CARD board of directors and staff plan “community” letter writing campaign to respond to my comments about their budget, bond campaign

20 Apr

My husband and I have been concerned over all these tax and rate increase proposals lately, so we’ve been attending meetings. Thursday night we attended the regular monthly meeting of the Chico Area Recreation District board of directors to see what we could find out about their plans to put a bond or assessment on our property taxes. They sent a survey out a few weeks ago, testing the waters. Here’s a scanned image of the one my family received:

img003

I also posted a spreadsheet from their budget report:

http://worldofjuanita.com/2013/03/31/card-2012-13-budget/

I wrote letters to both papers trying to get people to look at the budget because I didn’t feel CARD was being honest about why they are asking for this money. A look at their budget shows, instead of the aquatic center and other fantabulous projects they’re dangling like candied carrots, they really want the money to cover a sudden “side fund pay-out” demanded by CalPERS for their own pensions. You can see they drained the capital projects fund of over $350,000, and went over budget making that $400,000  “side fund pay-out.”

Regular board meetings are held over at the CARD center on Vallombrosa Ave, on a Thursday mid-month, in a little office room off the lobby. They start at 7 pm, pretty good time, gives a person a chance to get home and get some kind of dinner and clear the dishes aside. The agendas are available on the website under “CARD resources”.

I assume these meetings are usually attended by the board members – Ed Seagle, Jan Sneed, Herman Ellis, Michael Worley and Tom Lando – and various staffers, led by Steve Visconti, General Manager.  Lando was absent from this meeting,  but the other board members were present, along with Visconti and about half dozen staffers. Another half dozen folks sat in the audience, including Laura Urseny from the Chico Enterprise Record, and a head umpire from the baseball program, there to give a report.

These meetings are a refreshing change from city council meetings – well run, no dumb ceremonies or proclamations, just straight business. We wanted to be there for the Finance Committee report and the  “New Business” portion of the meeting, hoping to skip the mundane stuff in the beginning. We came in just in time to hear that Ann Willman, senior recreation supervisor for CARD, is leaving for a new job at Feather River Parks and Rec – gooshy best wishes all around – she’s taking the job Lando has been filling, how cozy.  Then we heard the umpire’s report – eight year old girl ejected for cussing out an ump – I was waiting for Amy Poehler to step through the door at this point. The brief and comical veteran’s and dog park memorial conversations were something that could have taken place on NBC”s “Parks and Rec.” But I will say, it has to be handled one way or another, and this group moves right along.

But you have to pay attention at these meetings. I come to find out about one thing, and I always hear some other interesting stuff. Oftentimes, it helps me to make sense of something else. When a Park Division manager got up to make a request for more workers, I found out, many of the people who do the work to maintain our parks are only part-time workers. These workers are limited in the number of hours they can work by CalPERS, because if they work too many hours, they qualify as full-time and therefore must get benefits. The Parks Division is the actual maintenance branch of CARD. They mow the lawns, stripe the ball fields, take away the trash, and fix damage like graffiti. This fellow was saying, the parks are extra busy over those fair weather months of March through October, and that they take a pretty sound beating, with folks leaving picnic tables and garbage cans piled with trash, and vandals regularly targeting spots like the skateboard park. He wants to hire some additional seasonal employees, part timers, whose positions would be “largely customer service and education.”  He added that maintenance like removing trash and cleaning tables was “difficult” to perform while people were in the park, he just wanted employees to direct the public to do the right thing, keep an eye on things. 

He called this “coverage.” What I was hearing from this man was, we need some kind of park supervisors, you know, like RANGERS, duh.  I’ve long felt the neighborhood parks, particularly playgrounds like Caper Acres and the skate board park, should have one or more trained supervisors, like the high school and college age kids who watch over the swimming pools. Even if just to say, “You’re not allowed to do that…” and call 911 when they do it anyway. Would they think of leaving the swimming pool gate open, free access to anybody, no life guards, use at your own risk? Why in the hell would they think that’s okay with a skate board park or a play ground?  Besides, it would provide good jobs for young people coming out of the Butte College and Chico State Recreation management department. Like life guards at Sycamore, Pleasant Valley, and Shapiro pools, these employees would be part-timers with small salaries and little or no health benefits, but they’d be getting good job experience and a solid reference for their resumes. 

Extra workers in Summer, when kids are out of school and a lot of parents are working in other towns,  and on Summer weekends, when more people are bbq’ing and picnic’ing, seems like a no-brainer to me. But the board seemed unconvinced, Ed Seagle asked for more information, and tabled it for the future. Seagle remarked, “With the funds we have, we need to be as judicial as we can.” I think he meant “judicious“, but I’m no editor. 

That was a good segway to the Finance report, which was over in 60 seconds or less – Jan Sneed announced she’d looked over the books and everything looked okay to her and the board accepted that report. I will have to attend the monthly Finance Committee meeting if I’m going to find out anything there. It seemed to me they’d be talking about their budget alot, but I’m new to these meetings. 

Board member Herman Ellis, appointed last year to fill a vacancy, reported on his park tour with staff, and of course had glowing reviews. “Everyone should do it,” he said, but didn’t elaborate much. He’s a pleasant man but not one to ramble on. 

It was just after 8pm. I didn’t have the agenda in front of me, but I thought we were getting pretty near the end of the meeting, so started to put away my notebook and slip into my sweater. That’s when General Manager Steve Visconti brought up the survey – I immediately grabbed my notebook out of my bag, having almost forgotten this was why I had come to the meeting anyway. He said the survey should be ready for the next meeting! Well Great! Good timing! Then Ed Seagle began a discussion about the bond/assessment campaign, saying, “Do we really want to push the aquatic center? It sounds like too much…”  Seeming to feel that an aquatic center is an unrealistic option, Seagle wondered if they should be shooting for more practical projects like fixing a gym floor somewhere.

The other board members muttered it over, and then Visconti announced, “We need to discuss whether we’re going to have some effort to get some community members to respond to Juanita Sumner’s letter to the paper…” 

Of course this caught my ear, I was already scribbling in my notebook as fast as I could. I was floored by Seagle saying, after they’d already planted this aquatic center bullshit in people’s heads, he didn’t think it was really going to happen. Well duh. But to hear Visconti organizing an effort to what? undermine my credibility? dispute the facts in my letter with nonsense?  is just unbelievable to me. We pay these people to sit around plotting against us. 

Not once did they say there was anything untrue in my letters, they just seemed to be as mad as a hive of bees that I had outed their budget to the public. They made that $400,000 side fund pay-off, sure, but wanted everybody to know, “we saved 7% percent by making that payment!” Yeah, 7% off the employees’ pension premiums, for pensions they will collect regardless of what the economy holds for the rest of  us.  Pensions we guarantee with bonds or assessments against our property taxes, no matter what happens.

This after hearing Seagle declare they can’t hire more part time workers to care for our neighborhood parks because “With the funds we have, we need to be as judicial as we can…” Yeah, right Ed.  

They are mad about my letters to both the ER and the N&R, but they can’t respond as a public entity or as individuals because they’re too chickenshit to take a stand that might jeopardize any of their positions. So, they’re cooking up a plot to have their friends, relatives, people in the programs, etc, write letters. We’ve seen this kind of campaign before, it will be interesting to see what they come up with. They already have a management staffer who devotes her time to stuff like setting up Facebook accounts – her report was a hoot – “we went up from 1,000 to 1,300 fans!” 

Laura Urseny sat right through the whole meeting, including the part about the survey,  and all she reported in today’s paper was the conversation about the dog park memorial. 

UPDATE:  Somebody has been searching terms “income for Juanita Sumner Chico Ca” and “Juanita Sumner credit”. Who could be interested in that? How low do you think these people will stoop? How personal do you think they’ll take it? How long do they think they can outlast an old turtle in a mud wrestle? Time will tell. 

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Capital Appreciation Bonds – how could ANYBODY not see this is a SCAM? How much money does Greg Isom make off the sale of these bonds?

17 Apr

The school district is contemplating selling “Capital Appreciation Bonds.” These bonds are a disaster – they just did a story on the news the other night, explaining how one local school district borrowed $6 million but will pay back about $80 million.  The district superintendent in that case defended himself saying they’d never be able to get the money to do anything if they didn’t borrow it at these outrageous rates and then just leave it for the grandchildren of their students to pay later, with interest on the interest.

That guy should be driven out of town in tar and feathers, and so should Kelly Staley, who is proposing the same deal for Chico Unified. In this case, they claim the  “emergency” project is the replacement of a gym floor, but we all know, they’re under pressure from California State Teachers Retirement System to make whopping pension payments for their crazy pensions.   

And don’t forget, Staley just led the campaign to extend the taking from ill-fated scam Measure A. She said she wanted $78 million out of that. Geez, where will it end? 

They give us all this crap about “projects” – excuse me, Kelly Staley (and I got this from her long-lost foster brother Norm) is a (bleeping) LIAR! They want this money to make their CalSTRS payments.

I got one of those 99 cent subscriptions to the ER so I could copy the salary charts. I’ve been looking over the CUSD  payroll.  Do you realize, there’s something like 2400 employees in the Chico Unified School District? And they’re management heavy – three “assistant” principals at each high school? Starting at about $70,000/year and ending up at about $100,000/year. And then the principals make around $110,000 or more. I saw a couple of principals at $120,000/year. One charter school has not only a principal at $120,000, but a “CEO” making same. 

Teachers get plenty – those salaries run from around $60,000 to over $100,000 too. We’ve got elementary school teachers making in excess of $80,000, and then paying LITTLE OR NOTHING toward their own benefits, as seems standard in the public sector. They get 70 percent of those salaries in retirement, plus an additional salary if they substitute teach, like our mayor, Mary Goloff.  And we still pay for their health insurance. (And don’t forget, we pay for a $21,000 a year policy for Mary as mayor too!)

And then there’s the weird little bits of money they give people without any explanation – $6,000 to a woman I knew several years back, and I’m wondering – for WHAT?  How do I get in on that? 

This district is AWASH IN MONEY. They spend so much money they could qualify as a small country. With no accounting, none. They tear up some stuff at one or another school, they “fix it” – where’s the bills? When do we get to see some accounting for this money?  How much goes out the door on salaries and benefits and pensions? 

And now these Capital Appreciation Bonds. Here’s how they work, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/capital-appreciation-bond-work-39357.html

Capital appreciation bonds offer an opportunity for a non-profit or small business to gain working capital to assist in starting or expanding the business. To the small business owner, the bonds work effectively like a loan that must be repaid with accrued interest. Unlike a traditional loan, the principle and interest are paid in one lump sum on the bond’s maturity date instead of making a series of regular payments. This lack of periodic coupon payments classifies a capital appreciation bond as a zero-coupon bond.

But then, oh no! You have to pay it back! Annual compound interest is accrued on a capital appreciation bond up until the maturity date. The principle plus this accrued interest exactly equals the par value of the bond. Therefore, the annual interest rate paid fluctuates with the investor’s original purchase price. Small businesses can calculate the interest rate they are paying by reversing the compound interest formula. Dividing the par value by the purchase price gives you the overall multiplier. Taking the nth root of this overall multiplier — where n is the number of years until maturity — gives you the annual multiplier. Subtracting 1 from this annual multiplier gives you the interest rate in decimal format. As an example, for a $5,000, 10-year bond purchased at $3,000, divide 5,000 by 3,000 to get 1.667. Take the 10th root of 1.667 to get 1.0524. Subtract 1 to get the annual interest rate of 0.0524, or 5.24 percent.

Greg Isom, as you saw in an earlier post, is the guy who sells the school district these bonds. How much commission does he make, I have to wonder. 

I tried to e-mail this question to Staley and the school board but the e-mail links on the district website do not work. I’ve never been able to find direct contact information for these people. They don’t want to hear from the public. When I  tried to call, I got a machine with a message from the superintendent’s secretary. I guess you have to go to one of their insane meetings. They do everything they can to keep the public out. 

I can’t make the meeting tonight, so I will have to send my questions via snail mail – that’s  1163 E. 7th Street, Chico, CA 95928. I’ll keep you posted. 

 

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Happy Tax Day – give a taxpayer a hug today! They really need it!

15 Apr

Thanks to Sue Hubbard for getting a letter to the Enterprise Record about Taxpayer Appreciation Month, just in time for TAX DAY!

Her request to council was met with a ridiculous rant by Scott Gruendl, I’ve posted the text here:

https://chicotaxpayers.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/scott-gruendl-calls-defeat-of-measure-j-a-threat-to-the-constitution-where-did-we-get-this-guy/

But beyond taking a few really weird pot shots at the CTA, council did not even discuss the request. How predictable.  They’re too good to stand up there and thank the taxpayers for their own salaries and benefits, how very, very predictable.

But Sue’s letter was comforting:

Letter: Council needs to appreciate taxpayers

Chico Enterprise-Record
Posted:   04/14/2013 12:05:21 AM PDT

We at the Chico Taxpayers Association would like to proclaim April as Taxpayer Appreciation Month. Even though our City Council is proclamation and resolution happy, the mayor chose not to honor our request. So we will simply proclaim it ourselves. We think it is appropriate.

Whereas, the approximately 47 percent of Americans who pay no income tax are supported by the 53 percent of those who do

Whereas, 5 percent of Americans are paying 60 percent of all income tax

Whereas, America’s top tax rate is the second highest in the world

Whereas, taxpayers’ money is used to fund government services

Whereas, taxpayers’ money is used to pay salary and benefits to government workers

Whereas, taxpayers are the ones who are paying for all the entitlements so generously given out in this country

Whereas, taxpayers pay America’s bills

Now therefore let it be proclaimed, that the Chico Taxpayers Association hereby recognizes April as Taxpayer Appreciation Month.

— Sue Hubbard, Chico

So Happy Tax Day! I mean that.  Taxes provide for the public convenience, necessity, and security. The fact  that taxes are often unfairly distributed and unreasonably high, and that  public officials and publicly-paid employees are often corrupt, lazy or stupid doesn’t mean taxes cannot be a good way to fund the everyday needs of society. 

It’s up to the taxpayer to keep an eye on their employees, and we haven’t. The average taxpayer is asleep at the wheel, saying to him/herself and anybody who listens, “that’s what I elect people for.”

And Mary Goloff – a woman our town has elected –  has told me, if I want to have a say in the public’s business, I have to run for public office. She is the typical politician who is so high on her own fumes she thinks she knows better than the public what’s good for them.  She doesn’t think she has to listen to anybody – she thinks it’s her job to run things as she sees fit. She thinks election has proven her some kind of mental giant among the rest of us pusillanimous midgets.  And, that is makes her so popular she doesn’t need anybody’s approval on anything.

There are two kinds of politicians – the Evita type, who gets so drunk on power she eventually collapses, and then there’s the “roll up our sleeves and work together” people, like Dan Logue. No, I don’t agree with Logue on everything, but he’s quick to get a public forum going when there’s a problem. And not a charette, where everybody breaks into groups with a handler, and gets spoon fed information to give a controlled statement supporting the proposal. Logue’s forums are a chance for the people to get in there and let the public workers know what we think. 

Where was our “single use” plastic bag forum? Well, I guess you could call those 8am meetings forums, the public is allowed. 

The biggest problem with paying taxes is that most taxpayers don’t pay enough attention to what happens to their taxes after April 15. We can’t blame the council for everything  – people have got to get more involved. 

And so, on this April 15, I would like to ask those of you who think our town is headed down the wrong path, who think they have some creative ideas for getting our city back into solvency – SAY SOMETHING! Come out to the meetings, and not just the dinnertime meetings, but those 8am meetings Downtown. Look at the “agendas and minutes” page on the city website. Familiarize yourselves with the issues Downtown, write letters, write letters, write letters. 

But for now, give yourself a hug, and hug somebody else who pays taxes. I just mailed off my property taxes earlier this month, and I sure needed a hug! 

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Here’s the guy who wants to sell those crazy bonds for the school district – borrow $6 million, pay $80 million!

14 Apr

GREG ISOM

GREG ISOM
Managing Principal – School Financing
Greg Isom has worked exclusively with California school and community college districts since 2004.  During his eight years, Greg has worked to successfully implement over 100 bond programs totaling over $4 billion in authorization, more than any Financial Advisor in the State.
EDUCATION:
B.A., History from Utah Valley University.
He works here:

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What is a “PAC”?

13 Apr

People have actually asked me, if I’m so crazy about local politics, why don’t I run for office? One read through the Fair Political Practices manual ought to give you your answer – there’s a million damn rules, and nailing candidates for rules is the how the FPPC pays their pensions and benefits. Failure to name a donor who was connected to a discussion Larry Wahl had as a city planning commissioner cost him about $12,000. They’re just waiting for you to put your foot in their trap, then they gotcha!

There’s all kinds of “political action committees”, and the rules and definitions  are confusing. First you better read everything about 20 times, and then you might want to talk it over with a lawyer. For example:

“A general purpose committee is a type of recipient committee – an individual or group that receives contributions totaling $1,000 or more during the calendar year for the purpose of supporting or opposing one or more state or local candidate or ballot measure(s).”   Including “two or more individuals or entities that make separate expenditures for a single product or service (for example a newspaper advertisement)”  

Right away, I notice, you have to decide, what are you forming your committee for? Will you oppose or support a candidate or an issue? There’s all kinds of different rules. You have to decide how much money you think you’ll spend –  the good news is, until you spend $1,000 on one campaign issue, you’re under the wire. The Chico Taxpayers Association is NOT a PAC or any kind of committee. We only spent about $330 on Measure J, so we were not required to file anything anywhere.  

But geez we were lucky – the idiots who wrote and supported Measure J, led by Ann Schwab, Scott Gruendl and Mary Goloff, were too cocky to think anybody would oppose them, so they never mounted ANY campaign.  We won’t get that lucky again. If we mount a Recall against any member or members of the school board, for example, they’re going to fight us. CARD is going to have a war chest too, but I’m not sure what money they will be allowed to use. And, if Lando comes forward with that sales tax increase proposal, he’ll have money and plans. I want to fight, and that’s going to take money. I’m going to spend the next few weeks studying up the situation, I’ll keep you all posted.

Here are some articles from the FPPC site:   http://www.fppc.ca.gov/serp.html?q=+rules+for+political+action+committees&cx=001779225245372747843%3A_7mfpc-fxyk&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&submit.x=12&submit.y=8

Sure, it gets tricky: “If more than 70% of a committee’s contributions and expenditures on candidates or measures are on a single candidate, single measure, a group of specific candidattes in the same local election or two or more measure being voted upon in the same state or local election, the committee is designated as a primarily formed committee rather than a general purpose committee.” Furthermore, “For purposes of determining whether the committee is general purpose or a primarily formed committee, the treasurer must count contributions and expenditures made to support or oppose candidates or measures during: The current two year period, beginning January 1 of the current or previous oddnumbered year and ending with December 31 of the following even-number year; or The immediate preceding 24 months. The committee must use the time period that most accurately reflects its current and upcoming activities.” 

Well, like my dad used to say, sounds like sticking your dick in a noose, but if that’s what we have to do to get our town back, I’m willing to take a shot at it.

 

 

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Should we form a PAC to recall the school board? Can we recall the Stuporintendent?

12 Apr

I’d like to thank all you people who voted to extend Measure A, the school bond that was originally shoveled down the voter’s throats with promises of a third high school. I’m so glad you all voted “YES!, Screw Me Blind! And my neighbors too!” on Measure E.

You bastards – of course I’m being sarcastic!

You’re probably the same dummasses that voted YES! on Proposition 30 – did you knuckle under to threats that  Dummass Junior would not get into Chico State because of “cut-backs,” or did you really believe they needed the money?

Again, you bastard! I would like to send my right Etnie straight into your glut-max!

Please forgive me for this rampage, I just paid my property taxes over the last couple of weeks, and I could eat the heads off a sack full of liberal tax-and-spend kittens.

Let me ramp it down a little, I have a good cup of coffee next to me here, I’ll try to think positive. It may be one of the last cups of coffee I’ll be able to afford.

When Kelly Staley and the Chico Unified School Board proposed this tax, they made all the usual bullshit promises about “citizen oversight,” saying there would be a citizen’s  and a list of projects that would be vetted before the public before any expenditures were made of this money. Now, what, five months later? The board has already approved a project to be paid for out of this money, without so much a list scrawled on a cocktail napkin discussed before the public.

They want to issue more bonds to get the money for a new gym floor – something called “capital appreciation bonds.” According to the Enterprise Record, school district “bonds advisor” Greg Isom is advising Kelly Staley to consider these bonds, and she’s listening to him. The ER explains, “With capital appreciation bonds, payments are delayed but the interest piles up. A $4.6 million bond for Yuba College will cost $58 million to repay. In Poway, north of San Diego, $105 million in bonds will cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion.”

That sounds insane, you might be surprised if you haven’t been paying attention to the school district over the years. They sold the voters on Measure A, promising to build a third high school to relieve the overcrowding evident to anyone caught within proximity of either of our high schools during class break, lunch, or before/after school rush. Kids come to those two campuses from miles around. Both have a junior high within a mile. It seems like a no-brainer to place another high school near the third junior high, in an area of town that’s been developing like crazy over the last ten years, even approved for a “city within a city” (Meriam Park). But the school district reneged on that high school, deciding pretty willy-nilly to spend the bond proceeds on whatever projects they felt like. Really dumb superficial stuff – facades! –  alot of of work that could have been done by the students themselves, even the construction students from Chico State. Instead the district has been spending the bond money on these projects, without any accounting to the public. We have no reports, no financial records – we don’t have the slightest idea how much money they’ve taken in off Measure A over the years or exactly where they’ve spent it. 

So now they’ve extended it, with the help of a pack of idiot lemming voters. Meanwhile, the third high school decision continues to haunt us. Now we find, the district is paying hundreds of thousands on mitigation for the land they bought but didn’t build the third high school on. They even mention they may still build a high school, “If the day comes that a high school needs to be built on the site…”  (“If?”)   But here they go right ahead and spend the money we were told would go to building that school on other stuff? 

And then what? “If the day comes…” they float another bond and tell us we have to pay more, that’s what. 

Here’s what I propose. I propose I start a “Friends of the Chico Taxpayers” Political Action Committee. All that requires is filling out forms Downtown, or at the county, whichever. We can collect money to run a recall on the Chico Unified School Board, and we can see what we can do about getting rid of Staley too. I’ll check into that, might pan out. 

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Chico school board asked to spend $436,000 on empty high school land

By ROGER H. AYLWORTH-Staff Writer
Posted:   04/09/2013 12:00:00 AM PDT
Click photo to enlarge

Wildflowers grow in a field at the corner of Raley Boulevard and Bruce Road that was to host the…

CHICO — Chico’s school board will be asked Wednesday to spend just under $436,000 to mitigate environmental concerns on a 50-acre lot that may not house students for decades to come.At issue is the parcel purchased by the Chico Unified School District in 2005 at the northwest corner of Raley Boulevard and Bruce Road in southeast Chico. The land was to host the future Canyon View High School, but with shrinking enrollment, the proposed project did not go forward.

Even so, CUSD Director of Facilities and Construction Mike Weissenborn will ask the board of trustees to pay for most of the environmental mitigation required under the various permits the district has on the property.

If approved, the money will go to so-called “mitigation banks” to cover the cost to create a vernal pool elsewhere and to maintain a population of the endangered fairy shrimp on the high school property at a different location.

Beyond the vernal pool mitigation, the district also must purchase credits to cover loss of intermittent streams on the property.

District building manager Julie Kistle said, “You can’t do anything without the mitigations.”

The district also needs to seek what would be the second extension of a permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers related to the use of the property. It expires April 17.

Kistle said while the permit and the mitigation are not directly tied, buying the mitigation credits would “really be a positive step,” to show the Corps the CUSD is

moving forward.Weissenborn said, “We have got quite an investment in that property and we don’t want to see it get re-regulated.”

He explained CUSD is working with “a set of knowns in a world that tends to create unknowns” — federal and state environmental regulation — and the CUSD would be better off complying with the existing rules than having to go through a new process and face new challenges.

Weissenborn said while the construction of a new high school on the property could be decades away, that doesn’t mean the land will continue to sit empty and unused.

He said it is incumbent on the district staff to investigate “appropriate interim uses” for the property.

On April 17, Weissenborn will bring a proposal to the trustees about the possibility of putting a solar power array on the Canyon View land. The electricity created could be used to reduce district power bills.

If the day comes that a high school needs to be built on the site, the solar arrays could be put on supports and provide both power and shaded vehicle parking such as now exists at Pleasant Valley High School and Chico High School.

He also said having the property in hand is good for the district’s future planning.

“They are not making more ground where we need it,” he explained.

Even if trustees approve the purchase of the mitigation credits, which will be funded through developer fees, no projects are going to happen immediately.

Kistle said the district is mandated to provide mitigations for the endangered meadowfoam plant, and as of right now there are no mitigation banks in place for meadowfoam.

PUBLIC MEETING:

CUSD board of trustees

6 p.m. Wednesday

large conference room at the CUSD offices, 1163 E. Seventh St.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

2 environmental fixes on 50-acre Chico school site OK’d

By ROGER H. AYLWORTH-Staff Writer
Posted:   04/11/2013 12:35:03 AM PDT

CHICO — In a split vote and after hearing a last-minute plea from another firm, the Chico Unified School District trustees voted to purchase environmental mitigation credits for a 50-acre parcel of land that was originally purchased to house a third high school.With board President Liz Griffin casting the lone nay, the CUSD trustees voted to purchase more than $175,000 worth of environmental mitigation credits for the district-owned property at the intersection of Bruce Road and Raley Boulevard.

Before the vote, Mike Weissenborn, CUSD director of facilities and construction, explained that in 1998, voters approved Measure A, a $48.7 million school bond, that was supposed to, among other things, build a third comprehensive high school.

He said that after extensive investigation, four sites, all along Bruce Road, were identified as the potential home of what was to be called Canyon View High School.

Weissenborn said all of the sites had environmental problems that would have to be dealt with before construction could begin. The Bruce and Raley site was chosen and in 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a conditional permit to the district that would allow construction when four problems were “mitigated.”

Under the conditions the district was required to obtain mitigations “credits” covering the creation of a 1.02-acre vernal pool, the preservation of an additional 2.24 acres of vernal pools that would include the preservation of fairy shrimp, and credits to cover the preservation of .33 acres of intermittent stream bank, and finally the preservation of one acre of land to protect less that 50 specimens of Butte County meadow foam, an endangered plant.

All of these mitigations take place on land preserves, not on the district parcel, and the district purchases the credits to have a private firm create the various conditions and maintain them forever.

As the student population failed to grow enough to justify the construction of Canyon View, the property has remained unused.

Weissenborn asked the board to contract with the Shauna Down Mitigation Bank, which has property in Butte County and corporate offices in Nevada, to do everything but the meadow foam mitigation.

He said the three projects would cost a total of nearly $436,000. The district had set aside about $500,000 to cover the mitigations when it first got the permit, according to the director.

The meadow foam question was not on the table because as of now, there are no firms that sell mitigation credits for the endangered plant.

Weissenborn said it was important to sign the contracts because the district is seeking a second extension of the Army Corps permit, which expires on April 17.

Things came together at this time, according to the director, because until recently there were no firms certified locally to do the mitigations.

That’s when Travis Hemmen, with Westervelt Ecological Services’ Sacramento Office, rose to claim his company could do the vernal pool creation work for $150,000 as opposed to the nearly $261,000 being asked for by Shauna Down.

Weissenborn said several firms, including Hemmen’s, were certified to do the work on April 1 of this year, and at the time his staff was reviewing possible contractors, these firms were not certified.

The trustees debated the question of reopening the projects to new bids, at the same time the district was trying to take actions to show the corps they were, in fact, moving ahead.

Weissenborn said he was concerned that if the permit extension was denied, the district could face new demands in the future.

Board President Griffin said she wanted to see the whole process opened to new bids. Trustee Andrea Thompson said she felt a fiscal responsibility to save the district money if possible, but at the same time, she said she was fearful of losing the permit.

Hemmen said his company was only really prepared to do the vernal pool creation work.

Weissenborn was asked if the district contracted for the other two mitigation projects, would the corps get the message the CUSD was serious. He said he thought that would work.

Then, on a motion by Thompson, board majority voted to award the two projects to Shauna Down for a total of slightly more than $175,000, and to leave the third part of the proposal for new bids. Only Griffin voted no.

No one from Shauna Down spoke Wednesday night.

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Letter: Here’s why CARD wants more money

7 Apr

Here’s a letter I sent to the Enterprise Record a full week ago. I don’t know why it took so long for Little to run my letter – I could speculate that he wants the CARD tax to pass. We’ll see when he endorses it in 2014.

My family received the Chico Area Recreation District’s survey regarding their proposed tax hike. We wanted more information, so asked for their 2012-13 budget figures.  

 
CARD says they need a new tax because of falling property tax revenues and a “disappearing RDA.” What they don’t mention is the recent $400,000 “side fund payoff” to the California Public Employees Retirement System. CalPERS has demanded public employers pay more toward their employees’ pension premiums, offering some savings on interest if they pay a certain amount immediately.
 
CARD, employing about 30 people full time, also paid $375,000  in regular pension premiums last year, and $300,000 in healthcare premiums. Salary and benefits totaling about $5 million dollars  eat over half their $7.2 million budget. 
 
They earn about $3.3 million of their annual revenues from their programs and rental of their facilities. The other $3.5 million  comes mostly  from taxpayers –  county taxes ($2,3456,782), homeowner assessments ($162,753), fees on new homes ($23,750), and $924,000 from the RDA credit card. 
 
CARD currently suffers a $420,000 deficit. Their capital projects reserve fund shows a sudden negative balance of $344,500. It appears to me they took money from their capital projects fund to pay their CalPERS “side fund payoff”, and now they want us to replace that money. It seems misleading to offer an aquatic center when what they are really asking for is money to pay for their pensions and benefits. 
 
I’ve posted the budget spreadsheet at chicotaxpayers.wordpress.com
 

Juanita Sumner, Chico CA

I know, I said I’d post the budget here – I can’t get it to come up right on this blog, so here’s the link to my other blog:

http://worldofjuanita.com/2013/03/31/card-2012-13-budget/

and here’s the link to the survey:

img003

This survey is completely loaded – essentially, they tell you, if you don’t pay this tax, your kids will end up on dope. Read it yourself.  They also promise “this measure would include strong fiscal safeguards and oversight, including that less than 5% of the proceeds would be used for administration.” 

CUSD stupe Kelly Staley said that about the school bond voters just extended. Chico Unified said they’d form some kind of citizens’ committee  to “vet” a list of projects, but the administration has already announced projects that have never been vetted in any way. And don’t forget, when the school district originally floated that bond about ten years ago, they said the money would be used exclusively to build a third high school. Then they changed their mind, and we’ve never been shown an actual accounting of how much they’ve raked in over the years or where any of that money has gone. 

In this case, you can see that CARD has taken money out of their capital projects fund and used it to pay their CalPERS obligation. When Steve Visconti sent me that budget,  I could tell from his attached letter he really didn’t expect me to read the budget, or thought I was too stupid to figure it out. I had asked him about revenues. 

“Our funding sources come to us a few different ways. One is a small portion of property taxes from each homeowner in our District. The other main revenue source is from programming fees. Those are also shown on page 6 of the attached budget.”

But the budget says otherwise. Like I said above – they get over half their revenues from property taxes and assessments – including $924,000 in RDA money. That RDA money is about to disappear, that’s just another reason they want this tax. Besides the $400,000 they stole to pay their own pensions.

You can print that survey from that link, fill it out, and send it to Visconti at the CARD center – 545 Vallombrosa Ave, Chico, 95926. You can e-mail him for more information at svisconti@chicorec.com

And here’s the funny thing – guess who’s on the CARD board – Tom Lando, the same guy who’s been proposing a city sales tax increase.

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Scott Gruendl calls defeat of Measure J a threat to the constitution – where did we get this guy?

6 Apr

I have to say, I did not support Toby Schindelbeck’s request for the city to make a resolution supporting the Second Amendment because I get sick and freaking tired of these resolutions and proclamations. But I have to hand it to Toby, he sure got a conversation out of it. The most interesting part for me was Scott Gruendl’s assertion that the defeat of the cell phone tax was “a threat to the constitution.” 

“but I believe there are threats to our constitution that go far beyond the second amendment.  I think they’re constant, I think they’re regular, and I think our affirmation of our oath of office is something we are confronted  with on a regular basis, and the Second Amendment is part of that, but it’s not the only part of it. One simple example  – we had a defeat of measure J that results in about  $25 in tax savings for the average public member, but for me, I have a tax rate that’s about 150 times that that’s imposed on me by the federal government because of a constitutional interpretation (his voice starts breaking here, as if he’s going to cry).  I don’t see the Chico Taxpayer’s Association standing up for my tax injustice and that’s just one example of what we’re confronted with on a regular basis…”

When I heard that on the video, I was shocked. I had to listen to it over and over to get it down, but that’s pretty much it. I punctuated the natural pauses in Scott’s voice, but I’m pretty sure I got it word for word. Let’s just take this thing apart, piece by piece, and try to make nonsense of it.

First of all, I just had a e-mail chat with Frank Fields over in the city finance office on this past Thursday. I asked him again, how many refund applications had been received as of that day, and what’s the average refund amount. Scott keeps using that $25 figure, the same figure he and Ann Schwab put in their “argument in favor” of Measure J. From Frank Fields:

“Ms. Sumner:

 

To date, the City has issued 157 refunds at an average of $50.81.  However, please note that six of those refunds were to business which obviously end up with larger refunds.  Excluding the six businesses, the average refund is $38.50.

 

Please let me know if you have further questions.

 

Frank”

That’s an interesting point Frank makes, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to worry about how these people  ran up their phone bills – they may have a business, or they may have family in Germany, I don’t care whether they use their phone for business or pleasure or to save a life.  It doesn’t matter how they run up the bill on which their tax is based, it only matters that 157 cell phone customers have applied for and received an average refund of $50.81, not the $25 Gruendl keeps claiming. In fact, we’re talking “average” here people – those businesses were taken for a lot more than $50 a year. When my family had AT&T, for three phones, our yearly UT was about $87.

And then Gruendl goes completely off the deep end with his walk through the dog park regarding threats to the constitution. The rest of his little peeve is just, well, crazy.  He says a group of citizens working to defeat a tax measure brought forth by government officials is “a threat to the constitution”? Whose constitution is he talking about?

“I have a tax rate 150 time that…”  Again, what is he talking about? 150 times…what? $25?

“that’s imposed on me by the federal government because of a constitutional interpretation…”  Is he talking about the gay marriage discussion? I thought the feds were going his way the last time I heard. Is he complaining that he is not allowed to write his partner off on his taxes? I have no idea of the law there, but I know “domestic partnership” has been accepted for some time – it’s in the cop contracts, and it’s on the paper work my kids bring home from Butte College. And, he complains that the CTA has never “stood up” for his “tax injustice” – well, Scott, we’ve never been asked. I’m not even sure what your “tax injustice”  is.

Here’s my “tax injustice” – I have to pay a salary and benefits for this ass Gruendl, I buy him a $21,000 a year health insurance policy, for which he pays $156 a year.  My cousins in Glenn County pay him about $103,000 a year and also give him a health benefits and pension package, for which he pays little or nothing. And now, he stands up before the citizens of this town and complains that he pays more taxes than the rest of us? This guy is a piece of work.

Maybe what he really means is, he gets more taxes than the rest of us – the 150 times figure might actually work there!

And then there’s the injustice of being limited to three minutes, even one minute!  to state my concerns and then have to listen to this crap-mouth rattle on at will, without any response from the public.  He’s allowed to say whatever he wants!  I’m not the only one who gets sick of these little diatribes. Here’s Bob Speer, from this past Thursdays News and Review –  – ” But it’s true, as critics often charge, that some council members, including Goloff, don’t always apply standards of brevity to themselves. They should take lessons from Councilmen Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan, who quickly say their pieces and shut up. It’s a sign of respect, and those of us in the audience appreciate it.“

I’ll say further, they don’t stay on topic, they use the podium to abuse members of the public who don’t agree with their agenda,  and they spread misinformation, all of which I’d say about Scott’s little rant.

And here’s the creepiest thing about that meeting Tuesday night: Gruendl and Goloff requested and got a list of the folks who spoke on the Second Amendment resolution request. Why would they need that?

UPDATE:

Today, at the First Sunday meeting, we were talking about the rules for council discussions. During this past Tuesday’s city council meeting, we found that the mayor is allowed to re-open the public hearing. When this was suggested by Sean Morgan during the eminent domain discussion, there was a moment of confusion. Mary Goloff said she was not able to reopen the public hearing, but Lori Barker interrupted that it certainly was allowed. That’s something to remember in future. 

Also, there was mention of a rule that limited the council members to three minutes – this I will have to check into, but it would certainly be worth it. 

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Just what really is the problem Downtown?

5 Apr

Yesterday was one of my top 10 worst days. I won’t go through the events – there was blood – but suffice to say, when the dirt settled, everything went my way.  In a roundabout fashion.

I was supposed to attend the “Luncheon with the Chief” with the Chamber of Commerce. I put my foot in Katie Simmon’s door and told her I didn’t think it was appropriate for city employees like Kirk Trostle and Brian Nakamura to talk to a “members only” audience. Nakamura has spoken at their last two meetings – I couldn’t make those, and yeah, I’m suspicious they were talking about their proposed sales tax increase, but oh well. Yesterday was plenty juicy.

Of course I showed up 45 minutes late. I had a horrible morning, I won’t go into that. I got the time all mixed up. When I realized I hadn’t completely missed the luncheon, I got in my car (!) and jammed Downtown to catch the Chief’s coattails. I wanted to hear what he had to say to this “members only” audience, and I had a few questions to ask him myself.

The Chamber is made up of businesses from all over town, but lately they are taken up, like everybody else, with the “homeless problem,” which is perceived to be mostly Downtown.   “Homeless” is the wrong word – it’s like saying “Tea Party Patriot” – it could mean anything. I’ve been “homeless,” by the standard definition – I had no address, I was a “couch surfer.” I had my stuff at my sister’s house, where she lived with Husband 2 and the assorted kids.  I slept at her house when things were quiet, I slept in a borrowed sleeping bag in the back room at my job, I slept at friends’ houses when they weren’t home, etc. That was a time in my life that I measured by semesters. I moved every six months, sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn’t. I’ll never forget the time a roommate and I both left our apartment in the middle of the night, sat all night at Dennys to avoid the domestic violence that went on in the apartment over our heads.  We sure as hell felt homeless for the month we lived in that dump, we never even unpacked our stuff.

But I’ve been Downtown, and I’ve lived in and around Downtown over the years – the problem there is mental illness, alcohol abuse, and a enabling city council and $taff.

The “homeless” question is complex. I attended a Police Advisory Board meeting a couple of weeks ago on the same subject. Lieutenant Linda Dye gave a short report about a week-long mental health class that trains “some” Chico PD officers in “how to handle”  people who may or may not be, uh, crazy.  She made note of the fact that some of these people are not crazy, but taking advantage of our kind hearts. Lieutenant Jennifer Gonzales pounded that point home at city council’s special meeting a couple of weeks ago. She feels Chico is on what she called “the homeless highway” and that most of them are perfectly healthy people who’ve learned to take advantage of the public in general.

So, with a “40 hour class,” these two women are now competent to  tell us who’s nuts and who’s just faking it?

Dye told us something that caught my attention – when they arrest somebody who is not considered to be rational, they take them to ENLOE for what they call “51/50”. That means they consider the person to be a danger to him/herself and/or the public and they are put on 72 hours observation.   These people are turned over to the staff at the Enloe ER – hey, that’s something you might want to know before you take your kid down to Enloe for that ear ache at 2:30 in the morning. I had a friend who took her kid in on an afternoon – sprained ankle – and described the place as “an insane asylum.” I thought she was talking about the nurses, but now I wonder.

So, they dump these nutjobs – oh, excuse me – helpless idiots off at the ER and drive away. These arrestees are supposed to be picked up by “the county.” That’s how Chief Trostle said it at the PAB meeting, just, “the county.” He and Dye said that sometimes “the county” is short handed, and they don’t get down to the hospital to pick these people up for hours. The hospital is not allowed to hold the person, so oftentimes these people, who some cop considered a danger to the public? – simply wander out of the hospital and back to whatever they were doing when the cops picked them up.

I looked into the county mental health department.  According to the Butte County website,  they’ve got 12 psychiatrists listed on staff and two nurse practitioners. But if you check the salary listings in the ER, you only find one of those psychiatrists listed, along with 23 “interns.”  As of 2010, that psychiatrist gets a major salary reduction, and then he’s gone.

I don’t know what to make of that, but given other stuff I’ve heard about Butte County mental health – including two suicides by patients who were allowed to wander out of the county facility – I don’t have very high expectations for their work.

So, here we’re left with a p0lice force that thinks they’re qualified to make mental health evaluations after a one-week class at Butte College, and an overpaid county staff who can’t even be counted on to pick up or supervise at-risk patients.

Yesterday the topic of conversation was a “sit lie” law, such as those currently under effect in cities like San Francisco. This means, essentially, the cops can arrest a person who is sitting or laying on the sidewalk and refuses to move out of the public right of way.

This law has been on the books in San Francisco, and got a  lot of attention during the “Occupy Movement”. Unfortunately, while you’d think it is a no-brainer to have laws permitting free movement on public sidewalks, this “sit lie” law has had little positive effect. For one thing, it looks like the cops, at their own discretion, are only really enforcing it in one part of town – the Haight district (don’t forget to wear a flower in your hair!). There it just looks like harassment, and the bums are moving through the jail faster than a revolving door, landing right back in their semi-dry puddle of puke before the average shop owner can hose it off the sidewalk. The shop owners are fed up – the “sit lie” law is just producing an overwhelming load on the courts, it ‘s not solving the problem of people laying sprawled out in front of doorways, demanding change, or just being generally abusive to customers and passers by. 

Here’s an article from the SF Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sit-lie-law-primarily-enforced-in-Haight-3763521.php

When I was a kid, we shopped in Chico, we never saw anybody resembling a wino or a bum. The sidewalks were clean – I think I would remember having to step over people, human and dog excrement, puke or other nasty substances, I was a little girl wearing my best patent leather shoes. My grandma was a very proper lady, and she wouldn’t have put up with stuff like that, she would have set up a howl with all her other old lady friends and it would have been dealt with, that’s how it was when I was a kid. You didn’t sit there and complain, you went out and said something to your elected officials. I remember standing on the steps of Ray Johnson’s house on Vallombrosa with my grandma and her lady friends, demanding highway improvements. Think of that next time you’re driving down Hwy 99 and you see that “Ray E. Johnson” memorial. 

So the Downtown merchants, mostly, are demanding the city and the cops do something about the mess this liberal council has allowed to fester Downtown. They want this “sit lie” ordinance. Chief Trostle says the police have been asking council to “give us direction.”  

And now, I have to go, but next time, I’ll tell you what the chief said when I asked him about the “A.C.E.” ordinance, which I feel is very related to the “homeless” conversation. 

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April is Taxpayer Appreciation Month – thank you Sue Hubbard and Harold Ey!

3 Apr

As I sit down today to make out the last of my property tax payments, I want to thank Sue Hubbard for writing and submitting the following:

Proclamation

 

WHEREAS, The approximate 47% of Americans who pay no income tax are supported by the 53% of those who do

WHEREAS, Five percent of Americans are paying 60% of all income tax

WHEREAS, America’s top tax rate is the second highest in the world

WHEREAS, Taxpayer’s money is used to fund government services

WHEREAS, Taxpayer’s money is used to pay salary and benefits to government workers

WHEREAS, Taxpayers are the ones who are paying for all the entitlements so generously given out in this country

WHEREAS, Taxpayers pay America’s bills

NOW THEREFORE BE IT PROCLAIMED, that the Chico Taxpayer’s Association hereby recognizes April as Taxpayer Appreciation Month.

This was supposed to be an official proclamation, Sue had asked the city clerk for the proper format etc, and sent it off for approval from a proclamation happy council – Mary Goloff turned it down. Oh well, one woman’s trash is the entire town’s treasure.  We don’t need those dummies to run our town – so be it, April is Taxpayer Appreciation Month. It’s just too good an idea to pass up.

Our first activity will be the usual First Sunday meeting at the library, or as I prefer to call it, The First Church of Democracy.

Harold Ey is not one of our standing members, but he’s our kinda guy. Harold has always lit up the letters page with his pokey wit, he tells it like it is. Here’s a letter of his I found in the ER this morning:

Letter: Taxes won’t solve homeless problem

Chico Enterprise-Record
Posted:   04/03/2013 12:05:04 AM PDT

 

One of the more off-the-wall suggestions we heard at last week’s 90-minute gabfest between Mary Goloff and Ann Schwab was the idea of taxing liquor sales. Schwab thought this could be a solution that might possibly reduce the number of down-and-out downtown drunks. Leave it to a liberal to attack private business with more taxation because; isn’t greedy capitalism the root cause of the homeless problem? However, as Schwab was rambling on, she brought up another point about how to deal with the perplexing problem of bicyclists riding on the sidewalks (there’s a cause of homelessness).However, you know her tax idea might actually work here. First, City Council puts a hefty tax on bicycle shops in the downtown area. After all, the sale started the problem to begin with, right? Then we require the shop owner to register each bicycle sold (another government fee) and keep a database for an undetermined number of years.

Then when a police officer stops someone riding on the sidewalk and runs the registration number, the shop selling the bicycle gets fined as well as the operator of the bike, and we double up the fine when a plastic bag is involved also. Makes sense, doesn’t it? The bicycle shop contributed to the scofflaw’s actions by selling the bicycle to begin with. Makes about as much sense as the first 90 minutes of last week’s “study session.” Yes, Mayor Goloff, the public is very upset.

— Harold Ey, Chico

I have to add here, this liquor tax is not Mary Goloff or Ann Schwab’s idea. It came to us from Chico PD, when Mike Maloney was chief, and now Kirk Trostle has picked it up. It’s called the ACE initiative, “Alcohol Compliance and Education,” and it’s to be administered, and I believe collected, by Chico PD. They tried to get us interested in it before the 2012 election, but they saw all those other tax increase proposals on the ballot, and they backed off, planning to bring it back around in 2014.

This is a fee collected from “alcohol related” businesses. It is at the discretion of Chico PD WHO pays,  and HOW MUCH they pay.  Here’s the slick pamphlet they’ve been handing out:

http://www.butteyouthnow.org/public/uploads/City%20of%20Chico%20ACE%20Issue%20Brief%20%232(1).pdf

Now take a look at the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control website:

http://www.abc.ca.gov/programs/grant.html

As you can see, the ABC is fully funded from fees collected from alcohol related businesses. Chico PD seeks to place additional fees on the industry in order to duplicate the actions of the ABC. I don’t see the sense in this. The police are supposed to be out there enforcing the laws, preventing and solving actual crimes – providing special consulting services to one industry in town does not seem appropriate to me.

Chief Trostle and his management staff spend a lot of their high dollar time yakking, I’ll say that. I just attended the Police Advisory Board meeting last week and tomorrow I’m headed to a Chamber of Commerce “luncheon with the Chief.” This guy is paid over $160,000 a year to run the cop shop, but he seems to be some sort of Public Relations expert. Same for Linda Dye and  Jennifer Gonzales – both paid around $100,000 a year to give reports at meetings. I know, they put on their vest and gun and go out for the photo ops – in fact, Dye was carrying her riot stick, which she handled absentmindedly, while she spoke at  the Police Advisory Board meeting. 

The cops are management heavy. They also DON’T PAY ANY OF THEIR OWN BENEFITS OR PENSION PREMIUMS. This is why I have said we need to reorganize the cop shop, but yeah, last night, Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan voted along with the rest of the fist puppets to renew the cop contract as is, with all the perks and benies. Sorry Harold, I think that booze tax is a done deal too.

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