably busy watching The Simpsons. 

What a bizarre period of history that was – ending with a Hollywood takeover of the Governor’s mansion. It may well have been an episode of The Simpsons, but it really happened. Davis was in thick with the utility companies, with representatives from all the major providers within his cabinet of consultants. He floated in contributions from the utility companies. When his friends manipulated the market to raise prices, laughing about it all along in those famous taped phone  calls, Davis called for ratepayers to conserve! Sound familiar?

Davis left under recall, but his cronies like Peevey stayed on in various appointed positions.  Gubernor Schwarzenegger didn’t do anything to change things, I’m guessing the utilities became more powerful over his administration, I haven’t researched it. Current governor Jerry Brown also took quatloos of dough from the utility companies, returning PG&E’s campaign contributions for this latest election only after “inappropriate” e-mails and phone calls between his office, PG&E, and employees of the CPUC were made public. 

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article2622212.html

That is the scandal that finally took Peevey out of office, at 75, into a plush retirement, but didn’t part a hair on the Moonbeam’s head. Here we are, stuck with him another four years. 

I can’t really celebrate Peevey’s departure, I’ve looked at the credentials of the other commissioners and it’s all the same – former employees of utility companies, whether directly employed or worked for them as employees of lawyers and other consultants. And then there’s Peevey’s retirement – I think he should have got a suit of tar and feathers, but he’ll get $80,000/year salary, along with complete health care and long-term care, and don’t forget the Cost of Living Adjustment, which is based on a percentage of their pension. The rich get richer a lot faster than the poor under these pensions. 

Here’s a piece about Peevey’s last meeting with the CPUP.

http://abc7news.com/news/controversial-peevey-presides-over-last-cpuc-meeting/442082/

A bizarre send-off, for a very bizarre man, in a very bizarre situation. I can only hope Senator Jerry Hill is right when he says this will be a new start for the CPUC, but Peevey’s replacement will be chosen by Governor Brown.

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CARD finally announces plans to pursue a tax measure to pay for Aqua Jets’ swim center

22 Dec

Here we are, days ahead of Christmas  – I really don’t feel like  talking about CARD – but that’s what they want, isn’t it? That’s why they waited until December 17, when so many people are busy, even out of town, to start talking publicly about their plans to put an assessment on our homes to build  an aquatic center for “a swim association”.

I didn’t make the meeting because I had to go out of town. We had already postponed that trip, and time is getting tight – I hate to be a lemming, but people, especially the very young and the very old, need tradition.  They need routine, they need to be able to depend on something. Traditions build family. Sometimes I have to turn my back on this stuff so I can  be sure I have something to go home to when the meetings are over.

I had to depend on ER reporter Laura Urseny to tell me what went on at the meeting – that’s okay, because I’ve been to these meetings before, and I know what she’s not saying. But she is leaving details out, which doesn’t surprise me. “a swim association”? You mean Aqua Jets, Laura Honey.

 
I feel Urseny has done her best to float this aquatic center in a positive light, while leaving out a lot of pertinent details, like how they want to fund it. She’s been at the same meetings I’ve been at, heard their plans about waiting until legislative changes were made in the assessment process, waiting until the voter threshold was lowered from 2/3’s to 51 percent. Jerry Hughes gave a presentation about that at one meeting, saying they needed to wait until all that legislation had passed  before they tried to pass a tax here. Laura Urseny was at that meeting, but not one word of Hughes speech was in her following write-up.
 
She also fails to report that about 99.9 percent of the CARD subcommittee is made up of parents and friends of Aqua Jets, including their general manager.
 

What shocked me was Lando’s questioning of the whole thing – asking, “is this more important than other projects?” How about, paying your employees and giving them  decent benefits?  At a meeting earlier this year, the board was told they needed to dump staff and cut the remaining workers to 28 hours or less, to avoid paying Obamacare.  Manager Monica Jameson complained she didn’t have enough staff to run popular programs, and was going to have to cut hundreds of kids from programs like “Junior Giants.” She only had a couple of people to supervise 300 or more kids.

But, like the city of Chico, CARD continues to spend – they laid out somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 – Urseny doesn’t give an exact figure – to Melton Design Group for three designs for this center, and are now going to hire another consultant(s) to tell them how to get the public to pay for it. A couple of years ago they spent $40,000 on a survey that came back negative – the majority of respondents said NO, we do not want to pay for your Taj Majal swim club – but now  they will try again.
 
Laura Urseny never discusses the CARD budget, how much of the money goes into the salaries of the top three managers and their benefits and pension. She never told the public how they bottomed out their budget one year making a $400,000 payment on their pensions.
 
After Christmas I’ll go after the newest information – they’ve had a management turnover with the retirement of director Steve Visconti, who was making about $112,000/year plus benies. Finance director Scott Dowell has left to go  to the city of Chico. He was making $96,000 a year with CARD. So, I’m guessing the new hirees have gotten raises over those employees, we’ll see what the new budget looks like after Christmas.
 
What I don’t have time to discuss right now is the rose garden issue, which I find  hilarious. Read that yourself, below.  I will say, at the meeting I attended on this subject, the fence wasn’t about deer, it was about homeless people and vandals. 
Swim center, rose garden looking different

By Laura Urseny, Chico Enterprise-Record

POSTED: 12/18/14, 10:44 PM PST |

1 COMMENT

Chico >> The Chico Area Recreation and Park District board is moving ahead on two projects, but not quite in the same direction as before.

On Thursday, suggestions about a proposed aquatic center and community rose garden veered off their previous courses, pushed along by financial concerns and the CARD board’s objections.

A proposed aquatic center is part of CARD’s master plan and has been discussed for more than a year. For this meeting, several plans with different attributes were going to be discussed, with costs ranging from $10.8 million to $18 million.

A CARD subcommittee of board members and the public hoped to trigger large contributions from the community, but it looks like CARD will have to take the issue to the voters for a tax measure to pay for the facility.

The board happily accepted an offer from members of the subcommittee, including a swim association, to pay for a feasibility study on the center.

General Manager Jerry Haynes suggested and the board agreed to bring in consultants to talk to the board about ways to proceed financially with a center’s development. As far as mounting a successful public education campaign, that should be up to the swim group and its supporters, the board agreed.

The board did not take a position on the three center designs included in the agenda.

Director Tom Lando noted CARD’s master plan was done in the “golden age” when development and revenue were easier to come by, and that the master plan priorities should be reviewed.

While he said he supported the aquatic center, he asked, “Is this more important than other projects” mentioned in the plan.

Later, in a separate discussion, the board agreed to review the master plan next year, to see if priorities were appropriate.

In regarding to the rose garden, a design that came in with preliminary construction estimates beyond earlier discussions hit the wall. Estimates ranged from $403,227.72 to $473,267.57.

“I won’t vote for this,” Lando said.

Lando and other directors noted the project was to be phased in construction, and liked early estimates of under $200,000.

The board agreed to match long-time resident Marilyn Warrens contribution of $125,000, making the first phase a $250,000 project. The board asked Haynes to come back with a first-phase design that met that budget. Likely CARD will face prevailing wage costs in the construction.

Warrens herself voiced surprise over the higher price.

“I can’t bring any more money to this.”

Warrens has tried for more than a decade to create a public rose garden, committing time and money, and getting involved in the project’s design. The Butte Rose Society has agreed to help as well.

Directors were shown a design that would replace the grassy area between the Chico Community Center — CARD’s home — and Big Chico Creek. It had a main stage for weddings and other events, rows of roses and seating. In adopting the project, CARD noted that the project could help bring in more revenue and better use the area.

The plan also included a 7-foot-high wrought iron fence surrounding the area and attaching to CARD buildings to protect the rose garden from deer, Haynes said.

The design addressed concerns voiced by the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission. CARD leases the property from the city, which is actually part of Bidwell Park.

Warrens agreed with board members who thought that once the first phase was under construction, other contributions to finish the project would surface.

The garden’s new design will come back to the board for discussion. Director Michael Worley noted that there should be some presentation of the design to make sure that the public is not surprised by the design as was the case in the City Plaza redesign.

It’s Christmas, and Chico Area Recreation District has got their hand in your stocking!

17 Dec

Busy busy Christmas time – I wonder if anybody is paying attention to what CARD is doing.

I will be out of town Thursday night for a family affair, but the newly installed CARD board will finally be having a truly public discussion about putting a tax on the 2016 ballot to build an aquatic center for Chico Aqua Jets. That is, if the public bothers to show up.’

The alternative is, fix Shapiro Pool, which has suffered from just plain neglect for years. They’ve let Shapiro turn into a shit hole so nobody will care when they close it and take all our money to build their Taj Majal aquatic center.  So  far CARD has paid my kids’ old hockey coach (and you sucked as coach Greg) an undisclosed amount (somewhere, they say, between $10,000 and $18,000 per design) for three designs. They used money from their budget – at a meeting last year they said their budget was so overimpacted they had to lay people off and cut employee’s hours to avoid paying health benefits, but now they come up with somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 to draw some sketches for an aquatic center that hasn’t been approved? 

I’m sorry, but if Melton’s designs are anything like his “commitment” as a coach, they aren’t worth the paper they’ve  been printed on.

See, this is the utter malfeasance that is Chico Area Recreation and Tax Sucking District. Nine thousand of you approved of this by voting for longtime incumbent Jan Sneed, so just suck it up and get out your own checkbooks, I ain’t paying. 

They say it will serve the public – I sat through earlier discussions, when the 30 or so people behind this move discussed how they would get the public to approve of such a tax. The lion’s share of this building will go to Aqua Jets, but the center will offer classes to children and the elderly. This will bring in some revenue, but longtime board member and former chair Ed Seagle admitted the center will “never pay for itself.” 

Legislative changes in the tax assessment process have made it easier to get these taxes passed – lowering the voter threshold from two-thirds to 51 %. Now 51 % of the public can shove a tax up the asses of the other 49 – wow, that’s not Democracy, that’s mob rule. That’s a G-Snatch! 

When I wrote a letter to the ER a couple of years back, talking about this discussion, former CARD director Steve Visconti actually brought my letter up at a meeting, right in front of me, and told the group they had to do something to counter my letter! He wanted to get a letter writing campaign going to discredit me, but I never found out where that went. It certainly didn’t make it into the newspaper. You’ll note that there has never been any real popular support for this center, only people with kids in Aqua Jets.

That’s the pattern of late – tax the poor to pay for fancy crap for the rich. Take note of the cop contracts – public safety workers are the new One Percent, with their lesser court made up of other public workers. Public workers who collect big salaries to “manage” – the manager of the local mosquito abatement district makes over $100,000/year, and pays less than 5 percent of his own pension and benefits. He just “managed” to put a open-ended assessment on your house – when was the last time you had any notice from Butte County Mosquito Abatement, that they would be doing any work in your neighborhood? Never? But look at your property tax bill – there it is. 

See, there’s this scam – if you could collect $1 from everybody in Chico, that would be over $80,000.  That’s twice the median, or normal, income, but it doesn’t seem like much when it’s just a dollar from each person, does it?  That’s how it works for all these agencies, CARD, BCMVCD, CUSD – they don’t do anything for most of us, but they can put a tax on your home to pay their salaries and benefits. And it’s a lot more than a dollar a year. 

 

 

 

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Rand Paul supports Right to Work legislation – “I believe that workers should not be forced to pay dues just to keep a job…”

12 Dec

From This Week in News for Senator Rand Paul:

Dr. Rand Paul Supports Right to Work Effort in Warren County

I issued a statement on Thursday following the Warren County Fiscal Court’s granting preliminary approval to a country Right to Work ordinance.

I support efforts on the federal level to promote Right to Work laws. I am excited that the local leaders in my hometown of Bowling Green have taken the initiative to push for this common sense change to the law.

Local leaders will be able to attract and keep good quality jobs in the community while preserving the freedom to contract for employees and employers. I believe that workers should not be forced to pay dues just to keep a job let alone pay them to organizations that spend hundreds of millions of dollars electing candidates that so many of their members oppose.

I am pleased to support your efforts, congratulate you on your leadership, and I am proud that my own hometown will be the first to take this dramatic step for the creation of jobs, and the protection of individual liberties. I want to thank Judge Executive Buchanon for his leadership in promoting Right to Work for the people of Kentucky. I also would like to thank the Warren County Fiscal Court.

More here:

http://www.paul.senate.gov/

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Guest Post: ER letter writer finds better shopping outside Butte County

12 Dec

Every now and then I check the letters section of the Enterprise Record to see what other people are talking about – this morning I found a somewhat like-minded person.

Letter: Butte County sales leaking over to Glenn County

POSTED: Chico Enterprise Record 12/11/14, 4:34 PM PST 

Butte County sales leaking over to Glenn County

I used to live in Willows and drive to Chico to shop. Now I live in Chico and drive to Willows to shop.

There’s a big difference in the size and offerings at the Walmart in Willows as well as less traffic and parking hassles. Another plus is that you don’t have to stand in line for 20-plus minutes to return an item.

While I am in Glenn County, not only do I end up buying groceries as well as other items at Walmart, I have dinner at the Black Bear Diner and I often make a stop at CVS, Dollar General and/or The Dollar Tree. 

— Maxine Rodgers, Chico

Ms. Rodgers says she shops in Willows to avoid the lines and parking hassles – that’s true. I think she’s talking about Walmart mostly, but it’s always interesting to check out the rest of the scene – there are some interesting specialty shops in both Willows and Orland, and there’s good Mexican meat markets and bakeries, for example.

Ms. Rodgers may not be aware, there is a movement in Chico to raise sales tax to pay for stuff Downtown. That is a good reason to shop in Glenn County too.  Please save your receipts and send them to Chico City Council.

Don’t forget to stop at the gas station  in Ham City before you cross the river – send that receipt to the council too!

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