Thanks to Toby Schindelbeck for taking on Miss Finance MisDirector and Councillor Moonbeam

10 Aug

Lately a little drama has been playing itself out Downtown – better than any crap you will find on tv – but I really wonder if anybody is paying attention.

Local business owner and city council candidate Toby Schindelbeck has been trying to take our financial bull by the horns and make it behave itself. My family were farmers, I’ve seen a few of these struggles. My great grandfather was gored, almost in his private parts, by a bull when he was trying to administer some vaccination or another. He survived, but it became a legendary story in our family – the moral of the story being, you better be sure of yourself if you’re going to mess with a bull.

Well, I think Toby was sure of himself, and he was ready for a bull, but what he got instead was a greased pig. Ever try to catch a greased pig? Let me tell you, the grease is not the worst of your problem. Don’t wear your best outfit, that’s for sure.

Section 908 has become a greasy little pig. Pigs duck and dodge, they dart, they wiggle, and just when you think you’ve got one, he slips away. If you’re not careful, you end up on your hands and knees in the mud and pig poop. If you’re not determined, you go home with wrecked clothes for nothing. But if you can get that little pig by the tail, or better, by the hind leg, and hold on, you will have yourself a pig. Or $50, that was the deal.

Toby is pretty good, I must say, he’s got  that little pig by the foot. Of course, you never seen anything til you seen a kid being dragged around a fairground arena by a pig running on only three legs. Pigs are incredible, determined, smart little animals who can make fine use of those stubby legs.  This is the beginning of the real battle, you still don’t have yourself a pig, and the danger of slipping in pig poop is ever present. And a mean pig, a real smart pig, will turn and bite. Ever seen a pig’s teeth? Nasty little spikes, like a terrier. It’s enough to make a kid let go, if he or she is not really determined.

Toby Schindelbeck is determined, that’s the truth. He’s got Section 908 by the foot, and he’s going to drag it down and make it behave itself. In a greased pig contest, it was good to be able to pick up and carry your pig, but if that wasn’t possible, you could just sit on it, and the judge would give it to you. Pig was usually so tired by that time, he didn’t put up much squawk, but now and then, he’d make one last move on your ankles, and you better keep your fingers away from that little mouth.

Toby is doing everything right with this pig – persistence really pays.  But it’s tough. In one of the most ridiculous conversations I’ve ever heard at council (it was a discussion of nudity in Bidwell Park that takes the top number one position of all time), Schindelbeck finally got the talking heads to agree to discuss Section 908.  I know, it’s like some skit from Monty Python, or the chapter on Volgon poetry from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe…”

This e-mail below illustrates Schindelbeck’s persistence. He stays calm and polite, but firm. 

Ms. Hennessy,

Thank you for your time and response. I appreciate it. However, my request was for the monthly financial reports as defined and required by the City Charter, Section 908, which states the following:
“The finance director shall submit to the council through the city manager monthly
statements of receipts, disbursements and balances in such form as to show the exact
financial condition of the city.”
I understand that the only portion of the Charter requirements that you comply with are the monthly disbursements, which are posted online in the links you sent.
Quarterly reports are not adequate to show the real-time exact financial condition of the city, especially when we don’t see the quarterly report for 90-180 days after the end of each quarter. In fact, on your website you only have the Q1 and Q2 reports for ’11 and ’12. The 4th quarter ended 6/30/12, and yet neither Q4 nor Q3 of ’11/’12 are posted.
Not only are quarterly reports inadequate, they are not what the City Charter Section 908 requires you to do.
As you are well aware, the Charter requires not only the monthly disbursements, but also the receipts (revenue that came in that month) and the fund balances (which would reasonably include each individual fund balance, along with transfers/allocations to and from each individual fund.) These items should be in such a form to show the exact financial condition of the city, not a hodgepodge of numbers.
As you admitted on 6/5, you struggled with providing this monthly report from the time that you were hired seven years ago. You also said that the city manager at that time directed you not to do it. Here is a clip from that meeting, in which you tell us this:
Fortunately for the taxpayers and citizens of Chico, neither the city manager, the city council, nor any other individual has the power or authority to modify the requirements of the City Charter. Changes can only be made to it by the voters of Chico, if such changes are on the ballot.
Thus, when the city manager directed you not to comply with the Charter seven years ago, he had absolutely no authority to do so and was acting illegally.
Ms. Hennessy, in my Public Records Request dated 8/2/12, I asked specifically for the monthly reports as defined and required by Section 908 of our City Charter. This request is not ambiguous; it is very specific and the language in Section 908 is very specific as well.
Let me ask you for this again; please send me the monthly reports containing the monthly statements of receipts, disbursements and balances, in such form as to show the exact financial condition of the city, for the following months: January 2012, February 2012, March 2012, April 2012, May 2012 and June 2012.As I understand the nature of Public Records requests, once a request is made the city has 10 days to provide the requested information. This applies to Public Records which are created, or which should have been created as required by the City Charter.Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to the timely delivery of the specific information that I have requested.
Toby Schindelbeck

CC:
BTA
CTA
Chico ER

The above email was part of the ongoing correspondence that finally got the ball rolling. A formal request was handed to council during the “Reports and Communications” segment of this past Tuesday’s council meeting. The public was also allowed to speak, and I joined about half a dozen citizens who stood up to urge council, and Jennifer Hennessy, to comply with Section 9o8. The council discussion that followed was pretty ludicrous. Andy Holcombe insisted that “we already comply”. He referred to the months old figures that Hennessy gives out quarterly, by request, at her office, Monday through Friday, 9 – 5. Unless she’s out for a three day weekend.

This gets inane, it’s hard to take Holcombe seriously.  Andy Holcombe would be great as the Emperor who gets new clothes. He’s just as persistent in his complete denial as Schindelbeck is in his insistence that there’s a problem here. Well, maybe not. In this next e-mail, Toby again asserts his position. 

Andy,

Regarding your comment tonight that you think we already receive the reports required by section 908 of our Charter, please watch this 1:38 minute clip of Ms. Hennesssy telling us that she is well aware of the Charter requirement, but only meets a portion of it. She goes on to say that she “struggled” with complying, and so she went to the city manager at that time (Lando), and was directed not to comply.

Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKjKixdGdO0&feature=plcp

I am not making things up, Ms. Hennessy herself said that she doesn’t comply with all of the Charter requirements in Section 908. 

Since she is our finance director, she would know, right?

Toby Schindelbeck


I can’t get into these Merry-go-rounds with Andy Holcombe, he makes me sick. I have no patience – I just want to land one right on the end of his nose.  Of course Holcombe has a response – another Butler Amusements special!  But Schindelbeck stays with it. This is the kind of “grit”  it takes to be on city council these days. Leaches have taken over our town, and it’s time for a council member who is ready to stand up to $taff. 

I’ll post the rest of the conversation as it comes in.

Please take a hint from Toby Schindelbeck, and write a letter to council or the newspaper, demanding that Hennessy and Burkland make the finance reports as is stated in the city code, section 908. 

 

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Thankyou City Council Candidate Andrew Coolidge for taking on Ann Schwab’s Phone Tax Plan

7 Aug

You may have seen the following bit on the news:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeE2xJfFiUM&feature=youtube_gdata

Andrew Coolidge, candidate for Chico City Council, has got the issue onto the news, good for him.   This is the kind of candidate I can support in November – a regular citizen who’s actually out there DOING SOMETHING! 

Coolidge points out that Ann Schwab is out of touch with the reality most of her constituents live – she thinks the average phone bill is only about 50 bucks.  No, Pollyanna Schwab, that’s about the lowest cell phone bill you can get – is she talking about pre-paid cards?  Those will also be taxed. My family gets the cheapest package available, and for the four of us it’s just about exactly $98 a month. And that’s the strip-down package. I know plenty of people who pay more, and Coolidge estimated high bills of $200 plus. I believe it. 

So, under Ann’s phone tax, my family will pay almost $4.50 more, a tax that goes into the General Fund, which can be used for ANYTHING, including the “employee share” of benefit and pension premiums.

That’s the other problem I had with the story. When Alan Marsden ran this story, he quoted Ann as saying the money would go to “public safety”. In the ballot argument she wrote in favor of raising your taxes, she says the money will go to public safety. Well, that’s all nice and everything, but that’s not what the measure says. The measure doesn’t promise anything of the sort. The measure only promises to place a 4 and a half cent tax on your cell phone. 

There’s alot that’s wrong with this phone tax, and I’ll be posting more information as the days go by.

And tonight, don’t forget, Toby Schindelbeck will be making his request for more disclosure from Finance Mis-Director Jennifer Hennessy. He will need support at the dais. This request is scheduled for the end of the meeting, under “Reports and Communications.” 

 

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The Party’s Over

5 Aug

As the headlines declare a new bankruptcy in another California town every few weeks, we must wonder just how close Chico is coming to the brink. But how would we know – we are held off by the forehead by the same $taff that profits from our not knowing. And we let ourselves be held off – for seven years now, City Finance Mis-Director Jennifer Hennessy has point-blank refused to perform aspects of her job, the most basic functions of her position, in fact – reporting to us, the taxpayers, on the financial state of our city. And we’ve let her get away with it, in fact, I think we’ve been hoping all along she wouldn’t bother us with the petty details of running our town.

I’ve known a lot of small business owners. I’ve seen some have great success, and others I’ve watched ride down the road to perdition – some of them wearing a “Perdition or Bust!” t-shirt, in fact. I had a friend who had long dreamed of owning her own restaurant. She’d waited tables for years, and then become an accountant, running the office for a large statewide business for many years before retiring to realize her dream. With a partner she’d only known a couple of years, she bought a long functioning restaurant-bar, with the intentions of taking up the strengths of the old business, and ferreting out the weaknesses.

Unfortunately she let herself be distracted with one aspect of the business – cleanliness. Yes, that’s important. But, instead of supervising, you would often find her climbing up into the grease trap or wading into the bathrooms with mop and bucket, declaring that nobody could get the place clean enough for her. In the meantime, her partner, who’d long dreamed of owning a bar, was happily handing out all the booze to his friends. And worse – he was  cashing their bad checks out of the restaurant cash register, and then letting it go when they told him they didn’t have the money.  Apparently his only dream for retirement had been to be the most popular man in town.

So, my friend’s business flopped after a year, no matter her business sense. She didn’t have very good sense in who she trusted with her money, and then she didn’t pay attention,  is what happened.

Here in Chico, we find ourselves in the same situation. We’re too busy to oversee our own public  finances, we say, too busy with the “real world.” Well, throw some coffee in your face and wake up – the world of city finance is about to  collide with your “real” world. Your local  taxes are about to go up, up, up. Starting this November with the Utility Tax increase and a school bond, and picking up speed in 2013 with a proposal to raise sales tax in Chico, as well as a proposed “booze” tax. This in addition to what’s going on at the state and federal levels, and you’re about to feel a kick in the pants.

The liberals on city council and their toadies on $taff want the phone tax increase to pay for their malfeasance. Right now they are accused of mis-spending some $11 million in RDA money, accused of misappropriating millions to pay their own salaries, benefits and pensions, and so far, they don’t have one shred of proof to the contrary. $taffer Shawn Tillman just keeps waving his hands madly and denying it, but he so far hasn’t come up with any paper trail as to where that money actually went. You know, like you’d have to pony up in a New York minute if the IRS was banging down your door.

That in addition to the roughly $43 million yearly budget – over 80 percent going to the same salaries and employee-related expenses like health benefits and pensions they are accused of using that $11 mil in RDA dough to pay. We pay not only the employer share on those costs but the employee share as well. Excuse me if I shake my head there  – I don’t believe they have the nerve to call it the “employee share”. The “employee share” is, they get to walk off with all the money and we get stuck holding the tab. Similar to my friend’s partner emptying out the cash register taking his friends’ bad checks.

I would say that people who put up with this kind of ridiculous, blatant malfeasance on the part of their elected and hired officials certainly deserve whatever they get, except that those of us who have been paying attention just get swept right along too. We’re already living with pothole studded streets, bad water, leaky sewers, Superfund clean-up sites on public land, mis-managed public safety agencies, almost 4,000 acres of mismanaged park, and a $taff that tells us if we want any of these issues addressed we have to form a non-profit and come up with the money ourselves.

My good Lord! How long are we going to take this shit?

Toby Schindelbeck, for one, has had enough. He’s arranged for a discussion of Jennifer Hennessy’s reporting requirements for this Tuesday night’s council meeting, at the end of the meeting, and it would be nice to have some speakers get up and support his request. It’s a simple matter of Hennessy disclosing our state of affairs – in other words, how much money we got, how much we’re planning to spend over the next 30 days, on what, and how much we have coming in. Every month. Just like you should balance your family checkbook every month (oh yeah, bust a snicker there!)

I will not assume everybody does this in their own house, because look at what’s going on all around us folks. Another house in my neighborhood was just foreclosed a month ago, and sold for less than half what was owed on it.  I know, a lot of people are in trouble of their own making. That means it’s time for some of us to hunker down and hold that line. We have to keep telling the City of Chico that  the party is over.

Yes there will be a mess to clean up.

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Facebook and the State of California: The Trouble with Assumptions

4 Aug

Chico City Council In Session: “Hey, who forgot to fill our bucket? By the way, that pile over there isn’t going to pick up itself.”

Years back, I was sitting in a meeting Downtown, listening to another budget report from Jennifer Hennessy, and suddenly the word “assumptions” hit me on the forehead with a “SMACK!”  Hennessy was explaining, essentially, that our entire budget is based on what she assumes we will take in revenues.

Yeah, that’s right – I like to call that, “ASS-umptions.” Or, as my dad might have said, “talking out of your ass.” Or, another Texasism  – “allowing your mouth to write checks your ass can’t cash.”

According to the online “Urban Dictionary,” th  is means that “talk is cheap relative to performance, or that promising something and delivering on it are two different things.  A phrase similar in meaning is ‘Money talks, bullshit walks.'”  Another Texasism.

And a perfect description of what Facebook has done. Initially a gigantic success, they are currently tanking. According to the State Legislative Analyst’s office, it’s costing California “hundreds of millions” in anticipated tax revenues. “Anticipated” is another word for “ASS-umptions”.

Don’t think I didn’t smell a rat when the Enterprise Record started requiring everybody to sign up for Facebook in order to post on Topix. Oh yeah, David Little and his cussing phobia, saying Facebook would make posters “more polite” – you know, some people wouldn’t say “stuff” if they had a mouth full of it. But that wasn’t the real reason for that requirement  – and if it was, it didn’t work. People are still nasty and many don’t use real names.   I’m guessing, Facebook offered newspapers something if they’d get more of their readers to open accounts. Why? Because, according to the IPO they filed with the SEC, Facebook makes over 85 percent of their revenue from advertising. Selling advertising requires the ability to put it in EVERBODY’S face, so, Facebook enlisted rags like the ER all over the country to boost their user accounts and sell their advertising.

That went so well, as you may have seen, Facebook essentially exploded with revenues. Thank you Enterprise Record and fish wraps all over the US.  That led to a furor of trading. Investors like Paul Hewson, better known as “Bono the Clown,”  were instant Bazillionaires. Of course the stock immediately turned around and crashed.  If you didn’t smell a rat in that, you need a good dog.

Like a good souffle, Facebook’s success was essentially full of hot air – a racket, really. Facebook is, let’s face it – NOTHING BUT E-MAIL WITH ADVERTISING. When people wrote letters on paper, it would have been funny to market stationery with ads on it – think that would have stuck? And would anybody care? I was just reading an article on Facebook revenues, and a commenter said, ” If my children are anything to go by, they have zero interest in commercial things appearing on their facebook pages.”

I do like ads. I have my fave TV ads, like the “Mayhem” ads (including the completely different Spanish language version – http://www.homadge.com/2011/01/spanish-mayhem-soy-la-mala-suerte.html), and alot of the “Got Milk?” ads – how many of you think of milk every time you take the handles of your wheelbarrow? Sure, advertising is effective.  Facebook has taken advertising to a new level – an electronic billboard network for your telephone and e-mail. This is why advertisers like  Netflix at first thought it was a new bonanza and hooked right up. In the beginning, 98 percent of Facebook’s revenues came from advertising. And then the trading frenzy began.

Never trust a bonanza, kids. By the time you hear about it, it’s a bust. That’s what happened to Facebook – advertising revenues were artificially ballooned by the excitement of new technology. When the excitement wore off – and, to tell the truth, I don’t think it’s done wearing off –  ka-POW! The balloon is burst. It’s going flatter by the minute. I think someday soon people will say, “Face-what?” And it’s just adding to the list of lost revenues for the state. Money they’ve already budgeted, and in some cases, are already spending.

Of course, that’s why you get into trouble with ASS-umptions. I realize, we do have to make assumptions in life. We must assume the sun will rise tomorrow.  We must trust in our business dealings and assume that our neighbors are good people, most of the time.  But spending frivolously based on the assumption that you will somehow come up with the money later is just ASS-inine. So follows the city of Chico, making ASS-umptions. In one report Hennessy predicted revenues would go up because the price of gas was predicted to go up, so they’d get more gas tax. She pulled the figure out of her hat as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know how she came up with it, but she marked it right down on the revenues side of the chart and proceeded to spend it.  I’m pretty damned sure it never occurred to her that a rise in the price of gas means people drive less. She seems to ASS-ume things will go her way, no matter what’s swirling around her head.

So, it’s important that we go in force to the next council meeting and support Toby Schindelbeck’s request for a monthly accounting of the city finances – with receipts, etc, just like Mom and Pop – from Jennifer Hennessy, who has apparently never been required to do so in the seven years she’s been employed by the city of Chico.  This is why our city is in trouble. They hold us off by the forehead – and, we let them. We need to take control of our situation. You know, it’s an “intervention.”

We’ll be discussing this action at the next meeting of the Chico Taxpayers Association, this Sunday, August 5, at the Chico Library – 9 AM!

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Keep a Knockin’ but you can’t come in! Come back next Tuesday night and try it again! And be sure to bring plenty of your friends.

26 Jul

Toby Schindelbeck has finally been rewarded for his persistence – he’s been going before Chico City Council, asking that Finance MisDirector Jennifer Hennessy comply with city code and give a budget report at every meeting.  City clerk Debbie Presson has informed him that this subject will be “discussed” at the August 7 council meeting. 

But we know, it won’t be a very good “discussion” unless a bunch of people come in and demand some action. Toby has observed that issues like Corporate Personhood and the “single-use” plastic bag ban have drawn fairly small crowds – he estimates 25 – 30 people, and I’d say he’s being generous. The city has acted on these issues, with only that small fraction of the population in support. So, Toby believes there needs to be an even stronger presence to get a decent discussion on this matter, and I agree. 

Like Toby and Stephanie Taber and others have been saying, the city code calls for a monthly budget report, with sticky details like receipts, etc, and Jennifer Hennessy admits she has not made such a report in the seven years she’s been with the city of Chico. Try not paying your taxes for seven years – you’ll get the same treatment as the man from Touch of Class Florist – 68 years old, and he’s being sent to PRISON. But Jennifer Hennessy and her boss Dave Burkland, and their overseer, Mayor Ann Schwab, get to flog the law right in front of everybody, and Ann just steps right into that little red convertible and drives off to her palatial estate in Forest Ranch. 

The law is a piece of paper. It takes people to demand law enforcement. We’ve got a serious law enforcement problem in our town. The police say they aren’t paid enough to enforce the laws in the streets, and now Dave  Burkland says, he just doesn’t have to. 

And your mayor won’t make him either. He’s retiring, on more than $150,000 a year, for the rest of his life, but she’s up for election in November – time to take out the trash.

That meeting is scheduled for August 7, the usual time, the usual place. I’ll keep you posted. 

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Stephanie Taber answers Quentin Colgan’s letter to the News and Review

22 Jul

I get complaints from friends and strangers, and it has also been my own experience, that the editor of the  Chico News and Review is not always objective in deciding which letters received from the public will be printed in the paper and which ones won’t. Robert Speer has offered me excuses, but I have always found him to be disingenuous. For example – he told me he would only run letters that referenced an article or letter recently printed in the paper – untrue a million times over. He also told me he wouldn’t print letters that had already run in the Enterprise Record – also untrue a million times over. The man has his own reasons for running or not running letters.

David Little is more objective, but he’s got his faults too – once he threw out a letter from my husband and later admitted he had thought I’d written it and used my old man’s name. He just threw it out without even calling the phone number or e-mailing, just assumed I’d do something like that when I’d never done anything like that before, because he was mad at me over a snit we were having at the time.

I think Little gets his nose out at people personally, and Hell hath no fury, know what I mean? With Speer it can  personal but I think it’s most often political. Suffice to say, they both carry what my dad used to call a “Shit List,” and if you’re on it, you don’t get ink in their rag. 

Of course either paper is equally likely to print a total wad of lies or misinformation without so much as a google fact check. I will never forget the time Dave Little printed a letter saying the cops had been called to my house on a dog complaint. The letter writer insinuated that this was why I often wrote letters complaining about the cop contracts. I called Little and told him the letter was false, nothing like that had ever happened – but  he wouldn’t retract it. I had to look the old man up in the phone book and call him myself, tell him he had been misinformed, and ask him to write a retraction. He apologized profusely and the apology was in the paper within three days. He wouldn’t tell me where he got the information, but later I found out he was a member of VIPS, and he still is. I think that’s something Dave Little could have looked into before he printed a story like that about me and my family, not to mention my dogs, but he didn’t see it that way. Poor journalism, is how I see it, and that’s what I’ve come to expect out of both the daily and the weekly. 

So, pardon me if I was not surprised when my friend Stephanie mentioned to me that she didn’t think Speer would run her response to a letter from Quentin Colgan, regarding our current fiscal morass. QC made an argument he has been swinging around town lately – that Fire Station 5 had to be closed recently because the Tea Party forced the city to have a $150,000 election over Measure A. 

The first problem I have with this argument is, the city is out a heck of a lot more than $150,000. The second problem I have is, I happen to know that over 8,000 Chicoans signed that petition, and there’s not more than 600 active members of the Tea Party. I also know the Tea Party didn’t sponsor the petition drive, nor were they the only people that marched out with those petitions. Colgan’s argument doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s amazing what kind of “facts” the general populace will believe if you just keep repeating them.

Some folks are trying to use the Tea Party as a target to rile up their peanut gallery, using Measure A as their rally call. They keep banging the same old drum. They refuse to have a rational discussion about the situation we’re facing, because it’s going to mean some sour beans for them and their trough-dwelling friends. 

So, it’s up to a rational person like Stephanie Taber to lay it out straight for those who like facts. Stephanie attends the meetings, she reads the reports, she goes to the trouble of putting questions in writing for $taff, and then waiting persistently for an answer that practically has to be deciphered by a lawyer. She has followed this budget conversation since the day then-city-manager and first rat to jump, Greg Jones, expressed his grave concerns that we were headed straight for bankruptcy. She has followed the figures and checked the facts until she has forced these rats right to the wall – they have lately begun to dig their feet in and refuse to obey the sunshine laws, refusing to give the fiscal reports demanded by the city charter. Some people can try to run their little smokescreen of repetitive nonsense, but more rational people are finding out the truth. Thanks to Stephanie Taber for writing this letter below, which may or may not run in the Chico News and Review:

I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to Quentin Colgan’s letter of July 12th; primarily because the costs surrounding the Special Election held regarding Measure A have been distorted.  Yes, it did cost $150,000, but why?  That’s the elephant in the room. The progressives on the City Council chose the method by which the election would be held.  Per the City Charter (which is the City’s Constitution) Section 501 clearly states “The City Council may determine that any Special Election shall be held by mailed ballot” etc. That would have cut the cost by half, at least.  But the Council chose the most expensive means possible, voting at the precinct.   They were afraid that just telling the students they were being disenfranchised, which was an obvious lie, would not be sufficient to defeat it.

 As to “it’s all the Tea Party’s fault”; I was the only signature to the Measure.  I felt no need to consult the Tea Party before I took that action; but did enlist the help of many concerned citizens to gather the more than 8,000 signature required to put it on the ballot.

 Toby Schindelbeck has called upon our Finance Director to adhere to Section 908 of the City’s Charter which states “(the) Finance Director shall submit to the Council through the City Manager monthly statements of receipts, disbursements and balances in such form as to show the exact financial condition of the City”.  It does not state when you may want to or if you have time to; it says “shall”. No one on the Council or otherwise can remember when that may have happened last.  If it was being done as the Charter states it would have been recognize that the City was facing a financial Armageddon and steps could have been taken much earlier in the fiscal year to avoid the closing of Fire Station 5.

 Stephanie L. Taber

July 17, 2012

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City Art Director Mary Gardner is foisting a new “Art Tax” on us to pay her own salary

17 Jul
To mgardner@ci.chico.ca.us, gerimahood@yahoo.com, mcbergarts@gmail.com
(Mary Gardner, city of Chico public arts director, city of Chico, Geraldine Mahood and Monica Berg of the Arts Commission) 
 
 
Hello ladies,

 
I recently read your memo here
I think it’s despicable Ms. Gardner that you are trying  raise revenues for your own salary by foisting a new “Art Tax” on new development. 
 
Ms. Mahood, Ms. Berg, nobody wants eggsuckers like you telling them how to spend their money or what’s “art”. You people make me sick.
 
The Chico Taxpayers Association will fight this grab, as will other civic groups through the area. That’s why you’ve kept your efforts “under the radar” I assume – you don’t want people to know about this, because you don’t want to hear what they think about it. Or YOU! 
 
You people need to get real jobs and quit sucking off the public teat.
 
 Read all about it here:
Sincerely, Juanita Sumner, Chico CA

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Jennifer Hennessy is incompetent – she can’t do her job and Burkland says she doesn’t have to

15 Jul

I’ll never forget my first real job – a clerical position at a manufacturing plant. I would compare it to the story of the miller’s daughter. On the first day, I was told that the employee I was to be replacing would stick around for a week to train me. At noon that day, having shown me where everything was and how to use the coffee maker, she got up from her chair, smiled, and told me she thought I could “handle it,” then left. At one o’clock, the plant manager came over to my desk followed by several “production” workers. They brought cart loads of microfilm, on rolls, in little white boxes. I was to label all of those boxes, three carts, piled high. This job had gotten held up, he explained, it would be “great!” if it could go out today.   Did I think I could get them done by 4 o’clock?  I wanted to make everybody happy, so said I yes without thinking, and set to work loading the labels into the typewriter.

It was a disaster. I had never typed anything like those labels before – typing class had been all about letters and envelopes, columns and reports. The labels skittered all over the platen, getting glue all over the inside of the typewriter. About every 50 or so labels, the platen had to be taken out and cleaned with alcohol. I typed and typed.   By 3 o’clock I knew I was in trouble. The production workers had come over to my desk to help me affix the sticky labels. We were nervous, labels were getting screwed up. At 3:30 the office manager and receptionist came back to my desk to help with the labels. I typed and typed, and tried not to cry.

We didn’t make it. The plant manager was flustered. The salesman who’d promised the job was really pissed off, he said mean things.  I apologized again and again, they told me it wasn’t all my fault, but could I please be more careful what I committed myself to in future. I could tell they also expected me to get a hell of a lot faster, but they were just trying to be nice.

So, I got faster. I came in early in the morning and worked through lunch until I got better at my job. I had signed up for a typing job, nobody had described all the weird stuff they expected me to type.  It started with typing and labeling, not only sticky labels, but microfiche jackets. They have a little quarter inch tall label strip across the top that chips and peels if you aren’t careful loading them into the typewriter, and strips or frames of 35 and 16 mm film  that falls out in your typewriter. Then there were the three-part work orders, with carbon paper, and the  three-part shipping labels, also with carbon paper. There were the mistakes – whole orders that had been indexed incorrectly, and therefore typed incorrectly, and therefore had to be corrected and typed all over again. I won’t describe what I had to go through to correct microfiche labels, it was too stupid.  I hated doing that, so I asked for my own little “eye-loup” – a little magnifier that you hold up to a light to look at the tiny little page numbers on the film – to make sure the cards had been indexed correctly before I typed them.

I’m not perfect, but I know I’m competent, cause I kept that job for five years while I watched others get fired, for everything from showing up late to breaking expensive equipment to stealing. I was given new jobs and increased responsibility as time went by.  I got good job reviews from my supervisors, and good raises.  Morale was high, we liked our co-workers and our managers, we felt like a team. Our customers were nice to us too. We worked for cities and counties, hospitals, banks – anybody who needed to keep records. We were trusted to handle confidential records, like people’s medical records. As we handled these confidential files we were simply told, “Don’t look at them,” so we didn’t. 

I left in 1984 in finish school. Over the next decade computers killed the microfilm industry, and the company went out of business. 

Excuse me if I compare my experiences in the private sector with stuff I’ve seen coming out of our city $taff. I keep waiting for some professional behavior, some professional accountability out of the people who run our town, and I start to wonder if I will ever get it. For a couple of months now, Toby Schindelbeck and Stephanie Taber, among others, have been asking council and Finance MisDirector Jennifer Hennessy to provide a simple accounting of city finances, as is required by the city charter, and she just plain refuses to give it. City Mangler Dave Burkland won’t make her. 

Last month she actually admitted, she is UNABLE to do it. At the June 5 meeting she admitted that she is incompetent to follow the city charter. She said that when she came to her position seven years ago, she “struggled” with doing such a report – something every house wife does – and went whining to then-city-manager Tom Lando, who apparently patted her on the head and told her she didn’t have to do it anymore. 

I don’t know about you guys, but I go over my check book every month, just to make sure everything is straight. I’ve found big, dumb mistakes, in the 100’s column even, that could have caused big, dumb problems down the road.  I’m no math instructor, like Mary Goloff, but it’s not exactly rocket science – you just add your deposits and subtract your checks and withdrawals. I’ll admit, when my kids were little, I felt like I never had time to do that, and stuff would get screwed up.  So now that I’ve got time, I make it a regularly scheduled event, and it’s amazing how much easier it is. And, I can keep the figures in my head, I know essentially how much I can afford to spend when I’m at the grocery store, or what kind of activities we can plan. My husband and son are enjoying a weekend trip right now that is already paid for, thankyouverymuch. 

But Jennifer Hennessy is unable to do that? And she has expectable stuff – over 80 percent of her budget is payroll. She doesn’t have that many emergencies.  The biggest emergency she’s had lately, is that the state has taken back the fund she’s been mis-using – the RDA. She was paying salaries and benefits out of a fund that’s supposed to be reserved for emergency public works projects. In other words, she’s been dipping into the till to pay her own salary!  

The mayor is to blame here, she’s the captain of our ship. Unfortunately, like the captain of the Costa Concordia, she’s abandoned ship for a party onshore. While she and her college chums bully their bag ban down our throats, our ship is sinking. We have less than $200,000 in our reserve fund, we have un-secured pension obligations totaling in the millions and growing every day, and we have  $taff who are using blackmail to get their way – they are just refusing to do their jobs. Hennessy won’t give the report she’s required to give because it’s BAD. I think the mayor is completely behind her on this – Ann Schwab doesn’t want us to hear that report either. Would you? 

Please write a letter to council demanding that Hennessy do her job, or get out. 

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Scranton, Pennsylvania cuts workers to minimum wage – only $130,000 in their cash reserves

12 Jul

I finally got a chance to watch the video of last Tuesday’s council meeting. It cut on me during the meeting, just after Walker and Goloff were mopping up their attack on Sorensen, and I didn’t get it back til yesterday. I have watched the video in bits and snatches.  I made it to the noise ordinance conversation last night, but had to turn it off after Jessica Allen and a couple of her friends got up to demand their rights to be bad neighbors. 

One thing I learned is that the city of Chico has less than $200,000 in the reserve fund. No, I did not forget a zero on that figure, that’s it – less than $200,000. Read it and weep – and then call them to ask what they did with that property tax check you just sent in. 

You can look at the budget report here:  http://www.chico.ca.us/finance/budget.asp

You see the millions the city takes in, in sales tax (over $17 million) property tax (over $11 million), even taxes on your PG&E, phone and water (almost $7 million), and your visitors’ motel rooms (over $2 million). To me that seems petty – “bed tax”?   Some people think it’s a good idea to shake down the visitors of your town, as if  it’s not enough that they spend money on your motels, restaurants and shopping centers.  It’s a common grab all over California, every city does it.  A lot of distasteful things become “common” when no decent person stands up to say “enough is enough.” 

In Chico, as has been oft repeated, over 80 percent of our budget is in salaries and benefits. That’s the elephant in the room, and everybody’s getting pretty hip deep in elephant shit around here.  It’s a simple concept, no matter how convoluted $taff and council try to make it: if they spend all the money on salaries, benefits, and the Great Pension Stock Market Disaster, there’s no money left to pay for supplies to say,  clean up leaks in the sewer and water lines that are causing the state to fine us by the day, widen the roads that we are required to widen because of the permitting of Meriam Park, etc. And you can just get used to those pot holes in the street out front of your house.  Got bad neighbors? Get a lawyer.

What’s really frustrating are the reactions of the cops and fire – they act like they don’t get paid at all. Those guys take most of the 80 percent. They get overtime written into their schedules. According to Hennessy, both fire and the cops are over budget on their workman’s comp claims for at least the third year in a row. The city just slammed another cop contract past us without public review, and signed the new chief’s contract three days before it was made available to the public, and then only by request and a direct visit to the clerk’s office Downtown. 

So, we will get another year of poor response times, bitching and moaning from cops and fire. Get ready for your homeowners and your car insurance to go up – the insurance companies know when your local police and fire departments are a pile of shit. 

And don’t think I’m not wondering about all those suspicious house fires. 

 You can just forget about any of the services a city is supposed to offer.  Try to get something out of the city clerk these days – if you can catch her in the office! 

Well, here’s the story of Scranton, Pennsylvania – home of Michael Scott! 

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/10/12659748-scranton-pa-slashes-workers-pay-to-minimum-wage?lite

The mayor of Scranton, when faced with a situation similar to Chico’s mess, did what needed to be done. Unfortunately, he waited until it was too late to do something rational. I’m afraid it’s come to that with our city council – if you think that scene between Goloff and Sorensen was rational, well, you deserve to live here. 

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Marysville council rejects sales tax ploy by retiring city administrator – where’s Chico’s knight in shining armor?

11 Jul

I am not a member of the Chico Chamber of Commerce, but I check in to their website regularly to see what they’re up to.  Sometimes I believe, they are the real Chico City Council. While our elected leaders frolic and cavort in  their stupid committee meetings, the Chamber is working on a “Top 10 Economic Development Action List”. 

Yeah, sounds great, until you consider, one of their “Top 10” is a proposal to raise the local sales tax.

One prominent member of the Chamber who might be able to fill us in on the discussion is Bob Evans. I’ve asked Bob where he stands on this tax increase, but he just keeps saying he hasn’t seen a proposal yet. Lately I have asked him if he would require Lando and the other sales tax increase proponents to get the legal number of signatures on a petition before he votes to put this proposal on the ballot, but he won’t answer me. His downright refusal to discuss the tax increase is frustrating to me – I want to believe Bob is a “fiscal conservative.” After all, he had some high and mighty things to say about his opposition to the phone tax. But, he knew the phone tax didn’t need his support to get on the ballot. It’s easy to posture as the good guy when you know others will achieve the end result you really want. Evans’ resistance to making a pledge against a sales tax increase is screaming in my ear like a fire alarm. 

In Marysville, Mayor Bill Harris had no trouble making himself clear when his city mangler proposed a half-cent sales tax increase: “This will be viewed as the City Council coming to them wanting more money again.”

Well, the article mentioned, the city mangler is retiring, so I would also see it as his way of securing his f-ing pension, but nobody mentions that. 

City councilwoman Christina Billeci echoed a sentiment I’ve been hearing increasingly in Chico –  “We need to balance the budget with the revenues we have,” she said.

Other council members cited lack of support from citizens, including one councillor who claimed to have got “angry reactions” to the proposal. One council member said he might have supported the move before the June election, “But the cigarette tax was voted down, and that should have been a slam dunk,” he said. “I would see this as a waste of effort and money.”

The only council member who supported the notion, Head Start administrator Ricky Samayoa, made some pretty disparaging remarks about the town. 

“There’s a lot of people that know there’s a lack of resources here for us to have a proper city and manage it,” he said. Oooo! A “proper city”! What a bitch!  Does he have letters from constituents to support  this statement, or is he just using “a lot of people” to describe himself and his co-workers? Not enough drive through coffee stands for you Ricky? Not enough 5 Star restaurants or pink boutiques? Sorry, we’ve never been ones for putting on the Ritz here in the North State, better get in your zip car and drive back to the Bay Area. 

In the Enterprise Record story, Samoyoa further claimed that “continued cuts to maintenance and other aspects of the city’s budget hurt chances for an economic recovery.”  I imagine Marysville has the same problem Chico has – too many $100,000+ salaries and not enough $20,000 – $50,000 workers. While he’s sitting down there under the air conditioner vent at Head Start in a fresh shirt and manicure, the streets are going unmaintained, the classrooms overcrowded, the police and fire  departments underfunded – is that the problem Mr. Samayoa? 

“The way we’re continuing to go, it’s just going to be a dying city, even if the economy picks up,” he said. Now, that statement doesn’t even make sense. This is a typical example of scare tactics. “The way we’re continuing to go…” You mean, paying $100,000+ salaries to fat bureaucrats, while cutting services to the public? Somehow I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about.  ” …it’s just going to be a dying city…”  Wow, what an idiot – obviously no knowledge of local history. Marysville has been through so many booms and busts, it ought to be called “Bouncyville.” If you get to know Marysville, you see it has everything needed to be a wonderful place to live, in good times and bad, regardless of carpetbaggers like Samayoa.

“Give folks the opportunity to have this debate,” Mr. Samayoa suggests. Sounds like the rhetoric coming from Andy Holcombe and the rest of the sales tax increase proponents. Hey, that’s a swell idea! People should talk about these things, hash them out. And then, if enough of them sign a petition to put such a proposal on a legal ballot, well, they can VOTE on it! But that costs alot of money – best for those who really believe in this cockamamie idea to get the petition first, show the need to spend all that money on an election. That’s what rational people would do, anyway. 

But if you ask Holcombe to discuss the pending proposal, he denies there is any such thing.  The only member of Chico City Council who is willing to discuss this proposal at all has been Mark Sorensen – thanks Mark. At least Mark has been good enough to answer our questions about the mechanics of such a proposal and getting it onto the ballot. Evans and Holcombe have both denied knowing anything about it, although Holcombe has made it good and clear he’d support raising the sales tax and Evans has been seen at Chamber discussions on the matter. The others have been mum to the public, but I’m guessing they will support it. Holcombe, Schwab, Goloff, Walker, Gruendl – and Evans? – are all banking on more revenues to rescue the city from the Shit Creek they’ve floated us up.   Evans, while he will admit we’re in deep shit, will not offer so much as a suggestion of a paddle. He seems to be holding back until after he gets himself safely re-elected in November. Then he’s got a year to get that sales tax voted in and three years to make the public forget he had anything to do with it. 

Well Bob, is that what you’re up to?

I’ll say, if he were at least honest, I might be able to hold my nose and support him, but this game he’s playing is a real turn-off. 

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