Gavin Newsom partnering with Chico for affordable housing on state property
“Randall Stone, the mayor of Chico, is welcoming the governor’s efforts which could help build much-needed housing locally, as the city has absorbed many displaced Camp Fire victims.”
I don’t know how you feel about roundabouts, but one fact we know for sure – they bring a lot of money into the city by way of grants.
From the Chico Enterprise Record, “According to senior traffic engineer Bikramjit Kahlon, the cost of the project is between $5 and $6 million. ‘It just depends when we go out to bid,’ he said Monday. The city’s match is about $1 million, with Caltrans funding the remainder amount.”
$5-6 million for one roundabout? Most of that will go into the salaries Downtown. An old contractor I know says “boots on the ground labor” and materials make up about 2% of the cost of these public jobs. This is one way Staff turns money we paid toward maintenance of our roads into their salaries and pensions.
Here’s a thought – how’d you like to see that million the city is kicking in on the street in front of your house? How far would that million go toward the streets in your neighborhood?
And again, they are using Camp Fire refugees as bait. Read these excerpts.
“Even before the Camp Fire pushed thousands more new residents into Chico, the intersection was known for commute-time traffic jams and lines of traffic out to the freeway, along with traffic accidents.”
“thousands more new residents”? I had to ask reporter Laura Urseny if she has any hard numbers on how many evacuees have settled in Chico since the fire. She had none, but asked city manager Mark Orme if he had any. “He [Orme] said he doesn’t have hard numbers from FEMA because of nonregistration, couch-living, trailers parked on streets etc. He said the city is still using the 10,000-15,000 estimate.”
So, Orme drives by your house, sees a trailer in your driveway, and assumes it’s full of evacuees? Sees somebody sitting on your couch through a front window and assumes you have a “couch liver” in your household? On this basis he assumes and reports that we have “10,000-15,000” new residents in our town?
Excuse me, this guy gets over $200,000/year in compensation, and he expects to give up this kind of crap?
Unfortunately he’s got a willing media to help him pull the wool over our eyes. Urseny skirts the truth, but keeps promoting the lie – “The project has been proposed for a long time, but has been sped up with the city’s dealings with Camp Fire impacts. However, Kahlon said there is no FEMA-related funding in the project.” If this project was truly necessitated by the Camp Fire evacuation, or any impacts, the city would be getting FEMA funding.
They started this campaign before the fire was even out. “The project was discussed during a public meeting about Camp Fire impact on Chico last year, but has been in the works much longer.” Here Urseny mentions a proposed refugee housing project that was rejected, but still includes it as a “Camp Fire impact”. “Initially, a FEMA proposal called for Camp Fire mobile homes to be placed on a vacant parcel on Eaton Road between Highway 99 and Cohasset Road, but that residential project has been abandoned. Nevertheless, the traffic on the current two-lane road is huge, impacted by Chico’s growing population, but also by residential subdivisions developing in north Chico.”
In the same edition that Urseny ran her promo piece, there was this map:
Map: See where Camp Fire evacuees have moved across the country
“Relocation destinations are also listed below from most to least popular, in terms of the number of households registered with FEMA now living there. FEMA only provided information about individual counties in California, not other states.”
In other words, if you had insurance on your destroyed home, and therefore did not go to the ridiculous lengths to register for something you were not eligible to receive, you were not counted.
The article said that 16,583 of the registered (and that includes entire households who live under one roof) have remained in all of Butte County. That includes Paradise, Magalia, Butte Meadows, Yankee Hill, Concow, Cohasset, Forest Ranch, Gridley, Live Oak – did I miss any? Personally, the Camp Fire victims I know are all planning to rebuild their homes in Paradise. Some have already hired private contractors to clear their lots and are already living back at their property. Some are struggling to live in unburned homes with no safe water or power, and dead/dying trees hanging over their heads. Roads are a mess, workers everywhere, and Butte County has not even started their lot-clearance program. But the folks I know are all determined to return, they have no desire to remain “stuck in Chico.”
And here’s another fact that Orme cleverly ignores – many of the folks who evacuated to Chico already worked here and drove down to town almost every day, where they also shopped and socialized.
So, the “impacts” are largely MADE UP. Staff continues to lie to get their way. Next Tuesday they will bring a revenue measure consultant to make report regarding the $25,000 survey they are planning to get us to tax ourselves to pay their pensions. They want $65,000 more for a consultant to actually run their campaign. This is illegal, but who will call them on it?
Will you?
You have to click on this post (title) to vote. Thanks for participating. You can only vote once but feel free to comment at the bottom of the post.
UPDATE: That was fun, I was surprised how many people participated, but no surprise at the results – 85% joined Chico State President Gayle Hutchinson in expressing disapproval of putting a low-barrier (anything goes) shelter a block from the college.
My kid is at University of Nevada, where they have a zero tolerance policy regarding “walkers” – transients are not allowed anywhere on campus. Workers, like my son, have radios, and whenever they see somebody who is obviously not a student or employee they are instructed to call security immediately. It makes me feel better to know they are serious about student safety at UNR, Meanwhile, here in Chico we’ve had a transient murder right on campus and reports of armed robberies and dead transients in the college neighborhoods.
Hutchinson, if she’s sincere about what she says about the shelter, should also do something to get the transients off campus, away from campus housing facilities, and out of the student parking areas.
And hey, let me know if you think of a good question for another poll, that was fun!
I asked my friend in Marysville about the latest news regarding the lawsuit Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and two Yuba County citizens have taken to court over Yuba County’s recently enacted 1 cent sales tax increase – Ballot Measure K.
The issue at hand is whether or not Measure K was promoted as a special tax, and therefore needed 2/3’s vote instead of 55%. The county now denies it was marketed as a special tax. But my friend recalls the campaign, “promises everywhere were made that it would go into a Special Fund. All of those safety meetings, polls/surveys, signs with flames and badges saying Keep Yuba County Safe. All the flyers and FB posts with promises after promises.”
She says the plaintiffs have “about 100 emails with proof of all of this. A County document that was done in Sept 2018 has how the Measure K money will be spent. 93% was designated to safety. 7% to essential services. “
Unfortunately the court recently refused the injunction to stop the tax increase until the trial, set for the end of August. So the increase went into effect April 1 – how appropriate. Folks are being told they can keep their receipts, and get a refund later if the lawsuit is successful. Like my friend says, “Ridiculous.” Imagine yourself sitting over that shoebox full of receipts, figuring the .01% refund on your cell phone calculator.
We’ll have to watch this one!
I got good news from Connie in Yuba City – Lou Binninger is back on the air!
Here’s the original link:
Here’s the tinyurl link, with preview:
https://preview.tinyurl.com/yy3jyyxo
The Yuba County radio station over which Lou previously broadcast his show was suffering a lot of problems with their infrastructure, and Lou’s show finally went off the air earlier this year. I heard from several frustrated fans who had been enjoying his Saturday morning show, and wanted to know what happened.
Of course he continues to write a weekly column or two with the Territorial Dispatch.
https://eterritorial.com/47-guest-writers/lou-binninger/14888-taxifornia
The Dispatch is a good read, with lots of local writers. Even a fishing column! They are also supported by lots of local businesses, you can see from their ads, they are truly a local paper. Too bad we don’t have anything like the Dispatch in Chico!
I hope you’ll give Lou a listen and a read, he keeps us informed of issues that don’t always make the papers.
Well, anybody who saw my last post and then saw my letter in the News and Review can see that I had to edit dramatically to get my letter in. When I sent my original letter to the address I’ve used for years, it was sent back, rejected for size? And I was told to use the form letter mechanism on the N&R website, which only allows 150 words. Snip, snip, snip – I still got my point across, and it was a good exercise.
Write those letters folks! When do I find the time? When I’m so pissed off I can’t sleep. Writing letters to the editor will save your teeth, believe me!
I sent the following letter to the Enterprise Record two days ago, watch for it, and write your letters too. Just yesterday Dan Walters ran a column about the spending of taxpayer money to pass revenue measures that will only end up being squandered on the pension deficit –
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article228799774.html
so people are thinking about this subject. Write now!
And don’t just write to the papers, forward to the city manager mark.orme@chicoca.gov and CARD general manager Ann Willmann annw@chicorec.com
Chico Area Recreation District board and staff have spent over $100,000 on consultants to help them pass a revenue measure but have yet to show the taxpayers that they can be trusted with money.
In 2014, CARD staff reported a pension deficit of $1,700,721 . Only five years later, that deficit has ballooned to $2,800,000, despite nearly $1,000,000 in “side fund payoffs”.
CARD staff announced they have “set aside” another $1,700,000 for payment toward the deficit, having admitted they have deferred maintenance to various facilities for years, including Shapiro Pool, which was closed permanently last year.
CARD only started asking employees to pay toward their own pensions in 2013, but management staffers pay 6% or less, with the general manager paying only 2 percent of an $108,500 salary.
CARD staff describe the pension/unfunded liability as “What we owe to CalPERS because of the difference in their guesses.”
Wrong. The pension deficit is the difference between what employees expect to get (70 percent of their highest year’s salary at age 55) and what they want to pay for it (less than 10 percent of their salary). For example, the general manager pays $2170/year toward a pension of more than $75,000. That is not sustainable.
CARD staff have used taxpayer revenues to enrich themselves while ignoring their mission. Now they tell us we need to pass a revenue measure, or they will further defer maintenance, close facilities, and cut programs. At the same time offering a grandiose new sports facility south of town? Let the board of directors know how you feel about that, at annw@chicorec.com
Dave Howell wrote a great letter to the News and Review, taking on the pensions. Thanks for going to the trouble to write these letters Dave, I know it’s not easy to get a letter in the N&R.
The problem is pensions
Re “Taxes and police” (Letters, by Martine Stillwell, March 14):
Martine Stillwell is justifiably outraged that our city’s politicians are pushing a tax increase to fix the roads after letting them fall into disrepair thus increasing the cost to repair them.
I wonder how much more outraged she would be if she knew that tens of thousands of our tax dollars are being paid to an opinion research firm to sell us that tax increase. And that doesn’t include the cost of the city bureaucracy’s staff time.
The reason for the awful condition of our infrastructure and the reason for this tax increase are the unsustainable cost of government employee compensation, especially pensions. For many years money for infrastructure repair has been siphoned off for raises and unsustainable pensions. Does she know our bureaucrats have pensions worth millions?
Yet instead of pension reform, our politicians believe that in a county with low wages, very high living expenses and a 21 percent poverty rate, the answer is to pass a tax increase that hits the poor the hardest.
I wonder if Martine and others will be outraged enough to vote in the next election against the tax increase and the politicians who push it and encourage others to do the same.
Dave Howell, Chico
In the same issue this letter appeared, editor Melissa Daugherty bitched about the park budget being shorted these last few years – but she didn’t mention why? So I wrote a letter about it.
Melissa Daugherty is correct (3/28), Bidwell Park has suffered deferred maintenance since massive layoff of park staffers over the last six years. The park department was absorbed into Public Works, where director Eric Gustafson oversees not only the park, but the airport, city buildings, street trees, right of way zones, street cleaning, traffic safety, city vehicles, and the sewer plant.
Like Dave Howell said (3/28), the problem is “the unsustainable cost of government employee compensation, especially pensions.” I’ll add, management top-heavy. Twelve management positions overseeing the park, including Gustafson, cost over $1 million in total compensation. The park division only has five “maintenance workers”, amounting to less than $300,000 in total compensation.
While staff defers maintenance in the park and other infrastructure all over town, they continue to pay almost $20 million a year toward their pensions, about $8 million of that toward the pension deficit. At the April 2 council meeting, staff recommends renewal of the CalPERS agreement, requiring employees to pay only 11% of the cost of their pensions, the taxpayers expected to pick up the deficit.
As long as council and staff continue to place the pensions ahead of the public, infrastructure will continue to be short changed, including Bidwell Park.
Juanita Sumner, Chico
I got my information from publicpay.gov (GCC, secretary of state)
https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=79&year=2017
and the city website – management contracts are available on the Human Resources page.
http://www.chico.ca.us/human_resources_and_risk_management/labor_agreements_home.asp
At the GCC website, you’ll see, the park budget also pays for several police/traffic officers, interns, and two “administrative assistants”. The city has to bring in Salt Creek inmates because they don’t have enough workers. And management is without a clue.
Eric Gustafson spends most of his time in meetings, same for “Resources Manager” Linda Herman. I’d bet my last $5 they don’t even own an appropriate pair of shoes to walk in the park. Both are clinically obese, and neither has any kind of credentials suggesting they are qualified to run a park.
The city continues to use the park and other sagging infrastructure to press for a revenue measure – I think we need to press for some firings Downtown. Starting at the top, with Mark Orme, followed by Chris Constantin, Scott Dowell, and every department head. It’s time for a tick dip.
This morning the Enterprise Record has two front page stories – more surveys blaming the Camp Fire evacuees for an uptick in crime and council votes to fund a “cooling center” at the Jesus Center.
Are you hearing what I’m hearing? Paradise residents, be damned! But you bums, you come with a stipend that goes directly into the salaries and benefits, so come on down!
The last letter I wrote about it is still sitting in “the queue” at the ER. New editor Mike Wolcott, already on two weeks vacation after less than six months on the job, tells me, “we are running about a week behind right now. We will run some extras later this week to catch up!”
That was last Saturday, and I still haven’t seen the letter. The ER didn’t run any new letters for three days after that. Gee, too much criticism of the city manager? I got this comment yesterday:
I too take offense with the constant implications that the people from Paradise are somehow the cause of the increase in crime in Chico. I would like to see proof the increase has been from Paradise residents. Also, the increased traffic have caused the roads of Chico to be in disarray, they were in disarray before the Camp fire. The people of Paradise have gone through, and are still going through an horrendous ordeal. I understand we have impacted your city but believe me would have rather not. You have a large homeless population which increased because people from all over the state were benefiting from our loss. I understand that Paradise residents have inconvienced Chico, but please don’t add to our nightmare by pointing fingers and casting blame for everything that is negatively happening in Chico.
One letter to the ER also pointed out, most Paradise residents already shopped here and many work in Chico. Those people already drove to Chico almost daily. Like Ms. Thorup says, Chico streets and roads were already a mess. Street maintenance was already a hot topic, with long time residents in older neighborhoods all over town complaining of potholes, flooding, tree hazards, etc.
One entire neighborhood went up in arms over sewer connections that had ripped up the surface of their street, the city telling them there was not enough money to resurface. Sewer connections cost 10’s of thousands each, but no money for street repairs?
We’ve been calling the city staff on their bullshit for years – now they throw the fire victims up like a shield?
Enough. If the newspaper won’t print your complaints, first send them here:
mark.orme@chicoca.gov
and then send them to me, and you’ll see them here before you see them in the Enterprise Record.
Butte County League of Women Voters held a forum last week (March 14) – “Law Enforcement Records: Public or Private?” There’s been a lot in the news over the past year regarding the protection of police officers’ personnel records.
According to the LWV announcement, “Topics include public access to public records, the process to access records, a review of Senate Bill 1421, alternative means for transparency, public review and oversight, and the role of media in transparency and public access to information.”
I looked into our right to access records on the web, and found the following at AVVO.com a “lawyer directory”.
Question: Can a person get hold of a police officer personnel record’s that have complaint’s in the file, if so how do I get it. And how long does the police/sheriff dept keep the file after he is no longer working for the department?
If the officer arrested you, you can ask your lawyer to file a Pitchess motion. The police officer has to have either used excessive force, or lied or made a misleading statement in his report. When your lawyer files the motion, if the judge finds that there is good cause, he will order the department to give the names of people who’ve filed complaints. The records on complaints go back five years.
Your question doesn’t elude to the fact that you were arrested or have a case pending, and I am assuming that you don’t have a lawyer or he would answer this question. So if you don’t have a case pending, you have no right to go into police officer’s personnel records. There is a police officer’s bill of rights protecting them from such intrusions and as the prior answer indicated, you would never get access to their files anyway, only the names of people who might have lodged complaints and only after you have established the threshold requirements that you are entitled to them. Your lawyer won’t get to see the files either.
Wow, “ you have no right to go into police officer’s personnel records.” Police officers have a bill of rights protecting them. Included in that bill of rights is Obama’s proclamation that a cop who feels his life is in any sort of danger is allowed to kill without retribution or accountability.
Some people feel police officers have more right to privacy than the rest of us, while others feel this practice perpetuates bad cop behavior, refusing to hold cops accountable for what would be considered aggravated assault if one of us did it. A cop can even get fired by one city and, unless he is convicted of an actual crime, apply for a job in another city without disclosing anything about why he was fired.
To my knowledge, Butte County DA Mike Ramsey has cleared every officer who has come before him in a shooting incident. Last year he finally charged Chico PD officer Scott Ruppel with aggravated assault for an incident in which he was caught on body cam strangling a restrained prisoner in the back of his squad car.
“[Officer] Ruppel’s face was tensed with what appeared to be anger and his upper body moved into the rear of the SUV continuing to press on Rowley’s throat. “
Just three weeks previous Ruppel had fatally shot unarmed Tyler Rushing. Ramsey called the shooting justified. But I have to wonder – did/does Ruppel have an anger management problem? Ramsey dismissed that notion, saying Ruppel’s behavior in the strangling incident was “understandable” but not “justifiable.”
Regardless, Ruppel was acquitted by a Butte County jury, and allowed to retire with full pension and benefits. If he wants to, he can apply for another job, without telling any future employer about his past record. He could get a job at your kids’ school.
Yesterday was the two year anniversary of Desmond Phillips’ death. In Sacramento Black Lives Matter advocates are observing the first anniversary of the shooting of Stephon Clark. In both cases family and friends have complained about having trouble getting records that many people believe should be made public as a matter of routine.
So it seemed like a good idea to have a public forum, allow the public to question our local officials, including DA Ramsey and Chico PD chief Mike O’Brien, as to why these public employees are so protected. I was sorry that I could not attend. But a friend of mine attended and sent me the following remarks.
There were about 30 or 35 people there. It seemed about a third or more of the people there were wearing League of Women Voters badges.
Former city of Chico council member Andy Holcombe was moderator. Butte County Sheriff Cory Honea was there to answer questions, with County DA Mike Ramsey and current council member Scott Huber in the audience.
I didn’t see anyone from the ER or N&R, or anyone from the local TV or radio, although the event was being filmed by multiple cameras.
Most of what they talked about you could have got off the Web or through a google search and a lot was a discussion of police response/violence.
The audience was allowed to ask questions. One person asked why nobody from Chico PD bothered to show up. Holcombe responded that they invited the chief but he said he couldn’t attend and since the chief thought this was a chief level event he would not delegate it to one of his underlings.
Another person asked if Butte County or the City of Chico conducted asset forfeiture and if so what records were available on that. Honea answered the asset forfeiture question. I was surprised that he was so matter of fact about it because asset forfeiture is very controversial. The government can take your property with absolutely no due process. You don’t have to be convicted or even accused of any wrong doing. Honea said both Butte County and the City of Chico use it. He said you can go to the court to get records, but did not elaborate.
One member of Concerned Citizens for Justice said the City of Chico is refusing to release records prior to Jan 2 of this year but there was no conclusive answer to her question.
Panel member Dave Waddell mentioned the $900/year clothing allowance given to Chico PD officers. According to Waddell, officers are allowed to keep it for their personal use. It doesn’t have to be clothes. And he said many of the cops use it to buy guns. He was trying to find out what guns they are buying but the city refuses to say.
Waddell also mentioned a “tank” the city bought but Honea quickly corrected him and said it was an “armored vehicle.”
Thanks Rob, I really appreciate you sending me your take on the meeting. I wish I could get more people to attend meetings and send reports like that. You don’t have to be a journalist to write about what you see, or what concerns you.
I didn’t find any report in the media, but here’s Dave Waddell on why they needed to have the meeting in the first place.
http://chicosol.org/2019/03/14/butte-county-slow-id-recent-deputy-shooters/
My feeling is that we need a new DA.
The Nature Center used to be a special place, run by a professional and caring staff, and then the money grabbers from CARD took over. Now the programs for kids are expensive – CARD makes no bones about wanting more money.
Now they want the city to forgive a loan made to the previous management.
So excuse the mismanagement, CARD isn’t in this to serve anybody but themselves.
I assume you’ve heard the outrage over a stand of perfectly healthy valley oaks mowed down at the center recently. The city contracted Cal Fire, who brings in inmates from a low security jail called Salt Creek. These crews are trained to do fire safety clearance, and they’re great. But they’re not foresters and they need to be told exactly what to cut. According to an article in the News and Review, city public works director Eric Gustafson admits – they had no consistent symbols for marking the trees.
Oh give me a fucking break!
We have a city forester, hired a few years back, that’s supposed to be exactly what he was hired for. We have a “Parks and Resource Director” – Linda Herman. We have Gustafson. And the Center is supposed to be overseen by CARD. All this “management ” – Honey, I’m calling it MISMANAGEMENT.
I want to see dead brush, non-native species and sick trees removed from the park, this is work that needs to continue, but I don’t want the whole park turned into parking lots and buildings. I’m afraid this wasn’t really a mistake. The city has wanted to develop the area around the Nature Center for a long time, build more money makers like the center.
CARD, with the city’s blessing, has taken a facility that was a free resource for everybody and instituted an admission fee. Low cost Summer “nature camp” has turned into a daycare scheme that closes the center to the public for weeks at a time. The south side neighborhood has complained all the way back to Shakespeare in the Park about cars flooding their streets for these events, it’s no different with the daycare center.
Now the city is talking about a Maidu Village -another attraction that will bring in cars and necessitate more parking.
A friend reminds me – if Gustafson asked the city for permission to remove the trees for a parking lot, the shit would hit the fan. But now he can blame it on Cal Fire and oh well it’s just too late to do anything about it. He doesn’t even seem sorry about the incident.
This is how the city and CARD will continue to “manage” Bidwell Park unless we step up and say GUSTAFSON NEEDS TO GO. The park needs a true resource manager.
Write to the Park Commission and tell them you want your park back.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
Janet Thorup Paradise, CA March 19, 2019