No more water storage for get-rich-quick developer scams in SoCal

3 Apr

I’ll say now, I am really disappointed in Ryan Schohr’s response to my concerns about water rate increases, but let’s face it, nobody’s perfect.

Schohr responded, essentially, that Cal Water is under onerous state regulations that cause the  rate increases – they are forced by us to provide those pensions and benefits free of cost to their employees? He also feels that our population is growing, growing, growing, and we need to provide a safe water supply.

In my opinion, water company employees, along with other public service employees, need to drop their “I deserve a meal ticket!” attitude and pay their own benefits.  As for population growth – let’s face it, too many of these people are being lured here by developers hoping to make a quick buck. Look at this stuff they’re building in San Diego, a city that does not even have it’s own fresh drinking water supply. These developments are intended specifically to BRING PEOPLE HERE, people for whom they expect us to supply water.

new-condo-san-diego-bayside-the-mark

With views to Mexico to the south, the local mountains to the east and one of the most stunningnatural harbors in the world, downtown San Diego’s delightful cityscape is a testament to the last decade of redevelopment and urban revitalization.

New condos Downtown San Diego have had a tremendous impact on the redevelopment of theeight distinct downtown neighborhoods. The construction of downtown San Diego new condos have brought residents to the area who have created a new culture of the downtown neighborhoods.

New Condos Downtown San Diego

Many of the new condos downtown San Diego are being purchased by young professionals, empty nesters looking for a vacation getaway, and people looking for an ideal climate to enjoy life. The multitude of residents purchasing these downtown San Diego new condos enjoy being located perfectly between the San Diego bay and San Diego’s Jewel, Balboa Park.

I am very disappointed in Schohr’s response to this problem. He says we need more water storage. I say, restrict waterless development. Schohr had a conversation with Cal Water manager Mike Pembroke, who gave him a big glass of chlorine smelling Kool Aid. He went on to describe the limits on our water table, but says Cal Water is sinking a couple of new wells a year anyway! To keep up with all the poorly-planned, new urban crap that our council is permitting to keep the revenues coming in to float these ridiculous employee contracts they just signed. Same thing is going on all over the state – in Sacramento, it’s on steroids. 

So, we’ll see what Gallagher has to say in May, but I’m guessing, more of the same fruit punch. 

Assembly Candidate Ryan Schohr wants more accountability from boards/commissions, direct oversight of legislators, sunset dates on regulations, and more sunshine for the voters

2 Apr

In my last post I reported that third assembly district candidate Ryan Schohr feels boards and commissions are keeping the state of California from serving it’s citizens.  Alot of these appointments are pure spoils positions with little or no practical worth.

For example, when Jane Dolan was ousted from her Butte County supervisor position by the voters four years ago, she was given a seat on the Flood Board by Jerry Brown, well connected to Dolan and husband Bob Mulhullond, former head of the California Democratic party. This position pays over $40,000/year, with overtime and benefits, and only requires her attendance at one meeting a month.

Robert Speer over at the Ads and Review tried to defend Dolan by saying, “And each of those monthly meetings will take many hours, if not days, of preparation. It’s hard to say how much Dolan will earn per hour, but even if it’s $200, your average lawyer’s rate, she’s well worth it.  Oh sure Bob, right, yeah, sure.  That’s like Laura Urseny saying Jan Sneed’s a real nice lady!

Casey asked, how can we get rid of some or all of these boards/commissions, and Ryan Schohr said there is currently a movement to include a sunset date on some of the regulations that create these boards/commissions. But, how do we get that? 

It starts with accountability – most legislators, Schohr laments, want to “keep an arm’s length” from these regulations, they don’t want  to be directly responsible, certainly not at election time. They insulate themselves with these boards/commissions.

Like the California Public Utilities Commission. The CPUC is a spoils board appointed by the governor. What governor can we trust – Republican or Democrat – they’ve loaded this commission with people from the utility companies. For example, the current president of the CPUC, Michael Peevey,  is the past president of Edison International and Southern California Edison – just in case you don’t know, that’s Southern California’s version of PG&E. The others are all connected to utility companies, one woman was a lawyer for the utility companies, etc. What are we thinking!

These people should also be elected by us. Why not just staff these commissions with legislators? I’ve seen it, Bernie Richter complained about it – our lawmakers spend way too much time yakking and partying while their spoils appointees are left to hand out all the cookies to their friends. They need to drop these spoils appointments. 

Schohr agrees, “we need to bring back control to the legislature,” suggesting these commissions be required to report on their activities (and expenses) every five years, and the legislature at that time can decide to dissolve them.  

He also pointed out, we need to “incentivize efficiency” by getting rid of the “spend it or lose it” budgeting system. I can’t believe this is still common – remember that episode of The Office?  Oscar explains to Michael there is a budget surplus and  if they don’t spend it, the main office will cut that much from their budget next year. A dilemma ensues – there is a true need for both new chairs and a copy machine, staff divided directly down the middle over which way to spend the money.  Michael calls the main office for advice, and David tells him the third alternative – keep it yourself as a bonus, keeps staff from fighting among themselves. So, Michael takes the money and buys a pimp coat at Burlington Coat Factory, problem solved. Wow, I can actually see people thinking that’s okay, especially when their thinking doesn’t extend beyond their proboscis. 

Actually, I still laugh out loud at the image of Steve Carell in that fur coat. But it’s true, in the public as well as private sector. Years ago Tim Bousquet told the story of a Chico State employee and her boss’  teak desk. A gal I met at a meeting Downtown told me of being chastised by co-workers for not using up the budget allotted her to wine and dine clients – “take your friends out to lunch, just use it!”  At our meeting, a retired teacher complained about being told to use her surplus classroom budget on “junk”, while her suggestions the unused portion go back toward capital debts was ignored.

“Let’s change the dynamic,” Schohr proposed. “If you save money from your budget, you can use it for something else, cut some of the spending restrictions that don’t make sense...” This would require, again, bringing folks to the table, bringing decisions back to the local level. Right now these decisions are made miles away, by people who have never been in the classroom or the patrol car or the fire truck, or the farmer’s field, or the factory floor, or your home. These people put onerous burdens on us, people who have never been north of Sacramento. 

We need local control over our law enforcement, for example, says Schohr. The board of supervisors, city council, sheriff and police chief should be able to decide where to allocate funding in their district, without the disconnected meddling of the suits in Sacramento and Los Angeles, just as teachers and parents should be able to decide where to spend money in  their children’s schools. The voters should have more sunshine into these activities, he continues, suggesting that bond measures put up before the voters should have to show the true cost of paying them off, with all that interest,  right on the ballot. 

I’d like to talk more about water issues we discussed at Sunday’s meeting in my next installment, right now, it’s looking good to put a load out on the clothesline and torch/pull some weeds! Frohes Frühling meine Fruende!

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Third District Assembly candidate Ryan Schohr greets voters at Chico Library with his take on state issues

1 Apr

Sunday’s meeting with Ryan Schohr was fun, a little more intimate than usual, and  gave me a chance to get to know the guy a little better.  While we still disagree on one key issue – water storage – I think I could learn to live with this guy. Especially if he lives up to his words – Schohr believes that a citizen should serve these offices, not become a lifelong professional trough dweller.

Schohr hit a chord with me when he began to discuss the myriad of state agencies that bind our government like some sort of flour paste. 

So Sue, who works part time for District 2 supervisor Larry Wahl, gave us an example –  Wahl recently asked for a list of Butte County boards and commissions, and was handed over 169 pages of listings. I thought she said, there’s 169 boards and commissions – no, 169 pages of them. She went on to say, Wahl was taken aback by the pile of paper, and said he’d actually only wanted those commissions and boards overseeing agriculture. No luck – that’s most of them, he was told. Bob Evans pointed out to us when he came in to chat – agriculture and small business in our county are completely overrun with regulations. 

These agencies often contradict each other – Schohr gave one simple concrete example that I knew about – our local fish and game agencies and mosquito control folks are at each other’s throats over their practices – mosquito spray kills wildlife. Years back, the Chico News and Review did a story about a local biologist who had gone to work for vector control, and when she complained that she was finding big dead mammals, like deer, along with skads of little animals and birds, around recently sprayed ponds and waterways, she was fired. We found out, that spray has a shelf life, and it gets “dumped,” into whatever little body of water comes up convenient, apparently. Here we have laws about private citizens dumping chemicals into public waterways, or even on the ground in your back yard, but the vector control people can literally spray poison all over everybody. That is a classic case of the silly contradictions and mismanagement that comes from turning every half-baked idea into a commission or a board.

“…all those boards we pay for,” Schohr reminds us. “That’s cost our economy,”  reminding us of pensions and benefits. “Government does this to itself, we pay to regulate all these agencies.” 

This is Bureaucracy folks, absolutely nothing new about slick types creating positions by which they can funnel the public’s hard-earned dollars into their own pocket. Schohr lamented that the decision making that used to be done directly by our elected legislators has largely been passed off to these boards and commissions, where, you know, it swirls around for years, doing nothing but generating salaries and benefits and pensions.  Bernie Richter told us, and I saw it as a young college student in Sacramento – alot of these legislators see their position as some sort of hayride, and that’s what it too often turns into. Richter complained about the suits and the way they treated outsiders who didn’t know how to dress for the constant luncheons in fancy hotels.  

When I lived in Sacramento, I had a friend who put up and took down tables and chairs in banquet rooms at the Holiday Inn. He said, about two thirds of the banquets he worked were made up of legislators and lobbyists . My sister was in the accounting department at the old Senator Hotel – that hotel also catered largely to politicos and their hangers on. If you rode the transit buses late enough at night, you’d see faces you recognized from news stories wandering along the sidewalk in pairs or small groups, snockered half out of their gourds. I once watched my own assemblyman load a completely wasted friend onto the bus I was riding, to take him to a parking garage, where I almost wanted to get out and watch him load the guy into a car, just for the entertainments’ sake. The stuff I used to see in Downtown Sacramento, sheesh. Remind me to tell you my Willy Brown story sometime.

So, Ryan believes we need to cut through all the duct tape that has gobbed our government up and prevents us from getting our money’s worth in public service. He says he wants to be the kind of legislator that deals directly with the people. He told us a story to illustrate this point. Schohr’s family has farmed near Gridley for several generations, and when Schohr was younger, they came up against a regulation that required an expensive one-day permit to haul farm equipment on or across a state highway. A farmer might own rice fields or orchards that are spread out and separated, and they need to drive big equipment a few times a year from one site to another. Some farmers are intersected, their property divided, by state highways.  So every time a farmer might need to use a particular piece of equipment, they would have to apply and pay for a permit that was only good for one day, a day to be specified by the paper shufflers. Furthermore, iff for whatever reason they couldn’t move the equipment that day – be it weather, mechanical failure or people problems – they would have to re-apply, re-pay, and take another shot at a permitted haul. 

That story set off our crowd. Why in the heck, several asked, would you need a permit to move your farm equipment. Well, it’s not just farm equipment, but farm equipment can also be quite large, endanger other drivers, utility poles, over passes and other edifices – my gramma’s mail box! Some need a CHP escort. When my brother was working in the gas fields, I once saw a derrick being moved. Wow, talk about other worldly. They usually move that stuff at night, and the route has to be mapped out and approved. So, yeah, there’s a need for some regulation here, but what Schohr saw was just a milking of the public trough that caused onerous hurdles for small business.

So, he went to Dick Dickerson, then Second District Assemblyman out of Redding. Dickerson he said, “brought people to the table,” worked for a solution, and was able to get the permit extended to a week.  This might not sound like much but of course it gives the equipment operator a lot bigger window without leaving the public in danger of being run off the road by trailer houses or giant sections of oil derricks or towering combines. 

“That is the style I think is important, bring people to the table for a common sense solution,” says Schohr. “We need to change the culture in Sacramento.”

 I’ll finish this tomorrow – thanks!

 

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Oh no, nobody ever believes Juanita!

27 Mar

I saw this report on KRCR Ch 7 news the other night – “Chico Housing Market One of Nation’s Least Affordable”.

http://www.krcrtv.com/news/local/survey-chico-housing-market-1-of-nations-least-affordable/25144536

The survey mentioned was done by a conservative “think tank” (my description) owned and run by a guy named Wendell Cox. Looking into Cox’s background, what I see is, this guy was an early proponent of the stuff we now know as “new urban” and “smart growth,” where you shove all the people into densely packed inner cities, served by public transportation. Now, he has turned 180 degrees, saying that none of this stuff has helped, our cities and roadways are still a giant mess. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Cox

Well, duh. I tried to tell people that a long time ago. Why do you have to have a bunch of money and some initials after your name to get people to listen? Back in the early 2000’s, I saw this happening in Chico. A building boom that necessitated the import of labor! We must provide starter housing for new families!, they said. “They” being our city council and staff.  They spoke in panic – painting a picture of whole families sitting on their suitcases out on the curb, unable to find a house to live in. I knew it was bullshit then, and I tried to say as much. 

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/housing-crisis-fueled-by-greed/content?oid=25836

Of course New Urban Builder Tom DiGiovanni, father of some of the biggest jokes in town (Doe Mill, Westside Green), said I made the whole thing up.

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/greed-screed-response/content?oid=25879

Wow, the laugh was on me – little did I know, at just about that time, city council was approving that MOU that linked city salaries “to revenue increases but not decreases“.  Wow, if you don’t get that, unscrew your head and put it in a bucket of pine tar.  That’s how they simultaneously drove up the cost of living and their salaries. By the time we figured that one out, City Manager Tom Lando’s salary had gone from around $65,000/year to about $190,000 a year. Just salary. At that time we didn’t know about the pensions scam.  And, when they dumped the MOU that tied salaries to revenue increases, they agreed to pay the lion’s share of pension premiums, and here we are today, well, you read the story in the paper.

Mark Sorensen went on his little swing about how it’s not his fault, he wasn’t on council when they did that stuff. Well, he sure as hell hired Brian Nakamura at $212,000/year plus 96 percent paid retirement and benefits, and tried to tell us it was for our own good. Yeah, that’s what they tell the victim – lay back and think of Mother England. 

Our housing market, after a boom that increased the size of our town by roughly a quarter, actually raised the price of housing. How does that happen? 

Read here, read it good. And then come back so I can say, “I told you so!”

http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf

I told you so! 

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CARD has allowed our public swimming pools to sink into disgrace while they paid their own benefits, now propose a fantabulous gazillion dollar aquatic center

24 Mar

CARD is still promoting the idea of a gazillion dollar aquatic center, and they’ve got “news” reporter Laura Urseny running their propaganda.

I get a kick out of Urseny – when I don’t attend the meetings, it takes her a couple of days to get the story in the paper, but when she sees me there, she posts that story the night of! If I accomplish nothing more that putting a match to the seat of her oversize drawers, that’s enough for me.

Too bad I can’t make a real news reporter out of her. She’s a propaganda hag, at best. The story she popped into the paper might as well have been dictated to her by aquatic center committee chair Jan Sneed.  Urseny posted two stories last week about what rotten shape Shapiro Pool is in, without once  telling us why. As if, rust just happens, things just fall apart, there’s no stopping expensive equipment from deteriorating. For at least 20 years the staff at CARD has neglected the equipment at the two public swimming pools in town, and now it’s rusted and falling apart, leaking like a sieve. In fact, the pool at Pleasant Valley (next to Bidwell Junior High) has been leaking for about 20 years. I sat listening to a pool company rep telling a life guard it would cost about $2500 to fix it, but the CARD board rejected his bid and watched Aqua Jets go to In Motion Fitness as a result. 

For the last 20 years CARD has been nothing more than a salary trough. The Board of Directors is nothing but a “look at me!” position, these people don’t really run the agency. The director runs the agency, along with the Finance Director, and they’ve both managed to shovel themselves some pretty good bling – salaries in excess of $90,000 and $110,000 plus fully paid benefits packages. CARD employees do not pay ANYTHING toward their own pensions, but still collect 70 percent at age 55 like other public employees. Steve Visconti will retire soon, on 70 percent of $112,000/year, having paid NOTHING toward his own retirement or benefits. 

Urseny saw me at the meeting, so she tells her readers “[Maintenance Director Jake] Preston added that CARD doesn’t have the money to fix Shapiro or build an aquatics facility, although it looked at a tax measure but backed off the idea.”  Preston whined a lot about the Americans with Disabilities act, but it became clear, they’ve used that as an excuse not to update the pools at all.  The showers at Shapiro are not only not ADA compliant, they’re disgusting, get in there with some Comet and a scrub brush Jake.  The bathroom at PV only had one toilet stall for all those kids, and they’d use it to change their clothes. The line would back up to the front gate. 

CARD gets over $2.5 million a year, just from the county, our property taxes. Where does that money go? Well, last year they took $400,000 out of their General Fund and made a back-payment on their own pensions because CalPERS was threatening them with higher fees. That’s where the money has gone. 

And let’s not forget – both pools are owned by the school district, which has allowed CARD to run them into the ground. Here they’ve built all kinds of junk on the campuses with that Measure A money (promised to build a third high school), but not one word about the swimming pools they’ve allowed to rot. 

Laura Urseny is not interested in the truth, she’s just interested in keeping her byline. According to the aquatic center committee spokesman, they have not got any sponsors yet, all these months and they’re still “identifying partners.”   And, according to Preston, Shapiro Pool has been operating at a loss for years. It’s been a mess since my kids were little, we went once and never went back. 20 years ago it looked like they’d abandoned it. It was a popular target for vandalism. Most of the kids in both pools were there as participants in CARD daycare programs.  Maybe they should realize – the public doesn’t support the pools we have now, CARD does not maintain them – what will change if we invest millions into a fancy new aquatic center that will be dedicated to the use of a private club? 

I’ll try to keep an eye on this, I  can’t believe they’ve given up on floating a bond or assessment. The survey they floated last year should prove they are willing to lie and distort to get our money. 

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Next Sunday we have Ryan Schohr, Dist 3 Assembly candidate, coming in to speak to voters, noon to 1pm, Chico library

23 Mar

This speaker series has been satisfying, every candidate has been cooperative and talkative, and the voters who’ve come in have had good questions.  Our last session with Larry Wahl was friendly but provocative, I’d say. 

I met our next speaker, Assembly candidate Ryan Schohr,  when he came in to hear our first speaker,  Assessor candidate Al Petersen. Schohr lives in Chico, so he’s attended almost every gathering, even helping to set up and put away chairs. I have not had much chance to talk to him, although we had an e-mail discussion about his support for water storage, and I’ve read over his website. The water storage issue has been pushed to the front of the conversation by everybody from Logue to LaMalfa. I don’t support water storage, water  transfers have to stop. They all look at water as a commodity they can sell to get us out of our pension disaster. 

We really should ask Assembly candidates Schohr and Gallagher (May 11, noon) more about the pension time bomb. I’ll try to remember to bring that up. Assemblymen get pensions.  Here’s an article that says our refusal to deal head-on with these teat suckers is going to ruin our state’s credit rating:

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/03/20/6254956/credit-firm-says-california-pension.html

As it should. If I were Moody’s, I’d pick Jerry Brown up by the feet and shake him until all his credit cards fell out of his pockets, and then I’d cut them up into confetti and put them in his underwear.   We can’t survive another  term under Brown. Remember that old legend about the earthquake that will drop California into the ocean? That story was figurative – they meant, Jerry Brown. 

So, I hope you will come over to the library next Sunday, and help us get a constructive conversation going, covering the issues that affect our quality of life. We’ll have Schohr’s opponent, James Gallagher of Sutter County, May 11. 

 

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Library funding up in the air – staff recommends funding, but you might want to e-mail city council

21 Mar

I got the agendas for next week’s back-to-back Finance  and Economic Development Committee meetings.  These committees have not been combined, but Nakamura said it would save money to have them on the same afternoon, with about a short recess in between. For me, that’s like some kind of all afternoon jail sentence, I am so sick of these meetings, I can’t even spit.

But, I did notice, they’re kicking around the idea of cutting library funding, again, along with Community Organizations (like the Blue Room and the Cat Coalition) and Economic Development/Tourism (like Artoberfest and the “Chico Open Boards Art” ).  “In light of the City’s budgetary constraints, and the impacts that staffing reductions are having on the city organization...”  they will “restructure“.   

NOTE:  Staff is recommending that library funding remain at it’s current $100,000/year. But I’ll also say, we should be worried anyway, they’ve gone against staff recommendations before. I’d also expect the other groups to be coming in to bitch, that is, if they were notified. When I called the library the manager told me she didn’t get a copy of the agenda, although she’d been told about a month ago that this discussion would be coming around. If they noticed her about it at all, should they notice her about this meeting? I don’t like to tell her how to run our library, but maybe I should have suggested she sign up for notifications. She asked me how I got it, I should have scolded her there, for cripessake. 

So, I’d say write a letter. It’s not worth your time or mine to attend these meetings anymore, they’ve restricted the public to speaker cards and three minutes, on subject. No more discussion, just an audience like a king gives.  In fact, I’d say, DON’T attend these meetings, you are just providing your tacit consent, they need to be able to say, “we told people!”. And your remarks will be put into the public record if and as the clerk or her staff see fit.  Those gals have attributed comments to me I never even said, while leaving out whole conversations about questions I’d asked. But if you write an e-mail or letter and ask that it be put into the record, there it is, for anybody who wants to see it.

After the Finance Committee meeting the Economic Develoment Committee will discuss dissolving itself. Again, “In light of the city’s budgetary constraints…”  I’m tired of hearing that. The budget is constrained because our council hired a bunch of overpaid junk and pays for it by laying off staffers hand over fist. They haven’t reduced our debt, we’re in as much trouble as ever, but we’re receiving little or no service for what we’re paying. They’re serving themselves, is what’s happening. 

If this committee is dissolved, the business they conduct will go completely behind closed doors. My biggest concern is that they are giving away city staff time to private businesses. That’s what TEAM is all about. While I hate these meetings, at least they are on the record. If this committee is dissolved, we’ll never know what’s going on in Nakamura’s office. 

Again, I’d say, e-mail or write a letter. 

 

 

 

 

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District 3 Assembly candidates lined up to speak to Chico Taxpayers – Chico’s own Ryan Schohr March 30, noon to one pm

20 Mar

A week from this coming Sunday we will have Ryan Schohr, Chico candidate for Third District Assembly, speaking to voters at Chico library. That’s March 30, noon to 1 pm, bring your questions and concerns. This seat currently belongs to Dan Logue, but Logue is termed out. Schohr’s opponent, James Gallagher, will be our guest on May 11. June 3 is the primary, and this race may well be decided then and there. So get yourself down to the library and get informed.

So far, the only outrageous difference between these candidates is that Schohr is from Chico and Gallagher is from Sutter County.  They are both from rice farm families and they both favor the plans for the Sites Reservoir, storage for water transfers to urban areas. It’s frustrating, all the state legislators are supporting this idea, which I find to be completely bonkers. Like Ice Cube says, everythang’s corrupt. I will have to listen hard to these guys to see if I can slip a piece of tissue paper between their philosophies. At least Schohr is from Chico, and these guys always seem to favor their home over the rest of the district.

 

 

 

Still time to write to CPUC about Cal Water’s proposed 38 percent rate increase

17 Mar

I sent the letter below to the Enterprise Record a few days ago. I had sent them a letter over a week previous to Larry Wahl’s presentation, but David Little apologized to me that he’s just had soooo many letters he was unable to print it. He promised to print this one, omigod, sometime over the next two weeks.

Such an ebullient outpouring of letters from the community – how about making the letters section bigger, duh? It’s one of the most popular sections of the paper, I know people who admit they only read that section, and maybe the comics, or the classifieds.

News? What news? Oh yeah, that building project on Salem is such a community success! Oh sure Heather Hacking, cheerleader in charge. I rode my bike over to that project Saturday afternoon, there were less than a dozen people there, all college students getting credit. And those houses look like toothpick crappers. The ER isn’t a newspaper, it’s a propaganda rag for the city of Chico. They should probably get ceebeegeebee money. 

Meanwhile, I did have an interesting conversation with David Little over my campaign to get that pulp mailer, Market Value Place, out of my mailbox. I was successful, and I told people how I did it – I e-mailed him and bitched about it. He was the one who had my name removed from the list, because I bitched his pants off. Only when I took the issue to the Sustainability Task Force and sic’ed commissioner BT Chapman on them did we get an opt-out contact for an ER staffer named Jenny Jurdana (jjurdana@chicoer.com).   Jurdana also told Chapman, according to him,  that the opt-out  information would be printed on the front of the MVP, but this has never been done. 

So now I get an e-mail from Little, a year or so later, wondering why I would give his e-mail out to people who don’t want MVP, as if he is not connected with this mailer in any way. He even acted as though Jurdana is not employed by the newspaper. I  tried to explain to him, when those posts were written, there was no contact for Jenny Jurdana. I reminded him that when I called the number on the mailer, the woman who answered repeatedly hung up on me, even laughing out loud at my request.  He acted completely ignorant of all that, as if it never happened.

I have since given out Jenny Jurdana’s information again and again – I even recently contacted her to make sure the contact was still good, and received her cheerful reply, which I posted at worldofjuanita.   I wrote a post saying, “leave Dave Little alone” less than a week ago, again posting Jurdana’s contact info. But, like I told David Little, who feels he should not have to be bothered with  these people and their petty complaints of mailbox stuffing – if he would print that opt-out info on the front of his ad-rag, that would be the end of it. People would no longer google “how to opt-out of Market Value Place,” and land on my year old blogs with his contact info. In fact, I googled it myself, and I landed on the recent posts with the up-to-date info. 

But he won’t do the right thing, the legal thing, and I know he’s in a snit about it. The whole concept of “total saturation advertising,” is to reach everybody in your town. If he prints that opt-out info where his advertisers can see it, that’s probably a breach of contract. So, he will continue to break the law that says he has to put it on there, because the postmaster won’t enforce it. When I contacted the postmaster, he told me I could just bring them to the post office and put them in the recycling bins. Yeah, our postmaster is out to lunch too, I guess you knew that. 

So, I figured, since I’ve pissed off Mr. Editor, I might as well run my own letters to the editor from now on. If I had more time I’d have my own newspaper, but I do have a life, sorry.

Now, back to the real subject at hand – write to the CPUC and tell them you’re sick of being a cash cow! By the way, I cc’d commissioner Michael Peevey, be sure to write to him at the address provided below. In fact, you could do like I did – write your letter to the ER, and cc commissioner Michael Peevey at the address listed below. I also cc’d the board of supervisors and County Administrative Officer Paul Hahn. 

(thanks, at your convenience, for running this letter sometime by March 30) 

 

Chico Taxpayers Association has been hosting a candidate speaker series at Chico library.   We’ve scheduled two candidates for State Assembly District 3 – Ryan Schohr on March 30, and James Gallagher for May 11, both from noon to 1 pm. This is an opportunity to discuss policies before the assembly, including policies that affect the quality and affordability of our water supply. The public is encouraged to attend.  

 

Both candidates favor a reservoir at Sites, that would draw water from the Sacramento River near Red Bluff. According to the Department of Water Resources the first priority of a reservoir is, “Enhanced water supply reliability for urban uses…” Water storage is for transfers, and transfers only benefit developers in Southern California. 

 

Instead I wish these candidates would focus their efforts on investigating the private water companies that are gouging us for our own water. In 2011, Golden State Water Company was not only denied a rate increase but ordered to lower their rates and pay refunds to their Sacramento area customers because of discrepancies in their books.  They were also ordered to do further audits. This is what we should be demanding of Cal Water, and we need to ask these two candidates how they will help us. 

 

Cal Water customers who are unhappy with the 38 percent increase currently sought by Cal Water to pay employee pensions can write to California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey at michael.peevey@cpuc.ca.gov

 

Juanita Sumner, Chico Ca

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State of Jefferson Committee meets today, Chico library, 3:30 pm

16 Mar
Approaching Mt. Shasta from the North, I felt relieved - there's no place like home, The State of Jefferson.

Returning from Oregon on a recent road trip, here we are in the heart of what some hopefuls call The State of Jefferson.  Every time I see Mt. Shasta it’s like I’ve never seen it before. 

 

Sorry for the last minute notice, but I will try to keep up on these meetings in future. I think they are held third Sunday of every month, same time – 3:30.  I will probably not be able to attend today, but I’ve been getting plenty of inquiries about the SOJ movement, here’s your opportunity to find out more.

Looking for Sasquatch - we wanted to get his opinion on this state separation business, but he wasn't available for an interview.

Hot on the trail of Sasquatch – we wanted to get his opinion on this state separation business, but he wasn’t available for an interview.

 

There is a lot of confusion. One thing I found out recently – it’s not a secession – that means, you want out of the USA.  We are talking here about State Separation, a split between North and South. 

The first dumb comment I have, and this is pretty central to the conversation for me – why Jefferson? Have you read “John Adams” by David McCullough? Wow, he paints Jefferson, through the personal diaries and letters of John Adams and his wife Abigail, as a complete idiot savant. Look at the details of his life – constant money problems due to a major spending habit – he didn’t know how to stop! 

And I’m not even going to touch his marital life. Not with a 10 foot pole – that whole sitch was really freaking weird. 

So, there’s my first criticism – needs a new name. How about, something that has a rat’s ass to do with California, maybe? Thomas Jefferson never even made it past the Mississippi.

How about, Northern California? I know, lacks imagination, like most solid plans. If you want imaginative, I’d say, choose from the myriad of names we have from the old people – the Yana and the Modoc often  being described as the biggest badasses.  I guess it might be nice to have some sort of badass name, show those Surenos  a thing or two. Nya nya!

I’d suggest “Sasquatch,” but that word comes from British Columbia. I don’t know what the local people called the creature we know as Bigfoot. The state of Bigfoot? Naaaaaah!

This is definitely something we should mull over. Along with all the really important details, like how to pay the bills, state song, state color, state bird, etc. I hope to get to a meeting, will keep you posted. 

 

 

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