Chico Taxpayers Association

Thanks for that wake-up call Frank – yes, public works raises are on Tuesday nights’ agenda. All the sudden we got enough money to hire two new positions and give people raises.  But, if you look at the agenda report (Item 4.9), you’ll see they are chalking up a $13,000 savings. That might sound good, but I think the Devil is in the details.

Frankly Frank, I don’t have a lot of time to analyze this shit, I wish I could get more helpers. Right now I got a loaf of bread in the oven, and I’m sick and tired of putting aside scrubbing my own bathroom to read reports. In about 40 minutes, I got to get over to the mess my tenants left me at one of my rentals, I got to get that bitch tits out and on the market within about a week and a half. Yeah, whiney-whine-whine!   You’re right, something stinks here. 

I’ll give you my women’s intuition on this – what Mark Sorensen calls “making stuff up” – well, I can make my own opinions Mark, and my opinion is, they’ve cut positions, hired cheaper people to do the same work – and divvied up a lot of the savings into raises for existing positions. You know that means less services for the taxpayers, but we still pay the same taxes.  I mean, did you think, they would divvy that $13,000 up 82,000 ways and send us a check? 

I don’t have time to look it over again right now, but if one of those positions belongs to Ruben Martinez, I’m going to make a stink about this. He excuses the salary increases in his report, “It’s important to note that these recent staff departures were for better opportunities and brighter future outlooks. “ What the hell kind of bullshit is that?  I like Ruben, but he’s getting soft. His hands and fingernails are nicer than mine, and I’m a woman.  Yeah, Ruben, I meant that like you heard it, Guero!

But I don’t have time to make a stink right now – I’ll have to get back to it later.

Here’s the link:

http://chico-ca.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&event_id=82&meta_id=40177 

Tonight the Butte County Mosquito and Vector Control Board will announce the results of the recent assessment ballot sent out to property owners. It’s a weird process, in which your vote is “weighted” by the amount of property you own. “If a majority of weighted assessment ballots returned are in support, the assessment may be levied for fiscal year 2014-15 and may be continued in future years…“

There will be a public hearing, but I’m not sure why that should matter if they’re going to decide this thing on a straight tabulation of the ballots. I’m not driving out to Larkin Road in Oroville for a 7:30 pm meeting, sorry about that.  Shippelhoute’s dog.

I would like to put in my two cents, so I’m going to make a few more phone calls. We need to tell these folks, we don’t like the contracts they’ve been approving. According to district manager Matt Ball, “District employees are 100% covered and District employee family members are 80% covered under a Blue Shield high deductible plan.  District employees hired on or before December 31, 2012, pay 1% of their CalPERS retirement plan.  District employees hired on or after January 1, 2013, pay 6.25% of their CalPERS retirement plan.”  

Furthermore, Ball said he’s laid off six workers – Matt, how about paying your own pension premiums if you’re so worried about cutting services? The board just approved a new contract for Ball, who admits above, pays nothing for his health insurance, only 20 percent of the cost for his family to be covered, and only 1% of his pension. Ball makes over $110,000 a year in salary, he’ll get 70 percent of that at age 55, and we pay for it. 

I guess the board really patted themselves on the back when they arranged for new employees to the district to pay a whopping 6.25%! Go ahead Boys, smoke those big cigars – I hope they blow up in your faces.

Today I will sit down between chores and call the Chico representatives and tell them what I think of the contracts they’ve been approving.

Albert Beck, 342-5991

Charles Bird, 895-7251

Larry Kirk, 345-9055

I can’t say I’m surprised in any way with the turnout for this latest election – only 26.8 percent. I’m not surprised – turnout has been disappointing here in past – but I’m pretty confounded. Why would so many people go to the trouble to register to vote, but not turn in a ballot?

I myself actually under-voted – left some offices blank because none of the candidates listed seemed good for the job. I also voted for a couple of candidates without really caring whether they won or not – I just wanted to send a message to certain incumbents that I don’t like the job they’re doing.  In a couple of races, I tried to vote for the candidate most likely to beat the incumbent – I really want Kamala Harris out of the Attorney General position, she’s a fascist bitch. But good luck – I predict she will only leave that post to become Governor, Goddess help us.

I might not always be happy with my votes, I don’t find myself backing a winner very often, but I vote no matter what. That’s why I registered for an “absentee ballot” – I don’t want to take a chance that an illness or other emergency would keep me from voting. 

Since I got my first absentee ballot, I realized, this is the way it should be. Polling places are dumb. I’ve lived right across the street from my polling place, and it was still a pain in the ass – where do you think the people park all day who don’t live right across the street?  And several times, the workers tried to tell my husband or I we weren’t registered – one time, my husband looked down and found his name on the page right above the woman’s finger. Another time they tried to close our polling place at 7:45 on a night when my husband  had been working in Quincy all day and sped home to get to the polls – they tried to shove him out and close the door with 15 minutes left til polls closed, he literally had to push their hands off of himself and demand  to be allowed to vote.  I’ll never forget when Candace Grubbs closed a bunch of polling stations because the students were out of town – but didn’t tell anybody about the change.  A friend of ours who’d been voting at the same precinct for over 10 years showed up at the door to find nobody home, and ended up turning in  a provincial ballot at our neighborhood station. My husband had to inform the women running the station that our friend had the right to a provincial ballot, they weren’t going to give it to him.

When the clerk’s office announced they were way short of polling station workers, I again wondered, why don’t they go on some sort of campaign to get more people to vote “absentee,” and then do something about reminding them to turn their ballots in on time. How about some well-placed billboards, “VOTE!” with important dates and a phone number?

A June 4 story in the Enterprise Record quotes Candace Grubbs as saying she was surprised with the low turnout – “I thought we’d be up to 45 percent.” That is roughly the figure for turnout in the 2010 and 2012 primaries. I don’t remember who was up then, or what the issues were, but I’d say, this election was pretty dismal. The governor’s race was almost a no-show, with all these no-name nobodies going up against the Star Power of the Moonbeam – not to mention, that guy started raising bundles of quatloos over a year before the election. Because of this anomaly, I’ve heard predictions that voter turn-out would be down since March – isn’t that something that the elections office should be studying? She doesn’t seem to feel she has any responsibility here, she’s just the piano player.

But we can’t put it all on the  clerk. I think low turn-out tells us,  people don’t know/don’t care about local government, that’s a conclusion I’ve come  to over the last few years of trying to get people to pay more attention. It’s hard  to have a Democracy when most of the public either doesn’t participate or just does a miserable half-assed job. People don’t bother to inform themselves, they vote on name recognition, or worse, names that sound good! They vote for people who look like them, have a similar last name, wear the same clothes, or use the right catch-phrases. They vote the way their friends and co-workers vote, or they vote for a person who was nice to them at a campaign event.  I’ll give you $5 if you can find 5 people coming out of a polling place that know what was on the agenda for their last city council meeting. 

For years now, I’ve been trying to get more people to pay attention to the issues Downtown, as well as at the county level, and you know, I notice more people all the time are starting to tune in. I get people who contact me to ask about stuff they’ve been looking into, wanting to network for information, and that is so thrilling to me. That’s why I want to continue the forums after this brief break.  I notice,  people want to talk about the issues, they need encouragement instead of being made to fill out a speaker card and given three minutes to blow their flap to deaf ears. So, let’s take a break to enjoy Summer, and then let’s get the forum up and  running again.

I’d like to thank all the candidates that came in to support our forum, congratulate those who made it through the primary, and those who didn’t – thanks for running. Thank you for doing your part to support Democracy.

I’d also like to thank those of you who came to the meetings with your questions – I’ll keep you on the mailing list, see ya later Alligator.  

Virgle Gage is a nice guy to chat with.

I am so glad I took the time to meet Virgle Gage – the discussion we had yesterday gave me a lot to think about.  I still believe a person needs practical experience in assessment and appraisal of properties to take this job, but I also believe there are subjective decisions to this job that are influenced by management philosophy, and I’ve been looking for each candidate’s particular management style.

I was impressed with Virgle Gage’s professional achievements. He has worked for years, doing what he calls “assessing”, in a general sense of the word. Mr. Gage assessed businesses for their performance, not their value, that’s about as simple as I can put it. Of course that job took knowledge, skill and training, but not the same training it takes to make a fair assessment of a home. According to Diane Brown, who is running the Assessor’s office in the interim between  Fred Holland’s retirement and the appointment of the elected official, there is a pretty vast set of rules regarding assessment, a thick manual in need of update.

I am not convinced a person who has no background in property assessment could come in and take a quick online course and test, and be considered qualified to run the Assessor’s office. On the other hand, I’ve found there’s more to this job than the qualifications. The Assessor makes a lot of subjective decisions, based on their own personal philosophy about how much a person should pay in taxes.  

I think there are two kinds of assessors. One kind works for the county, raising revenues. The other kind of assessor works for the taxpayers, making sure that we are assessed fairly.

There you go – that’s subjective. Everybody has their own idea of what’s fair. I think what would be most fair would be assessment based on sale price, but our California tax code allows the assessor to make “supplemental assessment,” meaning, if he thinks your house undersold, he can assess it for more.  I’d like to see a concrete set of rules for property assessment, and I’d like to think it runs along the lines of square footage and comparable neighborhood sales. Comps should be limited to the immediate area, within sight of the property being assessed, and should be of similar size, age, quality and amenities. 

Fred Holland was of the first kind of assessor, he told me so. He told me he thought it was his job to raise revenues for the county, and he would look for the highest possible assessment. When he came to assess my house, since I was home, he asked to come in. When I asked Why?, he said he wanted to see my “appointments” – drapes, counter tops, cabinets, flooring, all that personal stuff. That’s not what an assessment should be based on, and I said ‘No’. I referred any further snoopy questions to Old Venus, and I went in the house. I wonder how many people let him in thinking they have to?

Diane Brown spoke a lot about going into people’s houses. I don’t think that’s appropriate. If they’ve pulled permits, they’ve had an inspector in, and all that stuff is in the specs. Assessors can get everything they need from the specs and the front yard of a house. If there’s any suspicion that a property owner has un-permitted uses on their property, that’s supposed to be handled by code enforcement. There’s no excuse for anybody from the Assessor’s office to be snooping around in your house or private areas.

I think supplemental assessments are bullshit all the way around. How can they tell me my property is worth an amount I won’t realize unless I sell? And maybe not then?  It’s bad enough paying property taxes at all, but to have this all based on revenue needs is just wrong. It should be based on the concept of usable roads, quality schools, clean, safe utilities. 

While Mr. Gage felt it necessary to explain why he was running for this office, I was also interested in his general philosophy. I want to know, how does the candidate feel about Prop 13? Gage said he feels it motivates businesses to move to California, not only for protection of their commercial properties, but because a lower property tax rate gives homeowners more money to spend. This is the right attitude as far as I’m concerned, and I think we need to communicate this to the other candidates. 

This is one reason I hope the Assessor’s race goes on to November. I want this conversation to be had.