What is Tom Lando up to?

5 Jun

Last night we reached a new low with the council’s decision to move forward on the eminent domain of a private property for a bike lane. The worst part is, the owners say they’d go along with these plans if there was adequate compensation being offered, but the city stands by it’s ridiculous offer and holds a club up to the Douglas’ if they don’t agree.

Again, I’ll remind everybody – Tom Varga has admitted this acquisition will allow the city to apply for grants.  Mark Sorensen has said, “As far as the Grant revenue to fuel capital projects salaries… I believe that has at times been too much of a motivating factor.”  And the city is greedy – if they paid for the Douglas’ sewer hook-up, that would probably eat a good deal of the grant they’re after. 

I’m glad Sorensen voted NO on this item, but I don’t know if he sincerely didn’t want to eminent domain this family’s private property or whether he knew it would carry anyway so voted NO for the pleasure of his peanut gallery.  He had expressed a desire for the bike trail to be completed. Like Stephanie Taber said, they should have had all the properties secured BEFORE they started the trail. I believe Varga did it this way on purpose, to pressure any of those hold-outs who didn’t want to go along.  

But I’m not going to get distracted with that item right now. I feel like we need to be looking ahead. This bike trail fiasco went through the approval process years back, I don’t feel like going back through that process, or the bag ban. Let’s just remember who voted which way in a year and a half, when these people are up for re-election.  

What worries me now, is our finances, and what our city “leaders” are planning to do about the lack there-of.  Brian Nakamura and the New Kids on the Chopping Block – Mark Orme on bass, and Chris Constantin on drums –  are on the “Your City’s Up Shit Creek” Tour, with an appearance at City Chambers, this Friday, noon to 1:30. This event is being hosted by the city, as well as the Chamber, the DCBA, and the Chico Stewardship Council.

Yeah, I’d like to be there, but my family has already moved our plans to accommodate a financial opportunity for my son and a CARD budget meeting.  I hope somebody will go down there and fill us in. 

I will be at CARD’s budget meeting Thursday, 3pm, at the CARD center on Vallombrosa. The story in today’s ER says they have a balanced budget, with expenditures actually falling short of revenues – HOLY SHIT! Stop the press!  I’ll try to get photos of he momentous occasion.

Although, I am perplexed – if they can stay within their budget, why this panhandling lately? First they try to get us to agree to some sort of assessment or parcel tax, and when that doesn’t go over, board member Tom Lando tries to shove a SALES TAX HIKE onto the agenda. That’s what he said at the last meeting, that he wanted to discuss a sales tax initiative. The agendas aren’t very descriptive, there’s no report, so I’m going to the meeting to see exactly what comes up in the discussion. 

I could see a link here, excuse me for having a rubber brain. Lando has his fingers in several pies – he is a board member and past president at the Chico Chamber, and also a board member at CARD. As past city of Chico manager, he also consults extensively Downtown. This meeting Friday, sponsored by the city, the Chamber, the DCBA, and Bob Lincheid’s friends at the Chico Stewardship Council, just reeks of a campaign to get us to raise our own taxes. We need to pay attention to these people, because I’ve found, leeches do not like sunshine.

 

 

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Thanks Randall Stone for one of our best meetings ever!

3 Jun

Yesterday’s meeting with Randall Stone was one of our most productive yet. Even though I don’t agree with Stone on everything, we found common ground – we would both like to see the employees pay their own share.

I had booked the library room for a long meeting, and glad I did. We spent the entire two hours talking about budgetary problems,  from superficially low developer fees to employee contracts.

Randall reported that he had agreed with lowering developer fees during the last few years, in hopes of stimulating development and new businesses moving here. But, he says he realizes, fees here are some of the lowest in the state, a lot less than other cities of the same size, and it’s time to raise them back to levels sufficient for the development services department to pay for itself. Can’t argue there.

We talked about Measure J, which Randall feels should have been passed. I tried to get him to explain why we should pay more taxes,  given the report we’d both heard last Tuesday morning at the Finance Committee meeting, but we never got past the “agree to disagree” phase.

But the questions I had for Randall involved the employee contracts and employee share. I reminded Randall that Chris Constantin had told us at the Fin Comm meeting that he’s willing to pay his own share, but “they” won’t let him.  Randall explained this very well – “they” would be Constantin’s union fellows.  He may vote to pay the full share, but the others in his union all vote to take the E(mployer)P(aid)M(ember)C(ontribution). The majority rules, and that’s the package they hand over to our labor negotiators – city manager Brian Nakamura and a contractor who comes in to help.

The negotiators deal with the union representatives behind closed doors, and then make a closed door presentation to the council. It is up to the council, all seven of them, to decide whether to accept the offer or not. If there is no offer accepted by a certain deadline, the contract already in place rolls over and the employees just have to take it or leave it.

Instead of taking the hard line that a lot of us would like to see, council recently unanimously approved a contract that gave the cops raises and kept the EPMC  intact for another year.  Instead of telling the sergeants to cut their overtime, they gave police lieutenants a raise to solve the “compaction problem.” They gave police employees $330 a month toward a kind of HSA, in addition to their paid benefits. The cops even get paid for the time it takes them to get in and out of their uniforms every day.

I have asked Mark Sorensen and now Randall, why approve this contract? They both tell me, this contract only lasts a year, at which time they feel they will be in a better position to negotiate a new contract.  Sorensen won’t say anything beyond that, but Stone insinuated that after Nakamura gets done making cuts in both those departments, both public safety groups will be more reasonable. He mentioned, “naming names” of people who will actually be laid off – this is apparently what it takes to get the fire department to do the right thing.

Now we can only wait until talks begin next fall. Wait and see!  

But in the meantime, I hope people will start to turn up the heat on both public safety management and council to come up with better agreements. Randall Stone agrees – he wants everybody to know, the city is in trouble, and the EMPC is a large part of the problem. We need to “press” our city employees, particularly the public safety employees, to pay their own share of their benefits and pensions.

Stone said a few times, he doesn’t want “vitriol,” but he expects it, asking at one point that we “please don’t let the fire department pit the people against the council.” Last Summer, faced with the same request to cut his department budget, Chief Beery closed Station 5. Then fire department employee Ken Campbell and some others actually went door-to-door in the neighborhood surrounding Station 5,  telling people council had closed the station. They told folks to call the council members at home and tell them what they thought. Boy, Bob Evans was so mad – he got some pretty hot calls! This is the kind of “vitriol” the fire department likes to stir up.

Ha ha – that didn’t end up well for the Fire Department, Ken Campbell being made to stand at the podium like a whipping boy tied to a post, while Bob Evans got him to admit he had essentially lied, knowingly, to the public, to get his way – a bigger budget for the Fire Department. You must be careful when you throw a rock at a bee hive there, Ken, you better be all knees and elbows, that’s for sure, or you will get a pantsful of mad bees. 

So this time, when Brian Nakamura asked each department to make a 10 percent cut, rather than take a chance with the fickle public (bees), Chief Beery decided to threaten closure of the airport fire station. The public might not care – out in the “middle of nowhere,” the airport station only really serves a legal requirement for a fire engine to be available some 15 minutes before and after a commercial airplane lands (or takes off?). But, that brings the Federal Aviation Administration into it, like a water buffalo in a kiddie pool. I’m going to assume that Chief Beery has already drafted, if not sent, a letter informing the FAA of his decision to close that station. 

So, that’s the game they play, both of them. I say, play your hand Chief Beery – we can give that contract to Cal Fire/Butte County Station 42, right up the road. I’m betting they wouldn’t mind making a run to and from the airport three or four time a day.  

We’ll have to keep up the pressure, they’ll be discussing the contracts again in the fall. Write to your council members, tell them to get tough.  Getting the employees to pay their own share would eliminate a lot of our burden. 

Thanks again to Randall Stone for frank conversation. I hope he’ll come back in. We’d like to get some other council members to come in, maybe some staffers. This discussion was so much better than the council meetings, where you are limited in what you can say and how long you can talk. This was a table top discussion, with members jumping in as they had something to add.  It got a little push and shove at times, but we self-regulated really well, and everybody got to add their two cents. 

We also decided to start studying the employee contracts, get the public to read them, and get some public dialog going between now and next September. Let’s do it! 

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Cutting the junkies off their dope – $70,000 a month “loss” to defeat of Measure J

1 Jun

I was making dinner tonight, watching Ch 12 news, and I heard Alan Marsden report that the city is losing $70,000 a month as a result of the defeat of Measure J. He almost seemed to scold the voters who defeated that ill-conceived grab, reminding us that the city is in heaps of financial trouble. Tsk tsk!

I had already heard Chris Constantin report this figure at the Finance Committee meeting Tuesday – Stephanie Taber had requested a report.  Constantin said they’d got their last check from the cell phone carriers two months ago, and that they’d lost $70,000 a month since. That would somewhat explain the “$840,000 – 900,000” figure he gave us at the May 21 council meeting.

Of course, that’s a projection. We don’t get the exact dollars and cents, we don’t get to see the receipts or any paperwork from the phone companies. I assume he rounds up, to what place I don’t know.

In December, Jennifer Hennessy reported we had lost $500,000 to the defeat of Measure J in 2012. Again, this is a projection, we don’t know the exact amount.

And it just doesn’t add up. We didn’t defeat Measure J until November of 2012. They didn’t start notifying the cell phone companies until later that year, and some companies were still collecting as late as February. How could they possibly have lost $500,000  so fast? In one month? And now, only $70,000/month?

These figures just don’t make sense to me, but I’m going to let it go and try to have faith that these new people are giving us the straight dope.

Something that bugged me about Marsden’s “news story” was, it wasn’t really “news” – he didn’t give any details, didn’t mention Constantin or the Finance Committee, no real practical information. He  just wanted to say that the city was losing $70,000 a month from the defeat of Measure J, and now we voters shouldn’t  feel too smart about that!  Scott Gruendl called it a “threat to Democracy” – what, voting? Scott thinks Democracy is when everybody votes his way. 

If  Marsden had been at that meeting, he would have heard Constantin’s first report, detailing the shenanigans undertaken by $taff over the last ten years – money moved from fund to fund to make certain expenditures legal, without any supervision; purchases made without supervision; development fees deferred for work performed, without any oversight by the accounting department; budgets padded so department heads would get an excess that they would be forced to “spend or lose”; and on and on.  Maybe if Mr. Marsden had taken his eyes of his teleprompter for two seconds, he’d understand why the voters put a wooden stake through Measure J.

Scott Gruendl heard every word – he chairs the Finance Committee. His only reaction was to question Constantin – “wait, didn’t we vote to do this, didn’t we vote to do that…”, mumbling into his shirt sleeve.   If I were Gruendl, I wouldn’t be planning to run in 2014. 

Let’s have some more perspective here. While we’re supposedly losing $70,000/month to the defeat of Measure J, we’re losing more than twice as much – about $158,000 a month –  paying  the “employee share” of pensions.  That was the figure for 2012. We pay more every year, as their wages creep up, and their “share” – which WE pay –  goes up correspondingly.  Management just got a gi-NOR-mous pay raise – about $30,000 a department head – but still only pay 4 percent of their pension premium. OUCH!

Some nerve these assholes have – and that includes “news reporter” Alan Marsden – complaining that the voters (oh damn that DEMOCRACY!) pushed back against an illegal taking. Screw US for demanding some accountability Downtown!   

Here’s some more perspective – remember how they HOWLED about spending $150,000 on the election for Measure A?  That’s got to sound funny in light of this $158,000 a month figure they spend on their own benefits. In fact, I’m going to use the EMBEZZLE word again, cause that’s how I see it. 

 

 

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City stoops to emminent domaining private property to pay their salaries – THIS IS AGENDA 21

1 Jun

From this coming Tuesday’s council agenda:

3.1.  HEARING ON ACQUISITION OF INTEREST IN REAL PROPERTY BY EMINENT DOMAIN FOR THE BICYCLE PATH – LITTLE CHICO CREEK TO 20TH STREET PARK  Hearing on the public use and necessity of acquisition of property rights at 1377 Humboldt Avenue by eminent domain for: Bicycle Path – Little Chico Creek to 20th Street Park Project. The City budgeted funds for the construction of the new bicycle facility and must acquire additional right-of-way from a property owner to construct the project.  By notice letter dated 5/13/13, Laura and Jerry Douglas, the property owners of 1377 Humboldt Avenue, were advised of this hearing, of the City’s intent to purchase right-of-way and improvements, and that the property owner should submit a request in writing within 15 days of the date of the letter if the owner wished to be heard at this meeting. No request was received as of the date of preparation of this agenda. Compensation is not the subject of this hearing. (Report – Ruben Martinez, Public Works Department Director) Recommendation – Adoption of the following resolution: RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CHICO FINDING THAT THE PUBLIC INTEREST AND NECESSITY REQUIRE THE ACQUISITION OF INTEREST IN REAL PROPERTY LOCATED AT 1377 HUMBOLDT AVENUE IN CONNECTION WITH A PROJECT TO CONSTRUCT A PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE OVER LITTLE CHICO CREEK CONNECTING HUMBOLDT AVENUE TO 20TH STREET COMMUNITY PARK AND AUTHORIZING THE INITIATION OF AN EMINENT DOMAIN ACTION TO ACQUIRE SUCH PROPERTY (ASSESSOR’S PARCEL NO. 004-374-032)

And here the real reason behind it, in an e-mail from $taffer Tom Varga:

Ms. Taber-
 
Thank you for your patience for my reply.
 
Yes you were looking at the right project when you checked the “2012 Chico Urban Area Bicycle Plan”. Regarding the work to be done with acquiring the Douglas parcel, there are sufficient funds to accomplish this task and that was what I had in mind when describing it as having no budgetary impact. Construction funds will at the very least come from the Bicycle Improvement Fund. The City Council will decide in its budget deliberations when and how much is appropriate. In the meantime, staff will continue to look for other funding sources to improve on this. As an important point of information, once all of the needed easements have been secured, (the Douglas acquisition being the final piece), then the City is qualified for many more grants it can not yet apply for. Nevertheless, eminent domain is a powerful tool that should be invoked as the exception and not the rule. The City has been negotiating with the Douglas family for several years now and if an impasse is reached, then such a tool may be considered. State and Federal laws are very stringent in giving the highest reasonable valuation to any property acquisition by a public agency. Given the consequences of such a choice, it is very much a public process with a difficult decision placed before the City Council.
 
Regarding the Bicycle Plan (from which the various items are being referenced in our email chain), that is a topic that is basically different from the project or the acquisition under consideration. Your observations refer to a generalized list of potential funding sources to accomplish all of the goals in the plan. Likewise, the Bicycle Plan is a long-term plan with the understanding that not every listed project may actually be realized. Coincidentally, the City is starting a major update of its Bicycle Plan. This would be an ideal time to join in this review if you find topic important to you. By copy of this email, I will ask Tracy Bettencourt who is working as our bicycle coordinator to contact you about your interest in the matter.
 
If there are other questions, or if I can be of further assistance, please contact me at your convenience.
 
Sincerely,

>>> Tom Varga 4/5/2013 8:09 AM >>>

What Varga doesn’t mention here is that he needs to secure these grants to pay his own salary.  Varga made over $113,000 in salary alone in 2012, and then we pay for all but 4 percent of his benefits and pension.  $taff is desperate to get these grants.
Scott Gruendl is all over this snatch. Gruendl, who lives like a rat in a hole over in Doe Mill because he’s not financially responsible, has no respect for private property rights. As a proponent of Agenda 21, Gruendl does not believe in private property rights.
It might be too late to save the Douglas’ property rights, but we need to turn that little slimeball Scott Gruendl out in 2014.

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Chico Taxpayers Association meeting, Sunday June 2, 9am, Chico library – city finance discussion led by our guest, council member Randall Stone

30 May

I am really looking forward to our meeting Sunday. Council member Randall Stone is planning to attend and will try to answer our questions regarding the budget crisis.

Stone is a member of the Finance Committee and sat through the Horrible Truth report from Chris Constantin last Tuesday. He will give us his take – I know I missed stuff while my brain was screaming.

I read Tom Gascoyne’s story in today’s News and Review and it jogged loose a lot of details I forgot, like the Downtown parking discussion. They were talking about  raising fees, and the subject of parking fines Downtown got a little hot. Like Brian Nakamura said, there is a divide  between people who don’t want parking enforcement because they say it drives away business, and those who do want parking enforcement because a lack of it is driving away  business.  Now, there’s a dilemma! Let’s just cut that baby in half and see how they like it!

That is the problem all over town. People in Chico can’t agree on what government is supposed to do. We can’t get a collective voice, because we all want different stuff. Alot of our wants are contradictory.  I will give Scott Gruendl credit for having asked this question before – what level of “service” do we want? But he never asked, “what is a reasonable price to pay for it.” With Gruendl it’s  My Way or the Highway.

In the real world it’s a bargaining session, and all the “stakeholders” have a voice. If you don’t like the price of eggs at one store, you find another, and the first store will either be throwing eggs in the dumpster or they will lower their price. The public sector doesn’t want to have a public discussion. They’ve kept the contract talks and the entire discussion of how much they get paid and payment of the “employee share” completely behind closed doors. They don’t want to hear what the public thinks, and even more so – they don’t want the people whose kids go to school with their kids, or the people who clean their teeth down at the dentist’s office, or the people who stand on a concrete floor all day at the grocery store to know what they make or how much of their benefits are taken out of our paychecks.

They’ve kept it behind closed doors with the help of council.  I once asked then-councilor  Larry Wahl if I could get in on those talks, and he actually tried to get me in.  But the other council members – including Sheriff Billy Bob Bertagna – wouldn’t go for it. Mary Flynn Goloff made it loud and clear from the dais – if I wanted to be in on the contract talks I could run for city council. Evita speaks! Bertagna, bless his heart for his fresh ground pepper honesty,  told me they couldn’t let the public in because they needed secrecy. He explained to me without shame – they play the various employee groups – especially the cops and fire – against each other, and they need a cone of silence to pull that off.

The stuff that goes on down there, please!

This dialogue with Randall Stone is what we need, and I can’t say enough how much I appreciate him having the balls to come down to our meeting. I hope we can get more members of council and staff to come in. I’d like to invite Police Chief Trostle and Fire Chief Beery in another time to explain why their employees can’t pay their own share of benefits – there is actually some legal explanation for that, and I’d like to hear it.

So, come on down to the Chico Library,  Sunday morning, I’ll have the doors open by 9am. 

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Henny Penny tried to tell them about Loosey Goosey, but would they listen? Nooooooooooo!

29 May

Yesterday I put aside a bunch of junk I had to do to go to a meeting Downtown.  I don’t know about the rest of you people, but when I don’t work, it shows up pretty immediately on the balance sheet as no dinner, or clean underwear.   But, I figure, a few hours spent each month riding herd on the city monkeys is worth the effort. 

They had to hire some out-of-town gun to tell us, our city staff has been operating, as Chris Contantin puts it, “loosey goosey.” So, that’s why they called me “Henny Penny” every time I said they needed to slow down on the spending? 

I have to say – I really like these new guys. I like Brian Nakamura. I like Chris Constantin. And, I like Frank Fields,  a guy who’s been with the city for some time. I also have to say, I didn’t like Jennifer Hennessy. I wanted to like her – her kid played hockey with my kid, her husband worked with my husband on the rink in Ham City. But she was a petulant little spoiled rotten bitch who cared more about herself than her job. She was lazy, I’ll say it. She just didn’t want to do her job.  She expected to have that salary and those clothes and that hair and that little hot rod, but she didn’t want to do the work that paid for it. No, I”m not jealous – women like her make me embarrassed for the gender.

So, excuse me  if  yesterday, when Chris Constantin came into the Finance Committee meeting and gave the type of report that we’d been asking, begging, demanding from Jennifer Hennessy all these years – NO POWER POINT PRESENTATION?! – just the horrible facts, Ma’am – I just about blew up trying to hold back with “I TOLD YOU BASTARDS SO!” 

We all knew, the entire time, that money was being moved from fund to fund, excuse me for REPEATING MYSELF – like peas under nutshells. If I used the shell game analogy once, I used it a hundred times.  And yesterday Constantin reported to those in attendance exactly that – money was allowed to be moved, from one fund to another – willy nilly, loosey goosey, whatever – without any supervision from Hennessy or the Finance Department or the city manager. Departments were padding their budgets so they’d have a surplus to “spend or lose” – how many times did I tell you that? Like that episode of The Office where Michael has to choose between a new copy machine or new office chairs, and then finds out he can simply give the money to himself as a bonus and does so. 

I think most of the senior management staff needs to be fired. This is why Rucker and McKinley were fired. This is why Hennessy was quietly found another job elsewhere – it wasn’t all her fault – how many times did the council listen to Hennessy say we were in deficit and simply refuse to act? I know I sat in those meetings for years. I sat in one meeting with my then-6-year-old son, during which Scott Gruendl took a fistful of marking pens and a giant tablet and tried to draw a picture of how much financial trouble we were in. He jokingly put aside the red pen, not wanting to alarm anybody! But he made it clear, the city of Chico was spending alot more money than it was taking in. 

After the meeting, my son was aghast – “if the city is in so much trouble with money, what’s Scott doing with all those marking pens?” He noted that Gruendl was using more than one at a time, leaving the caps off, not really acting like a guy who might not be able to afford another set of marking pens. This is the same man who has voted to spend money on overpriced real estate, bar a major retailer from expanding unless they lay down a million dollars to swap out wood stoves, and who has led the city on a windmill chase over banning plastic bags that has cost God only knows how many hundreds of thousands in $taff time.

Furthermore, to listen to Ann Schwab and Mary Goloff sit on that dais and say they didn’t have any idea what was going on is like listening to the captain of the Concordia say it wasn’t his fault the ship ran aground because he wasn’t present at the time.

But let’s face it, it wasn’t just the way $taff was running the books, it was that MOU that raised Tom Lando’s salary from around $60,000/year to over $150,000. That MOU was the killer, linking salaries to revenue increases but not decreases.  It was like some kind of time release poison, it has taken us to The Brink. Gruendl voted for that MOU, in fact, I believe he was one of the proponents who pushed it forward for $taff.  The same thing was going on in Glenn County, where Gruendl’s salary went from around $50,000 to $103,000 in less than five years.

When the public found out about that MOU, it was canned, but they replaced it with this practice of paying most or all of the employee share of pension and benefit premiums. Now our city has adopted a resolution requiring all new hires from out of the CalPERS system to pay “50 percent,” of what I’m not sure. But, Constantin explained to me yesterday – even if the new hire is from out of state, if they come from “an agency” that has an agreement with CalPERS, they come in as a member of CalPERS, and they will not be required to pay the new share.

Furthermore, Gruendl has already informed us, that if we are going to require employees to pay more of their share, we will have to pay them more salary.

At yesterday’s meeting, I sincerely thanked Chris Constantin, but I told the committee of Randall Stone, Sean Morgan and Scott Gruendl that we need to get management and public safety to pay their own share of their pensions. Constantin agreed with me. He  said he’d tried to pay his own share, but apparently the union won’t allow it? I didn’t get a very good explanation. But he also said that if public safety would pay their own share, their pensions would be cheaper.  I think he meant, they’d be cheaper because the city wouldn’t have to go into debt to pay them, the payments would be taken directly every month instead of put off. So, there would be enormous savings in interest. I’m not sure on that, but I think that’s what he meant. It makes sense. 

But there it sat. They won’t push it. Trying to get them to do something is like trying to push Jello. 

So, we have to put the heat to the people who really have control – the council. We have to start holding a match to Mark Sorensen’s ass – he’s up for re-election in November 2014, along with Gruendl and Goloff. They all need to be told, loud and clear, that they shouldn’t even bother to run in 2014 if they re-sign these contracts in January. 

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Oh God our city is doomed

22 May

Thanks to John Salyer, Stephanie Taber, Sue Hubbard and the other citizens who showed up at last night’s catastrophe city council meeting. 

I went down, but left at 10 pm. I have a rule, and they also made a rule, that these meetings should not go on after 10pm, it’s just counter-productive. I get up too early, can’t always take a nap in midday, and by 10:00, I lose confidence in my motor abilities – you don’t want to be on the road with a woman who can’t tell a big raccoon from a person in the dark. Last night I slowed down because I thought I saw a pack of mice scurry out in front of my car – I screamed out loud – it was leaves blowing across the street. 

Better safe than sorry.

I also have a low tolerance for bullshit – I can’t eat it, I don’t care how much sugar you put on it. And Scott Gruendl is a regular lawn feeder. When he started rambling about his experience with the mentally ill, I made my way toward the lobby. At 10:00, with a full agenda, they had still not made it past Item 4.1.

And let’s talk about Item 4.1. I don’t remember when I’ve seen three items crammed into one before. Item 4.1 was supposed to be three reports from the city attorney, on three different ordinances, all slightly related by way of ALCOHOL. But all three deserving of separate conversations. Instead we got fixated on the sit/lie aspect of the item, and the other two subjects – a “social hosting” ordinance and a fee for “alcohol related businesses” got swept off to the side. Only a couple of speakers mentioned those subjects on a side note.

“Social host” ordinances involve holding the “host” of a party responsible for underage or other problem alcohol consumption. In Chico, when we discussed the Disorderly Events ordinance, Chico PD made it clear they want the city to go after not just the “host” of the party, but the landlord or property owner. That provision failed, I believe, because the city attorney and local property owners groups convinced them it was slippery legal ground. The Disorderly Events ordinance was passed without the landlord responsibility clause, and the cops have been trying to get it back in the door eversince. This “Social Host” ordinance completely lends itself to holding landlords responsible for their tenants’ activities, even though tenants can sue their landlords for harassment if landlord oversteps his right to control the property. 

Chico police officer and president of the Chico Police Officers Association, Peter Durfee, expressed support for both the sit/lie and social host ordinances, as well as a general distaste for landlords. He feels landlords are responsible for their tenants’ behavior.  The Disorderly Events landlord provision fell apart  when they realized, they’d have to notice landlords, some of whom live out of town. How would they identify which houses were rentals, and which were owner-occupied? The impracticalities just started to pile up, and the subject was dropped. That’s how far I expect them to get with any kind of “social host”ordinance.  There are too many subjective decisions to be made – and no, I don’t trust Chico PD to make subjective decisions, I don’t think they are the sharpest pencils in the plastic pocket protector. The salaries Chico pays only attract greed, and greed isn’t a good indicator.

But only a couple of people even mentioned “social host”. Most of the comments were directed toward the sit/lie ordinance, with most of the speakers in favor. It’s hard – I so agree there’s a problem, but I don’t think a sit/lie ordinance will help.

In San Francisco, where they have the ordinance in place, the arrested are processed and back in their own pee puddle in less than four hours. How’d you like to be the shop owner who made the complaint? Last night I watched career homeless man Bill Mash go off on a rant that Colliers is harassing “the homeless.” Wow. If I were the owner of Colliers, I’d get an armed security guard. Bill Mash is unstable. He’s exactly the kind of creep that, as Wayne Cook put it, is “poisoning” the atmosphere Downtown.  He’s hostile, in your face, and bigger than me. One woman said if I didn’t like “looking at” those people, I didn’t have to go Downtown. Maybe she’d like to set up an escort service for small women and children who don’t feel safe around these freaks. It’s a lot more than “looking at” them. 

But a sit/lie ordinance is not going to do it, not when the DA won’t prosecute, whining that he has no space in his jail. They will just be processed at our expense and turned back out on the street. One guy in that article on San Francisco had amassed 10’s of thousands of dollars in fines for the same violation.

Randall Stone also made one of the best points of the meeting – most of the annoying things these people do are already against the law. You aren’t allowed to block a public sidewalk, urinate or defecate in public, have an unruly dog – most of the stuff they do is illegal. But the cops won’t do anything.  Trostle admitted – all a person has to do, is refuse to obey a cop, or even mouth off to a cop, and it’s “malicious,” and the cop can arrest them.

Let me tell you my own personal experience with Peter Durfee, mentioned above. One morning, I woke up to find my neighbor had again had a loud party, and there was one of her friend’s vehicles parked in my driveway, right next to a “NO PARKING” sign. So, at 8:30 on a week day morning, I walked over, knocked on her door, asked if she knew whose vehicle that was, and when she said yes, I asked her very politely to tell them they’d have to move it, it was on my property – thanks! You’ll have to take my word for it, I was perfectly nice and sweet. And then, as I walked away, she said, perfectly audibly, “Or what?”  I turned and told her, “or I’ll have to have it towed.” And I hot-footed it out of there. I don’t like trouble – are you kidding, at my size?

I left the property for about 15 minutes to ride my bike over and  take in one of my tenant’s trash cans – they were out of town for the weekend, and asked me to get their cans in – and when I got back about 15 minutes later, Peter Durfee and his partner were sitting in my driveway, blocking not only my gate but my other  tenant’s driveway. He stayed a half hour, telling me I wasn’t allowed to go to my neighbor’s house to tell her to move her car off my property. He never said exactly what I was accused of, just said, next time I have a “problem” with my neighbor, call him. I still have his card with that message on back. I told him I thought it was crazy that, at a time when the cops were whining short staff, he would come to my house and stay over a half hour, blocking my ingress and egress from my home, over 100 feet onto my private property, harassing me over my neighbor’s trespassing on my property. Officer Fat Ass has no respect for private property rights – I asked him to leave several times and he refused, still blocking my tenant’s driveway as well as mine.  He seemed to be determined to get me to obey him, like some fat little god.  He finally told me that if I ever went to my neighbor’s door again, for ANYTHING, he’d arrest me. In exactly those words, he threatened to arrest me. I went in the house, and he and his partner sat in my driveway for another five minutes, then turned around and left. 

So, there you have the “quality” employees we attract with these salaries, and this fat little creep with the extra chin is the PRESIDENT OF THE CPOA!  Sums it up, as far as I’m concerned.

But even Officer Fat Ass did not discuss the ACE ordinance, the third subject of attorney Barker’s report. The ACE – or “Alcohol Compliance and Education” ordinance should be a dead fish, but the cops keep bringing it back – it’s a fee, that would go straight to the cops, to be used at their discretion. Chief Trostle says he’ll hire a cop to dedicate to alcohol related issues – how vague and – excuse me – unenforceable is that? Is this “dedicated” officer just going to be laying around in some kind of wrapper, to be brought out just for alcohol-related problems? No, they just want another $100,000 + a year to hire a new cop, I got Trostle to admit that at that Chamber function I attended.

Well, Barker shot ACE down last night – she said in 2010 the state legislature passed Prop 26, prohibiting a government from just tacking fees onto stuff without a specific purpose. Prop 26 “defines ‘tax’ as every charge that is imposed by a municipality...”  Furthermore, “alcohol fees were used as an example of what should not be imposed…” 

Any fee must have a specific service that is provided, for example, Barker cited license fees, inspection fees, or a fee for an employee education program that is directly provided by the city.  They can’t just charge a fee and use it as they please. 

Mark Sorensen, feeling his balls last night, asked, “how does this differ from the ABC (Alcohol Compliance Board)?”, and Barker answered that Prop 26 essentially says that the only things a municipality CAN do are things already done by the ABC.

So, we don’t need an ACE ordinance. The cops are just phishing for money, again. We have about a $43 million budget. The cops get $22 million of that. They pay NONE of their pension premium or health insurance.  They repeatedly tell us, they need more money and “new tools” to do their jobs. Talk about “aggressive panhandlers”! 

We need a new council, and a new police chief. Our mayor is incompetent, which is what I tried to tell everybody about our City Manager Dave  Burkland and our Finance Director Jennifer Hennessy, and nobody would listen. Now we have to hear it from an outside. I missed that report, held somewhere around what? 11:30 at night? As if anybody was still awake. And don’t forget, council also approved contracts that continue to pay the “employee share.”

These meetings are agendized without any sense. The ACE ordinance is dead, why was it agendized? Why were three items jammed into one public comment session? Mary even said, “we didn’t think this through” as she realized there were 29 speakers and it was already after 8pm. She wondered aloud how they would sort the comments on these three different issues. She tries to act like a mayor, but she doesn’t have the slightest idea what she’s doing.

Our council is a pack of naked emperors, all buck naked. They expect us to sit and look at their junk and not say anything about their shortcomings? What a pack of useless ninnies. 

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John Salyer: Keep an eye on the government

21 May

Thanks John Salyer for this appropriately timed letter. Tonight our new finance director will announce to a stunned crowd that we are (gasp!) OVER BUDGET AND DOOMED TO DEBT! What a surprise, I for one am just shocked! 

John Salyer is one of those who has been watching and yelling at the top of his lungs, “Get everybody off the track, the train’s coming!” To a deaf crowd that apparently wants to be run over by a train, picnic baskets and all. 

Thanks John, and keep ’em coming! 

 

Letter: Keep an eye on the government

Chico Enterprise-Record
Posted:   05/20/2013 12:00:00 AM PDT

 

One of the fundamental principles underlying much of what today’s small-government advocates have to say is the idea, attributed to John Stuart Mill, that people have no right to take over other people’s decisions about their own lives. Yet today, as government expands its reach and more and more citizens give up their freedoms, government bureaucrats begin to think of themselves as shepherds and the citizens as their sheep.As one economist notes, “Tragically, too many of us are apparently willing to be sheep, in exchange for being taken care of, being relieved of the burdens of adult responsibility and being supplied with ‘free’ stuff paid for by others.” In ways large and small, if government does more, many people end up doing less.

Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?

One of the key differences between mistakes that we make in our own lives and mistakes made by governments is that bad consequences force us to correct our own mistakes. But government officials usually cannot admit to making a mistake without jeopardizing their whole careers.

Let’s take the example of Chico being $50 million, more or less, in debt. How many of you even knew that? I certainly didn’t until I made the mistake of actually starting to pay attention to what is going on with Chico’s bureaucrats.

Search “Townhall Shepherds and Sheep” on the Internet for more on this interesting but unfortunately true subject.

John Salyer, Chico

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Wake UP Chico! Time to get to work!

20 May

I’m glad to say there’s a stink going up over the contracts being signed tomorrow night in council. I’ve received e-mails and forwards about it, all from people who’ve been watching for a long time, trying to get more people to pay attention.

Stephanie Taber is like Paul Revere. She goes to these meetings – she came to the CARD board meeting last week at my request – and reads documents with print that looks like black lines. And then she gets on her computer horse and tries to spread the alarm. 

Sometimes I can’t believe she is still standing, how does she do it.  Then I look at the eyes – little twinkly blue Santa Claus eyes I call them – always busy, like the circuit lights on my computer tower.  Stephanie’s brain is like a computer, full of data, always searching for connections, analyzing, spitting out conclusions. Working with Stephanie is like plugging my brain into the master brain. When things don’t add up, I talk to Stephanie, and we get some answers. 

The hard part is getting others to listen, to care beyond just bitching, to DO SOMETHING. I will admit, I have a hard time getting to those Tuesday night council meetings. And sometimes, I’ll admit, I worry that we don’t make any impact at those meetings, that they’ve already got their minds made up, we’re just giving them the legal closure they need by showing up at the dam-ned things. 

But, I’ll also say, I’ve seen things change, I’ve seen things get stopped, I’ve seen things get dragged down like an old water buffalo by a pack of hyenas.  It takes a mob, but it can be done. They can be worn down. 

I hate to even bring it up – it seems so silly now – but they tried to stop the frisbee golf course, and there it is. We see more cars there every time we go up. The  rangers are still up there, even on Sunday, trying to bust people for playing during wet weather, but there it is – like a big sign, saying “Screw the Friends of Bidwell Park and their Political Cronyism.” 

Tuesday night, that’s tomorrow, sorry for the late notice, but tomorrow our new finance director, Chris Constantin, will read his high school style report about how screwed our pooch is, and somebody should show up to give a damn.  Of course, they have pushed this report to the END of the meeting, after the plastic bag ban, the sit/lie ordinance, not to mention, the management contracts.  

Stephanie Taber has been concerned that the placement of this item at the very end of the meeting is a sure way to keep the public out of the discussion.  She’s asked that people yak it up, try to get more of the public involved.  I’ve written letters to the editor, I’ve posted blogs about it, I don’t know what else to do about it.   It’s time for more people to step up, express some genuine outrage yes – but more importantly, mention that three of these people are up for re-election in a year and a half, and they need to do something tomorrow night, or they shouldn’t even run in 2014.

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Randall Stone invited to June 2 CTA meeting to discuss city’s fiscal issues

19 May

Chico Taxpayers Association is planning our next meeting for June 2, and we have asked city councilor Randall Stone to come on down and try to answer some of our questions regarding the city’s current financial fiasco. 

No, Mr. Stone and I are not exactly chum buddies, this is strictly business. I know, we’ve gone pretty WWE in past, but we both promise to stick to the issues for this little Q&A. 

I hope people will have some good questions ready, I don’t want to waste this man’s time. If he enjoys himself, maybe we can get him to come back again, and maybe we can get others to come in to speak on these issues. We need to get a conversation going, we need some give and take between the elected and the electorate. City council meetings are a joke. We get three minutes, if the mayor’s of a mind to give it to us, and then councilors get to babble on forever, making personal attacks on speakers and spreading their bullshit unfettered. This meeting is going to be a conversation.   I’m hoping that Mr. Stone will take away at least as much as he brings to the table. 

This Tuesday night, council will be approving the management contracts. Management will be getting an extension of the same sweet deal that’s brought the city to bankruptcy. No, they haven’t used the “b” word yet, because three of them are up for re-election in less than two years. But, it’s hovering, like food poisoning at a potluck party.

No matter how bad they say it is Downtown, management won’t pay their own share. They will continue to pay less than half their “employee share,” 4 of their 9 percent. While we continue to pay the other 5 percent, in addition to our 15  percent. Next year our share goes up to about 22 percent – CalPERS is screaming like a junkie – we tried to make them go into rehab, but they said no-no-no!

Why should they? Their daddies on council think they’re just fine! 

Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense to you – it probably wouldn’t make sense to you to go out into your yard and eat a pile of dog crap either.  

One question I’d like to ask Councilor Stone is why council goes on paying the “EPMC” – employer paid member contribution – the “employee’s share.” I have not been able to get a straight answer on that one from anybody. At the first CARD meeting I attended, I asked CARD board president Ed Seagle why CARD employees pay NOTHING toward their pensions – CARD (we) PAYS ALL OF IT! I asked Seagle WHY, and he gave me that line about “attracting quality employees.”  That’s it, that’s all they’ve got.

Of course, Seagle, like so many of our local elected officials, is a trough dweller himself, having held positions in the state trough, all the way to Fresno, for his entire career. Right now he’s holding down a spot at Chico State – aren’t you glad your kids are being educated by these people? What Seagle could best teach our kids, is how to get their hooks into that trough and surf it for life. Of course a guy like him is not going to shake the boat by demanding that his $112,000 a year manager pay his own pension share, that would be mutiny!

Same for our beloved council. Most of them are in the trough, including Mark Sorensen, the boy who’d like to be perceived as holding his finger in the dike.  I never saw anything like Sorensen’s sudden transformation from a private sector business owner to a public employee. He took the city manager position in Biggs, in addition not only to his duties on council but in addition to running his business where he earns “somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 a year,” according to his Form 700. Wow, talk about a full plate, excuse me Mr. Piggie! Both those public positions come along with health care packages, and the Biggs position comes with a pension, paid mostly, I’m guessing, by the fine orchard dwellers in Biggs.

Sorensen has got some explaining to do after Tuesday night, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve invited him over to join our meeting, but you know, some people are thin-skinned to criticism. If you want anything out of Sorensen, you have to coddle him, and I don’t do coddling, or windows. 

If we don’t want our town to go on the trash heap with Stockton and Vallejo, we need to do a little finger pointing. We NEED to assign blame, I’m sick of letting people off to do it again. There’s an election in 2014, and we have a chance to change the course our city has been on for too long. Sorensen would like everybody to believe he’s on board, in fact, I believe he expects to be appointed Captain of the USS Shipwreck in a couple of years. But I’ll tell you what Mark – you’ve been signing the contracts all along. How do you explain that? 

The other question I’d like to ask Randall Stone is, will he support the sales tax increase measure being planned right now by Sorensen’s mentor, Tom Lando?  I’m afraid to ask Sorensen.

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