Time Machine: set your watch for Chico, CA, 2012…

21 Feb

How the heck did Chico get into the mess it’s in? That’s been discussed from many points of view – here’s mine. You can also read back in the archives, I chronicled as much of it here as I could, trying to make sense of it, all the way back to 2012, when I quit my old blog at the Enterprise Record. Anybody remember that?

I’ll start there. Back in 2012, the city of Chico hired a new city manager out of a tiny Southern California town called Hemet. Brian Nakamura – a man with a questionable employment record, who was already on the hot seat in Hemet for various reasons. Nakamura was hired at an unheard of new salary – $212,000/yr, plus full benefits – he paid nothing toward his pension or health benefits.

At that time the city was still reeling from years of fiscal hijinks – the most damning, a Memo of Understanding brought forward about 2006 by former city manager Tom Lando. At that time, the city was riding high from developer fees, so Lando decided everybody should get a raise. He wanted in on the money train coming from years of over development, so he suggest that we “attach salaries to revenue increases but NOT decreases”. Council approved that MOU. Over the next few years, salaries went up incredibly – 14%, 19%, 22%, per year.

Lando’s salary went from around $90,000/yr to over $150,000/yr. At that time, here’s the whammy – management paid NOTHING toward their benefits and the other employee groups paid slim to none as well. Public safety paid nothing, for pensions of 90 percent of their highest year’s salary, available at 55 years old.

And then, you might remember, The Great Bust of 2008. Like it was a surprise? Foreclosures all over town took property tax revenues into the toilet. Reeling from their own bad investments, CalPERS started to tank, and began demanding outrageous payments for all those new pensions. Trouble, right here in Bidwell City, and that’s starts with ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for PENSIONS.

That’s where we were when Nakamura rode in, like Gene Wilder in “Blazing Saddles”. Nakamura was hired as a “corporate assassin”. We had a big payroll, and he had been hired to pare it down. Instead of negotiating better contracts with a “top heavy” management force – as had been suggested several times by consultants – Nakamura just waded in and started firing people.

All behind closed doors, without explanation, he eliminated senior staffers who didn’t agree with the new policies. He hired his friends from Hemet to replace them – Mark Orme and Chris Constantin – as his assistant manager and finance director, giving them salaries in excess of the people who’d formerly held those positions. And then Constantin started a campaign of blaming all the city’s financial woes on his predecessor Jennifer Hennessy, calling her “Loosey Goosey” in meetings and in an appearance before the Chico Tea Party. Constantin went on an regular PR campaign – sheesh, he even attended one of my Chico Taxpayer meetings, brought his wife and everything. He tried to tell us the whole thing was the fire departments’ fault. Nakamura started reporting threats from the Police and Fire Departments. But he kept doling out raises to his friends and refused to ask employee groups to pay higher shares of the CalPERS costs.

Instead, Nakamura began gutting the lower-paid workforce in all departments. This really made no sense in light of the fact that new management positions continued to be created at higher salaries. Orme went on creating new management positions right up until he left last year, while telling us we needed to pay a one-cent sales tax if we wanted our streets maintained.

Nakamura had been the one who first raised the subject of the CalPERS pension deficit, even mentioning the benefits deficit that is rarely discussed. Well, of course he needed to mention that – all the new salaries and no employee shares was rising up on the horizon like a tidal wave. I always think, “Jaws”, or “Perfect Storm”. Nakamura told us about it, but his solution was, the taxpayers should pay more. After Nakamura left and Orme and Constantin took over, the total payments to CalPERS went up drastically, millions a year siphoned quietly out of all the department funds. The city finally established the “Pension Stabilization Trust” and these payments became instituted – the PST gets a set percentage of every department budget, no matter the needs of the city.

Nakamura left as quickly as he was hired, leaving suddenly to take a job in Rancho Cordova, from which he was essentially fired for pulling some dirty tricks in a revenue measure campaign. But his legacy lives on in many ways – next time we’ll talk about the Trash Tax (cause that’s what current city manager and former city council member Mark Orme called it back in 2012).

Ever wonder what happened to Nakamura? Here he is at Texas A&M, giving us his insights on how the public needs to do more. We’ll pick this up again later as well.

Dr. Brian Nakamura: Faculty Spotlight
I’m working on what we call “coproduction of services” at the local government level. Essentially, coproduction of services for a local government is “how do we engage the citizens to be active and to participate within the environment in the community in which they live?” We want citizens to engage within the community beyond volunteering and participating in public meetings. We want them to engage in the production and implementation of essential public services.
For example, citizens tend to engage in Neighborhood Watch or community-oriented policing, and we want to take this one step further by having citizens truly engage, in a safe manner of course, in providing services related to economic development, social justice, and environmental protection. Let’s put the gloves on, get the shovels and trimmers out, and rid our parks and natural areas of invasive tree and plant species, as an example.

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Took a trip to Willows, let me tell you about it

18 Feb

Well I have done nothing about the trash tax – have you? Seriously, I’m going to go before council at some point and call them on the carpet about it. Just trying to screw up the nerve to go to a night time meeting. But I will, you betcha, by golly.

In the meantime, it’s Spring, so my husband and I have been trying to get out there and enjoy the mellow temperatures and the surprises other towns have to offer. I told you I went to Willows. It’s a nice trip, with plenty of sights to see out there in Rice Country. I was born in Willows, at Glenn General, and in my entire life I have never lived very far from the Sacramento River. My grandparents are buried at the cemetery, and my mom lived in Willows until she died. So it’s good to get back out there now and then, see what’s going on in Honker Territory.

Willows, like Chico, has had it’s economic ups and downs. Looks like they’re on the Ups right now. The Sierra Nevada cheese manufacturing facility there on the Bayliss/Blue Gum highway has expanded across the road, and now they have a little storefront. It’s worth writing home about so I’ll tell you – they have reeeaaally good cheese – including goat cheese – for honest working man prices. And other products, like local goat yogurt, honey, jams and olives.

We drove on into Willows to see things that remained unchanged since my childhood. Some of the buildings had different businesses in them. I’m always surprised to see The Last Stand still operating – when I was a kid, it was called “Culps” after the family that owned it. Way back in the 60’s they served food and beer at an outside counter built onto the building. Right on the main drag, it was a big deal to sit out there with a beer in your hand and hoot and holler to your friends driving by. It’s somewhat the same – but less remarkable since everybody has outdoor dining these days.

We went to see my mom’s old house, but we found the school had expanded and they’d shut down streets for new buildings. The high school stadium look great – my mom was in the Honker marching band, so I always like to drive by the high school. We found my mom’s house, still the tiniest, oldest house among the subdivision houses that have grown up around it.

We drove around town to find Willows Hardware still doing a brisk business – my mom was a regular customer there, and when she died I’ll never forget how nice they were about the $11 she still had on the books – “don’t worry about it Hon...” We paid it anyway because people expect you to pay your way unless your butt poor and then they make fun of you. I’m just sayin’, Glenn County made me honest, cause everybody knows you and your family generations back.

My mom worked at Nancy’s Cafe when it was located in town. It was considered the nicest restaurant in town at one time, before it moved to the airport. My husband and I were surprised to find a trendy little restaurant in the building that used to house my grandma’s bank. With panini’s! Sheesh, you would have got made fun of for eating anything but a “sandwich” when I was a kid, but there it was. We got a panini and a very nice kale salad, with candied walnuts(!), and ate our meal at a neat little table on the sidewalk. No, it wasn’t a “parklet,” and it didn’t impeded the sidewalk in any way, because the streets and sidewalks in Willows have always been wide and well-maintained.

I wish Chico could take a lesson there, instead they narrow the streets in commercial sectors and completely ignore residential streets in older neighborhoods. A lot of the neat old buildings that colored my memories are still standing, in fact, the old Benamati place is getting another facelift. And there’s art – I wish I had pictures – they have old farm equipment mounted proudly on the corners of sidewalks, one old rake “repurposed” as a bike rack.

And they even have launched a “Shop Local” campaign – I wonder how much it cost them to print banners and hang them from lamp posts, featuring various tourist attractions like the museum and the Llano Seco bird viewing platforms. It was a sales pitch, to be sure, but well done. And effective as far as I’m concerned, my husband and I are planning to go back and see the museum.

Next time, remind me to tell you about our day trip to Redding. Wow!

Viva la resistance – can we stop Valley’s Edge? No harm trying!

11 Feb

The North wind is blowing and the oak trees are flowering, and yeah, that’s a mosquito buzzing around my elbow this morning. Didn’t Punxawtawny Phil tell us six more weeks?

Well he was wrong.

My husband and I followed some honkers out to Willows the other day. The migration is in full swing, waterfowl of all kinds are congregating in the rice fields west of Chico. We took a turn at Seven Mile Lane to check out the Llano Seco viewing platforms.

The platform is right on the road, generous parking lot, and a short trail out into what used to be a rice field. I grew up near Princeton, that was the route by which my grandma often brought us into Chico. She liked to take different routes, she was a bird lover. She’d point them all out as she drove along the narrow roads. But we were never allowed out into the fields, too dangerous, and trespassing is considered a sin in farm country.

So I love being able to take our dog and stroll along a ditch bank, watching ducks fill themselves up on the muddy bottom of a swamp. There were a lot of geese and other water fowl, and birds filled the air. There was a phoebe bird snapping at bugs just off the platform, and I could see sack-like titmice nests hanging from the trees. Phoebe makes a mud nest, oftentimes on a human structure. She sits on the end of a tree branch, or on a cattail, and when she sees a bug – SNAP!

And there was drama. As we were walking along the trail we heard a commotion – a bunch of ducks went running across the water away from the bank’s edge. We saw a stranger sitting on the water – a hawk had jumped a mud hen, and was holding it under the water to drown it. They say hawks rarely eat other birds – bullshit, just pay attention, I’ve seen them take a bird right out of the air. The hawk sat on the duck for two or three minutes as we watched wide-mouthed. I wanted to yell and throw rocks, but that’s a violation of the Prime Directive.

I’ll tell you what though, that water is cold. The hawk couldn’t sit it out, and you know, a duck can hold it’s head under water a long time. So the hawk gave up and the little mud hen paddled away like nothing had happened. There’s a lesson for you folks.

Nature is a good classroom. This kind of habitat goes away with over development. Many years ago people in Chico started to realize we had something special here – agriculture, nature, AND a really neat town to serve the local population. But, you know, a town can grow too big for it’s pants. Building into your ag land and your water shed is getting too big for your pants.

Our developer beholden council tells us we need the houing, but Kevin Costner told us the truth – “if you build it they will come…” What council and staff really want is high-priced, property tax generating housing and the spend happy city people that come here to live in it.

I don’t know if Valley’s Edge can be stopped, but I hope the lawsuit holds it back a while and taxes the city’s war chest.

Next time remind me to tell you about our trip to Willows.

Insubordination Downtown – whattya gonna do? Call Ghostbusters?

4 Feb

I asked all of you to contact your council representative and ask about the trash tax and so I did same. I wrote to the city clerk Debbie Presson and asked her how to agendize a discussion for an upcoming meeting. I got no response. So I waited a week or so and wrote to clerk Dani Rogers – she responded with this –

“The citizen request has to be sponsored by a Councilmember.  The Councilmember would bring the request forward.  You can email the full Council and see if one takes up the issue, or you can work with your district Councilmember to try to get them take it up. You can also address the Council from Business From the Floor and ask that they take up the item on a future agenda.”

I won’t waste my time contacting any members of council, they don’t respond. I’d rather go to the meeting and take it up from the Floor – at least then it’s on the record. But you know, that means going Downtown at night. I don’t mind admitting, I don’t go Downtown at all anymore, certainly not at night. I’ll have to think about it.

I sure miss Kelly Meagher, he used to make the meetings worth attending. I’ll never forget the night he got into an argument with Dan Herbert – back in the days when there was a real back-and-forth exchange between council members and citizens. Some people would say Kelly liked to tie one on before a meeting – who cares, he was magnificent. Dan kept coming at Kelly with the city line, and Kelly just kept coming right back at him. It got so Dan couldn’t get a word in, Kelly just kept ramming him down. Finally Kelly ran out of breath. Dan sat on the dais with a tired grin, as usual, the meeting had gone on too long. Kelly stood at the podium waiting for an answer, Dan just shook his head and laughed – Dan could be a real good natured guy sometimes. Finally he said, “Kelly, you’ve interrupted me so many times, I can’t remember what I was going to say…” Everybody laughed and the meeting went on.

Mark Sorensen, former council member and current city manager, has put an end to that type of back-and-forth conversation at meetings, he’s put an end to public input, he’s closed meetings as much as possible. He got a lawyer to tell council they don’t have to respond to their constituents anymore unless those constituents agree with them, or yeah – gave them some big bucks at election time. This is mutiny on the Bounty as far as I’m concerned, pure, willful insubordination. They think we won’t fight, maybe they’re right.

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Yes, Kasey Reynolds is a ruthless politician who would hide sick people in a rotting old building, and then refuse to answer their calls for help

3 Feb

No, I haven’t driven by Miller Mansion lately. In fact, I don’t drive or bike a lot of places around Chico anymore because the roads are bad and the visuals are… depressing. It’s hard when the sweet little town you knew as a child turns into a cesspool in front of your eyes and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

I’ll never forget having kids here – like my husband says, we got Chico in her heyday. We rode our bikes everywhere, enjoyed three well-run public swimming pools and rode our kids up the park to Salmon Hole. We were a working class family but we could still afford to own a home, as well as support various businesses, even charities like the Jesus Center, Esplanade House and Butte Humane Society. We were members of the Nature Center and the Butte County library, spent many happy hours with Joe the Crow. She used to greet us when we came in the door. We enjoyed downtown eateries and attended shows at the plaza. Oh my gosh – we could afford to water a couple of fruit trees and a row a’ maters!

Some day archaeologists will call that “The Chico Lifestyle”. It’s become extinct.

Well, maybe not extinct. Chico was going into a slump when I was a kid, I remember the chatter. Buildings had burned and were not being cleaned up. The building now known as the Diamond Hotel was empty and a disgrace – by the time I got to Chico State it was known at “The Pidgeon Palace”. The old administration building on Main was in similar condition, trees growing over broken windows, the inside gutted, full of pidgeons and rats.

I was still pretty young when they tore the facade off the Morehouse building because they were afraid it would crash down on the sidewalk. My grandmother shopped at Osers – later Sports Ltd, now I don’t know what – and the manager told us she was worried about the building falling down around her head. Tres Hombres was an empty lot with a lot of trash blowing around inside a chainlink fence.

When I came to Chico State in the 80’s, there was a Downtown Renaissance. Lots of good, affordable eateries, even a grocery store. But of course, at that time, the college students were the nuisance. A lot of people called Downtown “The U District” and avoided the area. Binge drinking, puking, and sexual assaults seemed to be the college culture. The college and the town were at odds. Downtown business owners complained of broken windows, urine puddles in front of doors, and vandalism. Binge drinking deaths started to become common headlines – what you still don’t see in the paper, is the conga line into Enloe ER every Friday and Saturday night.

It seems to me, Downtown is Chico’s spoiled child, and the more attention she gets, the worse she gets. But you see City Council still treats Downtown like a “special district”, pouring more and more tax money into a tiny grid that only serves a tiny portion of the public.

A recent story in the News and Review reports sales tax revenues for Downtown Chico are on the downswing the past few years, and not just because of COVID. Recovery has been slow, even though Downtown businesses have received millions in COVID relief from the feds and the city. Vacancies are up Downtown, the N&R reporter counted 20 empty store fronts just in the Mainstreet/Broadway grid.

While they fuss over their “Downtown Revitalization ” plan and spend more taxpayer money on a “shop local (Downtown) ” campaign (another local government fad, like skating rinks), the rest of Chico goes to hell. Furthermore, I believe that in her angst to rid Downtown of the troublesome bums, District 2 councilwoman Kasey Reynolds made arrangements with a man who didn’t even own the sub-code building he was occupying to “get them off the street”. Especially the street right in front of her Downtown ice creamery.

Kasey Reynolds is not fit for office. She’s obviously out to protect her own interests, and her own agenda. I also believe she entertains visions of higher office, hoping to follow her benefactor James Gallagher on to the assembly. Call me catty, I couldn’t help but notice – the day she took office, she started “dressing for success” and spraying on the make-up. She’s a girl with ambitions.

So I’m not surprised that she would do something so desperate and ruthless as hide people and their real problems in a decaying building and then ignore pleas for help. Atta Girl Kasey!

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There it is – the first letter to the editor bitching about a rate increase that could have been stopped with a piece of paper that said “NO!”

1 Feb

A friend sent me a link to a letter in the ER yesterday that goads me into saying “I told you so!” A local woman bitching about the sewer rate increase. Just now?

The entire process was legal, mostly because people haven’t been paying attention as the state legislature has changed the rules for how taxes can be administered. The writer had very good points, suggesting the use of some of the millions the city of Chico got in Camp Fire emergency funding, to bring our sewer plant and infrasture up to date. But, here’s the thing – all we had to do to to stop that sewer rate increase was write NO on a piece of paper with our address and signature and deliver it to the clerk.

In the 45 days between receiving the notice and the hearing date, I wrote two letters to the paper telling people about the process and how simply we could reject it. The local media sat on their keyboards. I contacted Howard Jarvis Association and received information how to beat it, and shared that on my blog. I spoke to friends, neighbors and strangers at the grocery store. I got many blank stares.

Meanwhile, I’ll guess over half of Chico threw their notices in the trash without even reading them.

So now the media, including the Enterprise Record, are jumping on the bandwagon to promote the rate increase, with a glowing Eric Gustafson talking about the Candy Land we’ll have now – even promising to resurface entire streets after sewer hook-ups instead of sloppy patches.

All that waits to be seen – what we will see immediately, is a continuing rise in our cost of living with a simultaneous dip in our quality of life. I also predict Gustafson will be moving on to a higher salary in another town within the next year.

What I also predict is another push to outlaw septic tanks – we’ll see, on the next installment of Tank Girl.

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Will we be forced to sue the city over the garbage tax? Ask Debbie Presson debbie.presson@chicoca.gov

26 Jan

One of the better news sources we have here in Chico/Butte County is the Butte County Fires and Accidents Facebook – better known as “bcfac”. Here’s a story I have not seen in the local news media –

https://www.facebook.com/groups/butte.county.fires.accidents.crimes/?mibextid=6NoCDW

Chico, CA Saturday 1/21/2023 7:25 PM BCFAC: A juvenile just walked up to a house asking for help, reporting unknown people robbed him of his bicycle and property in Bidwell Park.

Yeah, sometimes kids make up stuff – unfortunately this story is true. Two 26 year old adults were arrested for “strong arm robbery, willful cruelty to a child and annoying or molesting a person under 18 years of age”.

How would you feel if that was your kid? I know what I’d do, but let’s not talk about it here.

Why should I have to behave myself? Our town has become lawless, and you know Folks, when the fish stinks, it’s the head of the fish that stinks. Here in Chico, we have a many-headed fish, including 7 council members, a police chief and a city council member turned city manager.

And now, according to lawyer/activist Rob Berry, the “public safety” measure Kasey Reynolds floated onto the last ballot is completely gutless. Here’s Berry’s description of how a citizen would use Measure L to complain about a problem, like, how about – rampant crime all over town?

Measure L gives you a means to report a public nuisance on city land. It has to be particularly injurious to you. That is, if you were going to report litter at an encampment, you need to live nearby, not across town. It is one tool, not for everything. So one example that has come up is the encampment at Eaton and Cohasset. Before, the only thing available was a civil lawsuit.. Now you can simply fill out a form and the city has to respond, and if it’s valid, they should abate the nuisance. For example, restricting the use, citing for littering, illegal structures, etc. They are required to reduce the impact of the nuisance. That is how it is used.

No disrespect to Berry, but there it is – this measure is completely useless to 99.9% of the population. I read the measure – did any of you who voted YES on it actually read it first? It is very clear – the city gets to decide whose complaint is valid – gee, walked into that one with your pants down, didn’t you?

Right now the city is trying to clear Teichert Ponds. I don’t live nearby, but I know the people that live in that illegal encampment are shoplifting from nearby businesses – again, you have to check bcfac to hear these reports, the local media doesn’t pay much attention to this type of crime. In many instances, these people are followed right back to that camp. Frankly, this is just another reason NOT to shop in Chico – many of these business refuse to press charges, passing the cost of the crime onto the paying customer. At Walmart, it means you have to find an employee with a key before you can buy everyday items like socks and underwear.

It also means the customer is at risk. At Mangrove Safeway I was almost knocked down by a guy stealing a bottle of booze. The manager apologized to me but I don’t know if charges were pressed. I later saw the guy laying on the sidewalk alongside Kwando, empty bottles on the ground next to him. We used to live two blocks from that plaza and shopped there almost daily. We sold that house as we watched the crime move up our street, into our driveway. We still live in the general neighborhood but we don’t shop there anymore.

When we run errands in Chico while we’re out doing chores, one of us always has to sit in the truck while the other goes into the store so our tools won’t get stolen. I’ll never forget the transient who tried to act super drunk while he rolled his way along the bed of our truck trying to see what we had in the back. When he rolled across my passenger window my dog went nuts – it was comical to see how fast the man sobered up and walked away.

Chico used to be such a great town, it’s hard to see. But you know, it’s our own fault – we elected the people on council. We elected the people who passed a “Shelter Crisis Designation,” got us into a lawsuit, built a cardboard “homeless” camp on a children’s bicycle track, passed a sham measure designed to force us to sue if we don’t like what they’re doing, raised our sales tax, instituted an illegal garbage tax and most recently, announced a sewer tax over Christmas holiday.

Speaking of the garbage tax, no, I have not heard back from our lovely and vivacious city clerk about my request to agendize “Zolly v City of Oakland”. I have the worst feeling this is going to play out like the illegal cell phone tax the city of Chico collected for years. Measure L will not help us here – Chico taxpayers had to wait for a rich guy named Donald Sipple to sue cities all over California for collecting the tax, and then wade through a very misinformative campaign for the measure Ann Schwab put on the ballot – Measure J. In my experience trying to defeat that measure, I was shocked how many people didn’t know they were paying such a tax, and the very common response was, “what does Chico do to provide me with cell phone service?” The answer – nothing, it was just a shakedown. Like the sales tax, the garbage tax and the sewer tax.

So I’ll keep you posted here, and you keep me posted – don’t just stand there with your mouth open, flies will get in. Please cc me on your email to clerk Debbie Presson debbie.presson@chicoca.gov asking for the Zolly v City of Oakland discussion to be agendized, and I’ll post it here on the blog.

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Is it legal, or not? The trash franchise needs to be discussed – please write a note to your council rep and/or clerk Debbie Presson asking that this subject be placed on an upcoming agenda

22 Jan

This morning I sent an email to City Clerk Debbie Presson (debbie.presson@chicoca.gov), asking her how to agendise a discussion regarding the city’s trash franchise/tax. A recent Supreme Court decision says the city’s “franchise” is really a tax, and needed to be run in a ballot measure.

I’d like to ask for agendization of a discussion of “Zolly v City of Oakland” at an upcoming council meeting. Do I need to fill out a special form? Please advise – thanks, Juanita Sumner

INFO: Last August the CA Supreme Court ruled with plaintiffs in the case of Zolly v. City of Oakland, and “The court’s opinion answers the question of whether the city’s franchise fees are categorically exempt from the voter approval requirements as a matter of law — and concludes they are not”. (League of CA Cities)

Here’s a link to the case text  https://casetext.com/case/zolly-v-city-of-oakland-15

According to Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association lawyer Laura Dougherty, this is all it should take – notifying them of the legal decision. But you know these guys, it would be great if a few of you pitched in and wrote a note too. It’s all there, and you can google “Zolly vs City of Oakland” for skads more information.

I’ll keep you posted as to any response I get. Yeah, it’s Sunday – I wonder if Debbie Presson is watching the John Wayne marathon on GRIT? If you’re looking for me you’ll find me in front of the boob tube with a bag of popcorn, watching “The Three Mesquiteers”

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Letter to the Editor: tell your city representative the garbage tax is illegal

19 Jan

I was surprised this morning to see my letter to the editor in the ER – I only sent it yesterday. Here’s a prediction I’ll make – Wolcott is going to be gone soon, and Tuchinsky will take over the paper. At least Tuchinsky’s a journalist, we’ll see what kind of agenda he has as time goes by.

Of course, the media was a lot of the problem with the sewer rate hike. For one thing, nobody said anything about it until the day before the hearing, and then the tv news ran a really misleading piece, saying nothing about the doubled charge, saying it would only raise the “average” sewer bill about $15, and then quoting two people who admitted they really didn’t know anything about it but guessed it was okay because the city says it’s in a heap of trouble. Wow.

So yeah, I’m feeling like a whacked mole alright. It’s hard to live in a city full of mole rats. Frankly, my husband and I tried to sell our property in Chico last year but one developer after another told us, essentially this: The city of Chico is impossible to deal with, and there’s a bunch of cheap land in Paradise.

There are big lots all over my neighborhood. That was the Chico lifestyle. Now it’s too expensive to water your lawn or keep big trees, so yeah, people want OUT. You’d think our one and two acre lots would be in huge demand. But, every time we get a new city council, we get a new philosophy of how to build. It was infill, now it’s sprawl again. They want that Valley’s Edge thing because: 1) Bill Brouhard and his partner Doug Guillon have their fists up half the asses in this town 2) it’s going to bring in a BONANZA! of builders’ fees, property taxes and new people to bring in sales taxes and other revenues.

You ever wonder where all the money goes? Do they just roll it up and smoke it? Just like the other one… Do they just eat it? Do they stuff it up their asses in some weird sex ritual? NO! They put it in the Pension Stabilization Trust and use it to pay down their bad decisions. It’s better than heroin – it’s POWER!

Well, that was my rant for the day. You should read HJTA president Jon Coupal – he’s scary! He says the government is trying to tax older folks out of their homes so cities all over California can foreclose whole older neighborhoods for redevelopment.

Well, he’s right, but you won’t believe it until you’re about 60. That’s the dilemma – young people like Addison Winslow, a product of the California schools, are picnic’ing on the railroad tracks, and you just can’t convince them there’s a train coming. We’re overbuilding again, and last time we did that, the foreclosure notices were posted in yards all over Chico and Butte County. Before 2008, you never saw foreclosed homes in Chico – a quick search just now brought up 153 foreclosures for sale, in Chico, on just one website.

So, put both hands over your junk and get ready – the Chico we’ve known and loved is headed for the Glory Hole. It’s replacement – just another shithole along the freeway. I may not be able to stop that, but I can bitch about it. I’ll run my letter here, for those of you who have given up on the ER. Below that I also included a link to the post I made last year(?) about garbage rates gone up.

The city of Chico has managed to trick residents into allowing a major sewer rate change without fully informing ratepayers of their rights. Homeowners were given 45 days between Thanksgiving and New Year to prepare, with no ballot to protest the change, which also allows for yearly increases without public approval.

The same council tried to establish an illegal Pension Obligation Bond without voter approval and was threatened with a lawsuit from Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

So it’s not surprising that the trash franchise the city entered into years ago is also illegal. Last year the Supreme Court ruled in Zolly vs. City of Oakland that cities can’t collect franchise fees for the use of city streets.

My household trash bills have shown a 60% increase since we were forced to switch service to Waste Management. Now we’re told we must pay extra for a yard waste bin to separate food waste.

This franchise is clearly a tax that was run under the radar without public approval. The money does not go toward street repairs but is dumped into the General Fund. Last year it paid for raises for Chico PD.

According to Laura Dougherty, legal counsel for HJTA, “all a ratepayer needs to do now is send a copy of the Zolly decision to their city…”

I will certainly do so and urge other ratepayers to do same. I don’t like being treated like a cash cow – do you?

Waste Management has raised rates 19% over the past year – why isn’t that money being spent on the street in front of your house?

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Why did the city give $8 million from the sewer fund to PG&E? New thermostats for city hall? Again?

16 Jan

Tomorrow night the city of Chico will hold a hearing regarding their proposed sewer tax. Make no mistake – this is a tax, but it’s legal now because the city owns the sewer plant. One thing that really bothers me about this “rate change”, is that when they sell the plant to Cal Water – and you can check the agendas for yourself, they’ve been talking about it – Cal Water will no longer have to notice us for annual rate hikes.

Not to mention, the city is going to be charging us for water we already paid for, including water that never enters the sewer system. All because they can’t handle money Downtown. Here’s a good example I found in the 22-23 budget – out of an $11 million sewer fund, they gave PG&E “$8,487,515 to Project 50522 PG&E SST Phase 2… to reduce the costs of energy usage at City facilities and to help meet Climate Action Plan goals.”

https://chico.ca.us/sites/main/files/file-attachments/2022-23_city_annual_final_budget.pdf?1664554257

Sure, one of those facilities is the sewer plant, where PG&E made some upgrades, but new thermostats at City Hall? How does that pencil out of the sewer budget? Cause that’s how they spend money Downtown. Sure they have enough money in the sewer budget to make (more) upgrades at City Hall, or should we call it, “Taj Mahal”? But they need a sewer tax, and a sales tax, and they need the Utility Tax AND franchise fees on PG&E, Comcast and Waste Management?

As I said in my last post, those franchise fees, particularly the trash tax, are all under question as of a Supreme Court decision made about six months ago in the case of Zolly vs the City of Oakland. Laura Dougherty of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association suggests we inform our city of that decision, hoping we won’t have to sue, as did ratepayers in Oakland. But, she gave me a list of attorneys, I’ll be keeping that in my side pocket.

Something my dad told me when my brother went in the Navy – nobody is going to stick up for you, you have to learn to stick up for yourself. I’ll give you that same advice. And I’ll borrow a quote from actor/voice artist/radio ham Harry Shearer – if you’re looking for honesty and truth in government you’re looking for apples in the cheese section.

If you haven’t turned in your sewer rate protest already please do it either today or tomorrow at the city building. Don’t forget your parcel number – I did, and now I have to go Downtown to fix it. But, like my dad told me, nobody is going to do that for me. I just hope I don’t step in bum shit or get hit by a drunk walking by Duffy’s.

Next time let’s compare Chico to the state of California – both make too many spending decisions based on ideology – their own – instead of pragmatic solutions for the tax and ratepayers.

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