Chico Taxpayers Association

Somebody came to the blog via a search – “cal pers going broke…” So I googled that, and found this interesting article from “The State Worker”.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article204340914.html

Public employees just now losing confidence in CalPERS? So now they want 401K’s.

Just before this article was written, Chris Constantin and Mark Orme (and probably others) opted for 401K accounts instead of asking for more money toward their calpers pensions.

 https://chicotaxpayers.com/2018/02/27/calpers-nears-insolvency-meanwhile-city-of-chico-uses-cost-allocation-to-rationalize-fund-pilfering-to-pay-pension-costs/

Unfortunately the link to the Enterprise Record article in that post is no longer good – the ER is in so much trouble, financially, they can’t afford to let anybody read for free? Links I’ve posted to other articles in newspapers all over California still work years later, the Enterprise Record insists everybody has to subscribe. I’m sorry, journalism is dead.

You’ll just have to hold your nose and read the HR documents, they’re still good.

Of course this move does not save us any money – the city of Chico is trying to convince us we’re still on the hook for these pensions, meanwhile setting up new 401K accounts at the same time. 

We need to bite the bullet and get out of CalPERS, now, and then we need to get rid of these bloated management employees and start over with employees who expect to pay their own freight. 

City of Chico is such a mess – have you been out to South Chico lately? The transient epidemic is a lot worse on the other side of Little Chico Creek. As you drive over the bridge onto Mulberry you see an increasing transient camp on the little triangle of grass and trees that acts as a median. It’s public land, so they move right in, just like Bidwell Park. Meanwhile, the city debates over “the homeless problem,” giving CHAT $28,000 in CBGF money. 

https://www.chicohousingactionteam.org/

These people run “safe shelters” in revolving locations around town, with a lot of secrecy, because they know Chico residents are sick of transient criminals being brought into their neighborhoods through various, unrelated programs.  Their future goal is to get land and house transients in what amounts to sheds, with common toilets, electricity, and running water, all provided by generous donations? No, they’ve got their (expletive) in the Community Block Grant Funding, which is made up of tax dollars. 

In past, CBGF money has gone to organizations like The Opportunity Shop, the Cat Coalition, the Nature Center, the Blue Room – it’s astounding to me how they hand this money out without the kind of scrutiny a sound financial institution would give a borrower. Get a load of CHAT’S “budget” – and think back to the mound of paperwork you had to turn in for your first mortgage. 

Speaking of mortgages, you property tax payers should really sit in on a Finance Committee meeting sometime when they’re forgiving all the rules for somebody who borrowed city money to buy a house and now wants all the rules and requirements forgiven, even the loan itself forgiven. It happens several times a year, watch the agendas. 

You’d think they had a cookie jar without a bottom on it. Oh yeah – that’s US! 

As we could have predicted, local agencies all over California are out to raise tax revenues to cover their pension deficit. According to Dan Walters,

https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/local-officials-avoid-p-word-as-they-push-new-taxes/

“The California Taxpayers Association counted 98 proposals to raise local taxes directly, or indirectly through issuance of bonds that would require higher property taxes to repay.”

Walters predicts more on the November 2018 ballot. He says most tax proponents are afraid to mention the “p-word”, instead making rainbow promises about public safety and infrastructure maintenance.

Ha ha, the p-word, that’s good. 

Here we have Chico Chamber, Chico Unified School District, and Chico Area Recreation District all banging pots for their tax increases. The Chamber is running a campaign on behalf of the city of Chico  to put a sales tax increase on a ballot.  CUSD is talking about still another bond measure for the ballot, having just passed about $150 million bond back in 2016.  CARD wants to mail assessment ballots to property owners to see if they will tax themselves. 

All three talk about vast improvements they will make with the money, but only the Chamber of Commerce is mentioning pension deficit. They want $3 million for more hires to the police department, $90 million to fix roads – and $130 million to pay down the pension deficit. They argue that we, as a community, should accept this pension deficit as our shared responsibility, all the while threatening us with increasing crime and lower quality of life if we don’t pay more.

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2018/05/24/chamber-special-report-3-million-for-more-cops-90-million-to-fix-roads-130-million-for-the-pension-deficit/

The school district denied my claims that the Measure K bond money would go toward pensions instead of the kids.  But they started crying poor mouth almost immediately after the passage of Measure K, citing increasing demands from CalPERS and CalSTRS to pay more into their pensions. School finance officer Kevin Bultema told me only three months after the election, “The increase PERS and STRS costs are certainly a challenge for the district’s operations budget and will need to be addressed with either increased revenues from the state or cuts in CUSD’s program expenditures in the future.” 

CARD has followed their consultants’ advice, trying to get the media to portray them as fiscally sound when they are not. How about the spin they put on a $641,000 deficit increase with this story in the Enterprise Record.

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2018/06/06/chico-recreation-board-says-its-better-off-regarding-pensions-huh/

So you see, Walters is right, they’re coming at us with all kind of whack. The most disconcerting is the proposal from Davis, California, that school employees should be exempt from paying parcel tax! 

This is going to go up their ass, just watch. Working people will only take so much. 

Well, after the run-in I had with the bum who was stealing out of recycling bins up and down my street last week, I heard from my good neighbor Phil today that his pick up truck had been “rummaged.” Parked in his driveway, more than 90 feet off the public street onto his property, surrounded by security lights. He said it must have been late in the night, because he and his wife like to sit out in their backyard until at least 11 pm. 

Allowing these freaks to walk through our neighborhoods on trash day, going through our stuff –  like I said before, it doesn’t stop with our trash/recycling bins, it leads to our cars and our sheds and right into our homes. They watch and learn, they know who goes to bed early, and who gets up early. They know when we got to work, and when our kids go to school. They know who is gone all day.  They know more about us than our neighbors. They know we leave what amounts to money in our recycling bins, and that Waste Management doesn’t pick them up until after noon. In my neighborhood it’s about 2:30 pm. Mayor Morgan told me they don’t get his recycling bin until after 3 pm. 

Here’s a solution for those who have created the problem – Waste Management needs to switch the pick-ups – start picking up recycling first, come back in the afternoon for the trash. I take my bins out by 8 am, the trash truck comes by 9:30. After the trucks have got everybody’s trash bins, they head back to Chico as recycling trucks. I’m not asking WM to buy more trucks – although that would have seemed reasonable given they were more than doubling their customer base. I’m just asking, pick up the recycling first, you are causing a crime problem. 

Recology had separate trucks, and both my bins were empty by 11:30. Make that 11:27 – I saw them, every week, and you could set your clock by the recycling truck. 

The mayor expressed his total lack of concern, telling me he liked the late pick-up because sometimes he forgot to put his bins out in the morning. 

Sean Morgan should get a button on his mouth, with a 5 second delay and a  team of experts that get to decide whether each remark should be uttered or flushed. He’s his own worst enemy – actually, his mouth, which seems to be completely disconnected from his brain, is his own worst enemy.

It’s frustrating talking to a person so entitled and yet so stupid. I would like to ask him – “Sean, how far would a bum make it up your street? At all? Before Peter Durfee or some other member of Chico PD was right up his/her ass?”  But he’s got a short attention span – he launched into an attack on Mark Herrera without answering the questions I’d already asked him. 

They come through my neighborhood by way of the city bike trail, the road to Bumville – also known as Bidwell Park. 

They’re also being allowed to camp at the “parklet” there where Pine and Cypress turn into Mulberry, at Little Chico Creek. People laying with all their garbage on the (finally) mowed grass. The garbage piles again line the creek, right behind the new low-income housing facing on Olive. Just a few blocks down, at Mulberry and 20th, there sits the old Victor building, site of a neat little landscape business, with freshly painted over tags every day, windows smashed out and boarded, weeds growing waste high all the way around. Up and down 20th and on toward Park, you see bums camped out between bushes all along the sidewalks. Garbage everywhere. Where’s code enforcement? 

But if a bum scratches a tag into the window of your Downtown business and you don’t get it replaced fast enough, Chico code enforcement chief of flatulence Leo DePaola will hit you with $180 fine. Where do those fines go? Right into DePaola’s back pocket? I’m just asking. 

Where’s the plan here? Who the hell is in charge? 

Ask a bum.