I e-mailed Brian Nakamura, Mark Sorensen, and Scott Gruendl about their new garbage tax. I forwarded to Chris Constantin to get his take on it. I’ll post any responses I get.
Howdee,
I’ve included the news editors because I haven’t seen anything about this in either paper.
I don’t know where you’re at with the garbage tax ordinance, but I thought I would remind you – if you are going to impose mandatory garbage service, you need to provide a subsidy for low-income. A rebate won’t cut it either, you need to subsidize at the time of service.
Of course, as in the case of PG&E and Cal Water subsidy programs, you will have to notify all those not included in the low-income program that they are paying for it.
You can’t just raise the cost of a utility without thinking of the low income families. Sincerely, Juanita Sumner
And now folks, it is Cowabunga Time.
If I never see you again, let me tell you what, it’s been swell!
Larry Wahl came in to act as guest chair of today’s Chico Taxpayers’ Association meeting.
A sturdy crowd came out on a dreary day to greet Larry Wahl, second district Butte County supervisor, at the Chico library. I love the rain, but it does seem to make folks want to stay inside, at home, where they feel comfortable and secure. I can’t knock that, but I’m grateful to the hardy souls who joined us today with some good questions and banter.
Larry was eager to hear what everybody was thinking, starting out with a brief statement about some of his priorities, and a general statement about the fiscal health of Butte County. Two of his priorities, he said, have been public safety and job creation. He also pointed out that the county is in good shape, “we have spent less than we have brought in, we have a surplus.”
Wahl supports the principles of the Tea Party, he said – limited government, and individual and economic freedom. Two rules for fiscal health:
don’t spend more than you have
if you think you need to spend more than you have, refer back to Rule #1
Al Petersen pointed out the problems the city of Chico has had with spending, and asked Larry what he thinks the county has done differently. Here Wahl praised Butte County finance officer Greg Iturria for keeping the supervisors abreast of the county’s finances, explaining the bookkeeping in everyday language, and giving regular, up-to-date reports. As all of you probably remember, we had to scream for that from the city of Chico, and it wasn’t just Jennifer Hennessey who dragged her feet about it.
As for salaries and benefits, Wahl said there’s been improvements, with employees paying more of “their share,” although he wasn’t sure of the actual percentages. They pay more than city employees, I believe. He says this has not come about without “some turmoil,” and that negotiations are constant. But, things are working out, and the county is slowly paying down their pension obligation while maintaining an $18 million surplus.
Jim asked what was the county’s biggest problem, and the supervisor immediately answered “the marijuana thing.” He pointed out environmental impacts, as well as complaints from neighbors, some of whom have reported harassment from growers. There are over 3,000 parcels in Butte County with more than 40 plants, Wahl says, and he believes most of them are operated by the cartels, “guarded by non-English speakers who are told to shoot on sight.” This is much of his concern over public safety, and he’d like to see more sheriff’s officers and code enforcement officers, he says.
There are currently a referendum and an initiative being prepared for submission to the county clerk by a group opposed to the marijuana ordinance recently passed by the board of supervisors. I’m confused on these terms, and there was confusion in our conversation yesterday. I don’t think a solid 30 percent of the American voters understand anything, frankly. So, I googled it.
From dictionary.com: referendum – the principle or practice of referring measures proposed or passed by a legislative body to the vote of the electorate for approval or rejection.
From the National Congress of State Legislators: initiative – the process that enables citizens to bypass their state legislature [and, in this case, the County Supervisors] by placing proposed statutes and, in some states, constitutional amendments on the ballot.
These terms are similar in that they require a certain percentage of the voters to sign a petition, which would enable the voters to bypass the lawmakers.
Wahl reports the proponents of these measures must gather a minimum of 7500 signatures, on each petition. The referendum, if passed by the voters, would cancel the ordinance passed in January, and the initiative, if passed, would adopt “reasonable restrictions on the cultivation of medical marijuana…” and that’s all I got because little Miss Candy Grubbs does not load the documents so that they are cut and pastable. You can see the rest of that initiative here:
I must say, it took some guts for those people to sign, but I’m not surprised. I been noticing, more people are ready to come out in support of marijuana as the board of supervisors just keeps making their claims and the restrictions they want to put on private property. Alot of non-smokers I know are looking at it like an assault on private property rights, and they believe it’s just another excuse to get code enforcement on your property. They also wonder how much $taff time = $$$$ has gone into this windmill tilt? I can guess the answer to that – at least, 10’s of thousands, probably over $100,000.
The county admin officer, Paul Hahn, makes over $200,000, in salary alone. His time alone probably racks up to alot more than $17. Larry complained that we need more sheriff and code enforcement employees – so why spend money continuously tweaking this ordinance when you could hire more code officers to enforce it? The things Wahl complained about – environmental degradation, a woman being threatened at her mail box – those things are already against the law, and having more officers to take complaints would certainly be the way to better serve the public, than sitting in meetings masturbating money out the door.
We’ll see what happens. I notice the signature gatherers were out in force for a couple of weeks, now I don’t see them anymore, so I’m guessing they have more than enough signatures to qualify. These people are professionals, I’ve talked to them – they were definitely checking for voter registration, correct addresses, etc, because they don’t get paid for slugs. A friend of mine told me a couple of weeks ago he saw a gatherer at Butte College being swarmed with people wanting to sign – “you couldn’t even get near the guy.” There was a signature gatherer set up at the library for the last month, whenever I was there I’d see him get at least one signature – every time I was there, somebody would walk up to the guy and say, “I’ve been looking for you…” And these were older people, entrenched voters, library patrons. I watched one 35-ish woman sign right in front of her junior high age kids. No, she did not look like the “potheads” we been hearing about on the news, nor was she carrying a piece, ready to “shoot on sight.” She seemed like a perfectly nice lady to me, but, Larry Wahl seems like a perfectly nice man to me, so who am I to judge?
Helen Harberts does not come off to me as a very nice lady. It really got me when she called local gadfly Stephanie Taber a “flatliner,” which implies to me, a flat line on a hospital monitor. I thought that was pretty nasty, but par for her tactics of trying to bully people with different opinions. The idea that she thinks she is allowed to stalk and harass people who are practicing Democracy is very troubling to me, and I just hope I don’t find out that Larry Wahl has been financing her efforts or encouraging her in any way.
It’s bad enough he admits, he’s encouraging Butte County clerk-in-disgrace Candy Grubbs to check every single signature instead of the usual sampling method used to save staff time. I guess that’s his right, and I will remember to do so in future when there’s a petition I don’t like worming it’s way around town. But, she’s only got 30 days to check the petitions, and the usual process is to do a sampling. That’s how the city of Chico does it, but Wahl says he wants Grubbs to check all 7500 signatures – or check until she certifies 7500 signatures out of the 14,000 or so expected to be turned in. I guess that sounds right and all, but we’ll see if she can pull that off in 30 days (250 a day including weekends?), with her complaints of being short on staff, and assuming the other little chores she has for staff to do don’t get in the way.
Speaking of staffing, Michael Jones asked Larry, as a former Chico city council member, what he thought of the idea of Cal Fire taking over the duties for the Chico Fire Department. Larry said he thought Cal Fire does a great job, but would have to see more information as to reorganization. Of course, he predicted, Cal Fire would need to hire more people. I think that would take care of a lot of the fire department employees, that is, those who are willing to work for a lower salary and pay more of their own pension and benefits. He also answered Jones’ question about the city contracting with Butte County sheriff to eliminate Chico Police department – yes, this is possible, and plenty of towns around the state are doing it.
NOTE: Mike posted a great proposal for Cal Fire to take over services for city of Chico here –
As for the city’s financial problems, which started with contracts signed back in the early 2000’s, Larry cited “check kiting” and “a shell game” as how Chico had run it’s finances over the past few years. Nobody had the nerve to ask Larry what he thought he’d done to contribute to that downward spiral over his tenure on council, but I heard him telling Kelly Skelton (thanks Kelly!) after the meeting that he was regularly voted down “6-1” on financial issues. I know he admitted to me he’d approved the MOU that attached city salaries to “revenue increases but not decreases,” but he also voted to throw that out when it became apparent just how that mechanism was working to drain city finances into the pockets of city management. The salaries that resulted were never turned around, and that’s where we are today. And, unfortunately, when they dumped the revenue-attached salaries, they agreed to pay almost all the pensions and benefits, especially for management. That sleigh ride is going to land us in bankruptcy, you just watch. But, I don’t know the details, so I certainly can’t lay it all on Larry. Maureen Kirk, current District 3 super, also approved those agreements. So did Scott Gruendl. Mark Sorensen has approved his share of bum deals as well.
At least, given his claims about county finance officer Greg Itturia, it seems like Wahl has learned alot from the city of Chico’s problems.
At this point I launched into my diatribe about how we got to fight the water rate increase. Larry asked me to forward the information to Paul Hahn, and he’d try to interest the board in writing another letter before the CPUC makes their decision – I’ll get on that today, even though I got a thousand things to do, my husband is poking me right now to get off the computer and go out to do some errands, check our rentals for storm damage, etc. I think I will clone myself, I heard they can do that now.
Toward the end of the meeting we talked about The State of Jefferson proposal, and why proponents think it will benefit the state. Ruth reminded us of all the commissions, including the Air Resources Board, that not only cost millions in salaries and benefits, but place onerous restrictions on our lives and livelihoods, like the new requirements for trucks to be retrofitted with a smog filter. I’ve read some pretty bad reports on those filters – they don’t work, they interfere with the efficiency of the vehicle, and in one story, the bus drivers in Vacaville have to drive on the freeway just to get their filters properly working – these filters don’t work for slow-moving vehicles like busses, the vehicle has to achieve a certain speed in order to heat the filter enough to burn off the particulates. That’s really how this dumb filter works – it just burns the stuff so hot, it’s supposed to vaporize it. That is so stupid I can’t believe it.
CARB and it’s requirements have been a big problem for Butte County, all three of our county supervisor speakers, candidate Bob Evans, and supers Maureen Kirk and Larry Wahl have all agreed, these onerous restrictions are hurting business in Butte county. Larry went so far as to say, the bigger corporate companies are profiting because the restrictions are putting the mom and pops out of business. I agree.
Ruth and her husband Tom have been working hard to get information out about the State of Jefferson proposal, they’ve got some good answers for your questions. Here’s a youtube video of proponent Mark Baird, speaking to a Chico audience.
Supervisor Wahl wants a discussion of supporting the SOJ proposal, but says the other four board members are dead set against any kind of discussion? I’m with Larry, and also agree with Bob Evans – we need to discuss this separation of the state, one way or the other, and we need to show the South we are fucking serious about dumping their lousy asses.
Just as we were getting into some serious details, our time was up, we had to vacate the room for the next group. Our next date is March 30, we have Ryan Schohr, who Larry has endorsed for Third District Assembly. We’ll pick it up there.
I been busy with my own business lately – and I know how EVERYBODY would love me to pay more attention to that. Unfortunately, city business becomes my business when the ordinances they pass Downtown affect my livelihood. That’s why me and a gaggle of other landlords, small and large, came down to the last Internal Affairs committee meeting to have a conversation over this new “Social Host Ordinance.”
The city attorney had written a clause into the ordinance that said the police chief could decide to assess a property owner/landlord for “response time” of cops and fire where underage drinkers were present. In other words, hold landlords responsible for the actions of their tenants.
When we hashed this all out over the Disorderly Events ordinance, they dropped the landlord clause because it was found that they could not possibly notice a landlord quickly enough to prevent a second incident, and how could the landlord be responsible for a second or even third incident if they were unaware there’d been a first incident? But now, they want to use proof of mailer, which just means, they sent a notice, to somebody. They expect to use the assessor’s roles to get the contact info. According to Butte County Assessor candidate Al Petersen, the rolls are full of mistakes – some 10,000, last year alone. Those mistakes include contact information, and I’ve had that problem – they got the wrong address for my prop tax bill, and it took me almost two years to get it corrected. At one point, it was so screwed up, they let my neighbor’s mortgage holder pay my taxes, and sent my check back, even thought the other check was in the wrong amount. So, we’re supposed to trust these idiots to get us a notice that the cops have been called to our rental?
The angry crowd that showed up at the Internal Affairs meeting had already had a private meeting with the city attorney that I was not made aware of. City attorney Roger Wilson said after meeting with those folks, who included the management for Webb apartments and other big dick swingers, he recommended dropping the “landlord responsibility clause”. Don’t you get sick of the special favors Downtown? I mean, I wanted that dropped, but I don’t like any of the ordinance. These fuckers sold out because it suited their bottom line. Thanks Randy, you egg sucker!
And speaking of errors, get a load of this draft ordinance I had to get from Debbie Presson, because she hadn’t loaded the agenda properly, and it wouldn’t cut and paste. There are so many typos in this thing – like I’ve said before, get off your dildo Debbie, and do your job. I’ve seen items pulled from agendas for less mistakes than this:
I. GENERAL PROVISIONS
A. The fees set forth herein shall be used to calculate the costs to be recovered by the City in connection with the following incidents:
l. The apprehension and arrest or citation of persons convicted of an offense involving the driving of a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or any drug;
2. Response to accidents caused by persons who are convicted of anotTense involving the driving of a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or any drug;ef
3.LiabilityJorthe City’s emergencyresoonsecost~ underJhe Social Host Ordinan~~ (Chico Municipal CodeChailter 9.31Lor
‘L Participationin a second response to a loud or unruly event as defined in Section
9.70.030 of the Chico Municipal Code.
B. Payment is due and payable at the City’s Finance Office within thirty days of the date the bill is mailed or payment shall be considered delinquent and subject to the collection
measures set forth in Administrative Procedure and Policy No. 15-14.
II. COST RECOVERY FEES
A. Police and Fire Department fees as set forth below shall have a one-half hour (30 minute) minimum fee.
B. Fees shall be based on the amount of time spent by each police officer and/or fire suppression personnel responding to the incident, plus administrative processing costs,
and shall be calculated using the following fees:
Minimum Fee For Each Administrative
(for first y, hour)Additional Minute Processing Fee
PoliceDepmiment$46.50 per officer $!.55/minute/officer $34.50 per incident (this line does not make sense, what do they mean – $46.50 per officer $!.55/minute/officer $34.50 per incident? That doesn’t make sense even without the typo)
Fire Department $22.00 per fire fighter $0.73/minute/fire fighter $34.50 per incident (again, this line does not make sense)
Ill. AUTHORIZA TlON TO ANNUALLY ADJUST FEES
The City Manager is authorized to annually adjust the fees set forth above to reflect personnel compensation adjustments previously authorized and approved by the City Council without further City Council action (BP E.5.).
While the typos make it difficult to read, I think most people would see plenty to be alarmed about here. First of all, it’s up to the police chief and the city manager to decide when there’s been an offense, and how much to assess, and then turn around and put it right in their own pocket. That’s completely inappropriate conflict of interest. And second, there you see the “AUTHORIZATION TO ANNUALLY ADJUST FEES,” administratively, with no public oversight.
Wow, look at that, I just spelled administratively, twice! I wonder if they could use somebody who can spell and type down at the City of Chico?
Kelly sent me a link to State Controller John Chiang’s website regarding public salaries – it’s got the data for every county and city in California. I looked at years 2009 – 2012, and I saw something for the first time – from 2010 to 2011, when the city first started shedding employees due to the impending bankruptcy, the amount of employee “share” paid by the city of Chico went from $6.5 million to $14 million.
I had to ask Mark Sorensen, who was elected to council in 2010, how that happened.
Now, here’s something I just noticed yesterday – did you sign contracts in 2011 that raised the amount of pensions and benefits paid by the city from about $6.5 million to over $14 million? That would have been just before I started understanding all that pension time bomb stuff, I was not watching. At the same time we were getting rid of employees, our pension/benefits cost more than doubled, how did that happen? I remember you talking about this in your blog –
It looks like you were advocating paying 80 – 90 percent of employee costs, but saying we’d save money? – am I getting that right? Please explain – thanks, Juanita
I think I hit a nerve, cause it took him almost a week to get back to me. I know he’s busy, but when he wants to talk, you can get him just about any time. Now all the sudden he didn’t want to talk. And when he did answer me, he accused me of making it up.
“…contracts in 2011 that raised the amount of pensions and benefits paid by the city from about $6.5 million to over $14 million?”
I don’t know how you dream this stuff up. It just confuses an already confusing pile of information.
What’s with the defensive tone? I asked him a question, he comes back telling me I make stuff up? He accuses me of confusing the issue with too many questions – aha! Now we know who’s really behind the new rules for committee meetings – Mark Sorensen and Brian Nakamura are running the city while Scott Gruendl is out road-raging over his sister’s death. They want the public OUT! Because he knows the curtains are getting pretty thin, and pretty soon everybody is going to know what’s really going on Downtown, and who is really pulling all the strings.
And then he throws down the toothpicks with this confusing ramble – with all the different type faces and font sizes – this is what I get for asking a simple question of a man with red hands:
Pension costs alone have been at about $10-11 million per year for many years (employer contribution rates were increasing slightly, while the number of employees was decreasing). Take a look at the Calpers annual valuation reports for the city of Chico’s two pension plans. Those reports contain the exact pension cost numbers. Though, you must manually add the EPMC (employer paid member contribution), which has been around $1.8 million per year, and now rapidly going down to $0.0 per year. Other benefits costs have not changed much in recent years.
There were no new city of Chico labor contracts beginning in 2011. All were set to expire in 2012.
My blog entry that you mentioned references a modification by way of a “letter agreement” to one contract. That being with the IAFF.
The primary impact of that letter agreement was to STOP a 4% raise to the firefighters as was scheduled the 2007 contract. That contract was being modified in order to halt the 4% raise.
The history of pay and benefit increases can be found in the following document, beginning at page 7.
This year will register very significant decreases. Is it enough? No, but it is about as much as could be obtained if necessary from the California Public Employee Relations Board.
It took many years to build this financial debacle, it will take years to re calibrate it, but particularly take a good look at what occurred between 1997 and 2002.
What? So I asked him that:
I got it off Chiang’s website Mark, I didn’t dream anything up. Look for yourself – benefits paid by the city doubled from 2010 – 2011. I know CalPERS started demanding more, I guess I should ask – why weren’t the employees asked to pay it? Why did you folks continue to approve contracts that required the taxpayers to foot the bill for these outrageous pensions and benefits agreements? They’ve still continued to get raises, by the way, we’re not blind.
It doesn’t look good that six of you are on public salaries with packages of your own to protect.
You’re accusing me of confusing this mess by asking questions? These contracts are written purposely to confuse anybody who hasn’t been to law school. Nothing you say makes sense –
(Mark said) Pension costs alone have been at about $10-11 million per year for many years (employer contribution rates were increasing slightly, while the number of employees was decreasing). Take a look at the Calpers annual valuation reports for the city of Chico’s two pension plans. Those reports contain the exact pension cost numbers. Though, you must manually add the EPMC (employer paid member contribution), which has been around $1.8 million per year, and now rapidly going down to $0.0 per year. Other benefits costs have not changed much in recent years.
What ? Why would I go through those calisthenics when I have Chiang’s numbers? You didn’t answer my question – did you sign contracts that raised the amount of EPMC from $6.5 million to $14 million? – JS
We’ll see if he answers, but I think I got an earful already.
Next Sunday is Spring Ahead, make note of that. We have Dist 2 supervisor Larry Wahl coming into the Chico library at noon to talk to us about his concerns and answer questions about ours.
These sessions are very casual and you can ask what you’d like. Issues we’ve discussed so far include State of Jefferson, marijuana initiative, global warming, staffing in various county offices, and an elected offical’s due diligence to their constituents.
I don’t think everybody realizes, the June primary will be the end of it for a lot of these county and state offices, and it’s already March. Don’t dawdle, get informed. And, here’s your chance to inform these people what you find to be important.
Please come on in, I’ll be there at 11:30 to set up chairs.
I got this notice today. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it, I’ll try to find out more about it. I’m just happy there are people who are working to encourage the voters to educate themselves about the issues surrounding the upcoming election. I’m hoping this event will be well intended, show these people some appreciation for their efforts.
When I was out doing some errands yesterday I saw this sign sitting in an empty lot over in South Chico. I’d heard about these signs from the gals over at Truth Matters, and I was so jealous, I wanted to get my hands on one.
I don’t know who made or distributed these signs. I’d say, if they were serious, they’d put some contact info on there. Of course, we probably wouldn’t want to spend the money to impeach a guy we could just vote out, but it’s fun to talk about stuff. Lately I do feel a groundswell of anger is about to overtake the assholes Downtown, and Gruendl is going to find himself out on his bum.
There’s a great cover story in the News and Review today about the latest budget and contracts, which are a little too little, a little too late.
At last the whole story is getting out. It’s been out before – the late Dr. Richard Ek was all over the over compensation Downtown. He wrote article after article detailing not only the crazy spending, but the really enormous problem of salaries and benefits. Now Dave Waddell, who was Ek’s successor over at Chico State journalism department, is taking it up. Michael Jones and Kelly Skelton are taking it up. At last the dirty laundry has hit the air.
Chico Tea Party meeting Tuesday 2/25/14 @ 7pm, Marie Callender restaurant at 1910 20th Street (at the Chico Mall)
“Fire Department Status and open questions with Bill Hack Division Chief Chico Fire” Learn about the $5.3M Grant that just past City Council.
Sheesh, there’s just not enough time in the day to bitch about stuff. NO, I’m not happy about the new grant for the fire department. First of all, that’s our money – why don’t people get that? Second, we don’t need more stupes in boots to sit down at the fire station breathing their own farts or endangering our lives using their sirens to run stop lights. And, last but hardly least – when this grant runs out, they will kick and scream that they need more funding from the city to pay the extra guys they hired with the grant.
We’ve been here before – who keeps eating the bread crumbs? The city of Chico just keeps running in the same circles.
I will not have a chance to attend, but these meetings are open to the public. I’d recommend being on time, they usually have an interesting program for 20 minutes or so, and then the speaker is given the floor, and will accept questions from the general audience. Also, they open the room at 5:30 for dinner, I believe, if you want to make an evening of it. The wait staff there is very professional, and you can have drinks during the program. Please be sure to tip nice, these guys and gals work hard on their feet all day.
Thanks for doing this Tea Party! In future I will try to remember to post all their events, sorry to be so slow to get this up.
For years now, I’ve turned my attention toward the day meetings, where there has always been a more conversational tone between council/committee members and the public. Although it was sometimes testy, it was what you call “give and take.” It was one of the few remaining factors that kept Chico’s “small town” atmosphere – the notion that elected officials were just members of the public who had been chosen by their peers to do a job, that they were never above us, and if they didn’t watch it, they might just end up under our feet.
Unfortunately, we’ve had one mayor after another who has abused their privilege as elected “official.” Yeah, that’s right – starting with Ann Schwab, I’d say, they just started getting a little too officious. Our current mayor Scott Gruendl has become a regular Pinochet, using his position and his gavel to silence criticism while he empties the city coffers into the pockets of his friends – his developer friends and city employee unions who have financed his campaigns for city council.
Gruendl’s latest abuse of power is the institution of new rules for those daytime committee meetings. And it’s not just Gruendl’s idea – Brian Nakamura is chiefly behind it. Didn’t I tell you he was up to something when he started charging that too many members of the public got “off topic” during meetings, and that it was a violation of the Brown Act?
You know, the Brown Act he says does not need to be attended to when it comes to having staffers supervise the un-elected committees, namely the Sustainability Task Force. The STF can now have meetings with anybody they choose, make recommendations to council based on what their friends tell them in secret meetings, without any oversight from the public. But you and I need to put our name and address on a card to speak, and we’re limited to three minutes per agenda item?
From this week’s Finance and Economic Development committee agendas:
NOTE: Citizens and other interested parties are encouraged to participate in the public process and will be invited to address the Committee regarding each item on the agenda. In order to maintain an accurate and complete record, the following procedural guidelines are being implemented:
1. Speaker Cards – speakers will be asked to print his/her name on a speaker card to address the Committee and provide card to the Clerk prior to the completion of the Staff Report.
2. Speak from the Podium – the Clerk will call speakers to the podium in the order the cards are received.
3. Speakers may address the Committee one time per agenda item.
4. Speakers will have three minutes to address the Committee.
I’m sorry, that is not encouraging, that is discouraging. That is how they hold us off by the forehead. They have a conversation right in front of us, they say the most outrageous stuff, and then they tell us we only get to address them, from a podium, for three minutes, cramming every observation we have on their up to one hour long conversations into three minutes.
For example, during the Internal Affairs discussion on the Social Host ordinance, a group of landlords came in to make it clear they would not tolerate being held financially responsible for tenants’ behavior, they’re landlords not babysitters. Sean Morgan, in an attempt to suck up, kept telling them, “don’t worry, the TENANTS will be held responsible…” He kept using the word “tenants.” We’d just had a long discussion about how the only person who should be held responsible, is the person(s) who provided the alcohol to the underage drinker, and hey, that might be the landlord, or it might be the tenant, or it might be the under-age person’s parents, or a guy he/she met at the liquor store. I wanted to hear the legal lingo – dealing with these fuckers Downtown is a Repo-man grab – you have to get them to SAY IT, and you have to get them to say it in legal terms. Morgan is an ass, how he got a job as a professor at a college mystifies me – he just wasn’t getting it. We wanted to hear “responsible party,” which is what city attorney Roger Wilson finally gave us. There’s legal import to terminology, just like when you accuse somebody of LIBEL! But this idiot thought he had to tell us, they’d stick it to the TENANT, he was just trying to buy us off and shut us up. We had to demand, and that doesn’t happen in a three minute puke-up from the podium, it happens in a give-and-take conversation.
I’ll tell you why they did this – because the people have gotten a little too tired and a little too wise to take any more of their illegal bullshit. People have been packing those little rooms to tell these fuckers where to stick it, and guess what – Brian Nakamure and Scott Gruendl and Mark Sorensen have got some kind of royalty complex – they think people are just supposed to do what they say without asking questions. They don’t like too many questions. And they have some kind of fatal allergy to THE TRUTH.
The people have been overthrown. Long live King Gruendl and his jesters Morgan and Sorensen.
We have five speakers lined up between now and the June 3 primary – thanks so much to these candidates, as well as Alan Petersen, Bob Evans, and Maureen Kirk, for supporting our series. All the presentations will be at Chico library, located at the corner of First and Sherman Avenues in Chico, starting at noon and running until 1pm. The public is asked to come in and take this opportunity to learn something about the candidates who are asking to fill very important jobs. I will be there at 11:30 to set up chairs.
March 9, Dist 2 Supervisor Larry Wahl
March 30, Dist 3 Assembly candidate RyanSchohr
April 27, Chico city council candidate Andrew Coolidge
Chico Taxpayers Association 