Tag Archives: Ann Schwab Chico CA

Ann Schwab offers to give us a half-cent decrease in exchange for a four-and-a-half cent INCREASE!

2 Sep

City council races are supposed to be “non-partisan” – tell that to Ann Schwab. But watch it, Bob Mulhullond might move in to impale you with those over-sized scissors he used at the Grand Opening of Democratic Headquarters on Mangrove Avenue.

You’ll recognize the building, I’m sure, by the “Yes on TAXES!” signs posted out front. The Democrats have got a wish list of tax increases, starting with Jerry Brown’s statewide sales tax increase, and the Chico Democrats are on the bandwagon.

I haven’t noticed any “Yes on Measure J” signs out front of the building yet. Measure J – that’s Ann Schwab’s cell phone tax. I call it that because she promoted it and wrote the “For” argument on the ballot pamphlet, so I assume it’s her little bastard. And what an ugly baby it is!   A  4.5 percent tax to your cell phones, as well as your pager, and forms of “electronic communication” that haven’t even been introduced to the public yet. As a matter of fact, as soon as the phone companies start charging you for your Skype fix, Schwab will tax that  too.

Here’s the text of measure J, as it will appear on the November ballot:

Shall an ordinance be adopted to amend the City’s Telephone User’s Tax in order to: 1) reduce the tax rate from 5% to 4.5%   2) modernize the definition of telephone communication services subject to the tax to include new technologies such as wireless and voice over internet services  3)apply the tax to all telephone communications services regardless of the type of technology used; and 4) reflect changes to federal and state law?

I have to take this thing apart and look at it – where is that smell coming from?

Well, here, isn’t this funny – it says, first of all, “reduce the tax rate from 5% to 4.5%” – that doesn’t make sense. See, currently, there is no  tax on your cell phone, so how could Schwab be reducing it? The city charter only allows for the taxing of electricity, natural gas, water, and land lines, at 5%. The rate will stay the same on your PG&E bill and Cal Water bill – 5 percent – but she’s offering to lower it to 4.5% on old school telephones  in order to get us to agree to allow her to tax our cell phones too.  

She’s crafty, that gal, and what balls of brass she has! She’s offering a half-cent decrease on the dollar for your landline in order to get a four-and-a-half-cent INCREASE on the dollar on your cell phone. Read that again, and then page me.

I just googled this “fact” – about 30 percent of U.S. households have dumped their land lines, as of February 2012. You can take that or leave it, or google it for yourself. I would say, that’s understated – only one of my friends has a landline, that I know of. I’m guessing a few more that I have never discussed it with. But alot of my friends, and all of my tenants, are going wireless, and loving it. Little did they know, silly rabbits, that the bunny bopper was heading for town.

I’d guess a lot of the existing landlines are for businesses, and that probably won’t change any time soon. I wonder how much a half-cent decrease would amount to for the average business? How would it stand up to the extra 4.5 cents on the dollar they would pay for their cell phones, pagers, and “voice over internet protocol”?

So much for “reduce the tax rate…”

Next we see how the city attorney uses the word “modernize” to mean, “tax something that has never been taxed before.”  Here’s where this measure enables $taff to extend this tax, at their discretion, to “ to include new technologies such as wireless and voice over internet services “.  As Mark Sorensen puts it, “to include all and any new forms of electronic communication, now or in the future…” 

I don’t know if you’ve been following this:

https://chicotaxpayers.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/hennessy-is-using-city-funds-like-walnut-shells-to-hide-and-move-money/

but I’ve got a problem with allowing a person who won’t give us a straight accounting of what she’s doing with our money any further discretion to take MORE of our money.

So much for “modernization.”

The next part of the measure seems harmless enough until you read Schwab’s “Argument For,”  which I posted here:

https://chicotaxpayers.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/ann-schwabs-argument-in-favor-of-measure-j-to-protect-against-the-risk-of-losing-illegally-collected-tax-revenues/

The measure says, “apply the tax to all telephone communications services regardless of the type of technology used”.    But Schwab injects something more into it – “ ensure that all users of communication services are treated the same,” insinuating that some of us are getting away with something.  She’s trying to pit the land line users against the cell phone users. Hopefully, that tack will turn around to bite her on the ass – I’m guessing, the majority of landline users are also cell phone users, and I think I covered that pretty thoroughly already. Why would you allow yourself to be hookwinked that way by a woman who runs her fiscal house like a betting parlor? 

And that knocks “let’s be fair – let’s screw everybody!” out of the ballpark.

Finally, she reminds us that this measure is the result of a court decision stating that many California cities, including Chico, have been taking a tax off your cell phone illegally. Our city charter, like those of cities up and down the state,  had adopted the standard language of the “telecommunications tax” over 20  years ago, before cell phones were widely available to the general public. The original ordinance, which still sits on the books Downtown, only allows for the taxation of land lines. But the city has been collecting the cell phone tax off of willing providers, like AT&T,  all these years. At the maximum rate allowed by city charter – five percent. 

In the Southern California town of Chula Vista, city $taff undertook a similar scam, described by one attorney as “a failed attempt to retroactively authorize UUTs” . The voters not only overturned their Measure H, but are currently undertaking a class action suit to demand return of the money, taken illegally by their city staff. Unbelievably, as of this time last year, the city of Chula Vista was still collecting the illegal tax, even after the voters overturned their “modernization” measure and mounted a lawsuit. The lawsuit is scheduled to be heard in January of 2013. 

Please tell your friends and neighbors about this taking. How many of us can afford to shell out more money for city staff and their outrageous salaries? Why are we paying the “employee share” of their benefits? Why are we paying one staffer over $85,000 a year plus benefits to foist a bag ban on our local grocery stores? Can we really afford to have Lori Barker, at over $200,000 a year, writing an unenforceable smoking ban? 

Where are the jobs? 

Please join me and the Chico Taxpayer’s Association in rejecting Measure J. 

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Finance Committee to take up Section 908 – will Jennifer Hennessy do her job? What does the new city manager think?

27 Aug

I don’t know how many people are available for an 8am meeting Downtown, but tomorrow morning the Finance Committee will take up the issue of Jennifer Hennessy not complying with Section 908 of the Chico City Code. 

908 says that the Finance Director is supposed to give a current update regarding our budget, just like you do every month with your check book. You see what you’ve taken in, and you see what’s gone out. It should all be there, so you don’t get in trouble with your finances! Heck! You wouldn’t want to write rubber checks – Mike Ramsey will slap you in jail for that! 

The city of Chico is in a deep amount of deficit-doo right now because Hennessy hasn’t been making these reports. The only reports she will make are “after the fact” – by the time she tells us anything, we’re already in trouble. And the reports she gives are never clear – she spends hours on these ridiculous “power point presentations,” with little cartoon figures and charts and graphs, without ever really telling us exactly how much money has come in and where it’s gone. We just see budgets – like Scott Gruendl said, “budgets are a fairy tale…”. They’re speculative, imagined, hoped-for,  but rarely achieved. And Hennessy announces so many budget changes due to “unexpected downturns” that it’s hardly worth the paper to even write the damned things. 

I’d frankly rather have a neat little accounting of what she’s taken in for each fund every month, and what’s  she’s spent. She won’t give us these details – leaving a suspicious person to speculate that she is doing something inappropriate with the money. 

The state parks department was funneling money into a secret fund that was being used to buy state worker’s unused vacation time. I’m sorry, but until Hennessy tells us what’s going on, I’m a suspicious person.

So, if you have the time tomorrow morning, that’s 8am, at City Hall, in the little conference room off the main chamber. There’s speculation that new city manager Brian Nakamura will make an appearance, I’ll keep you posted. I can only stay half an hour cause I got a dentist appointment. Yeah, I saw Marathon Man too, Stop It! 

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Measure J – That’s Ann Schwab sliding her hand into your purse.

23 Aug

The other night the Chico City Council signed a new city manager at $217,000 a year, plus benefits. That’s an increase of about 14 percent over retiring city manager Dave Burkland’s salary. Meanwhile, the median American income, according to the census bureau, has fallen by 7 percent. In Chico, the 2010 figure for median income was about $38,000. Seven percent would be a hit of over $2500. OUCH!

I wonder if the researchers took into account those families whose incomes have remained fairly steady, while expenses like utilities and taxes have grown unrepentantly. You’ve probably received the same notices I have got from PG&E and Cal Water – they seem to raise rates at will these days. You probably read Cal Water’s notice that we weren’t using enough water so they had to raise rates to recoup money they spent when they thought we were going to use a lot of water. But,  talking out both sides of their mouth, they raise the rate per ccf tremendously when we use over a certain amount of water – to encourage us to conserve water! What kind of circular bullshit is that?

The same circular bullshit you get from the city of Chico, that’s what.  For several years now we have heard one report after another about our dismal financial situation. We had to close a fire station for a month.  We can’t keep enough cops on the street to serve a citation for a second noise complaint. We don’t have enough money to fix our streets. We don’t have enough money to properly maintain Bidwell Park.  But without missing a beat, they tell us they are increasing their own salaries.  They are signing a contract with Chico PD that gives them a raise, along with structured overtime and pays the “employees’ share” of their benefits and pension premiums. And now they hire a guy at $217,000  a year, plus the benefits and pension payments, whose successor in Hemet is only making $162,000 a year.

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/hemet/hemet-headlines-index/20120821-hemet-council-selects-orme-as-interim-city-manager.ece

And they propose to cover these asinine appropriations by raising our taxes. That is the intention behind the phone tax –  measure J – already placed on this November’s ballot, as well as the motivation behind Tom Lando’s coming sales tax increase proposal – watch for that in a special election in 2013.

Measure J is our immediate problem. It is billed by it’s sponsors, including Mayor Ann Schwab, as a tax reduction.  Sure, they will lower the existing land line tax from 5 percent to 4.5. But this measure will allow them to extend the tax to cell phones, pagers, and forms of electronic communication that have not even been introduced to the consumer yet.   This measure will allow the city Finance Director to add any future form of electronic communication that is included in your phone bill to the tax base without consulting the voters. You will simply see the increase on your phone bill.

Remember when the only people who had cell phones, or “mobile phones,” were guys like Elvis Presley? Yeah, a cell phone used to be for rich people only, a status symbol even. Well, try living without one today.  Land lines are pretty unreliable – unless you live within a few blocks of the router over in college town, you get hit and miss service, at best. When we had AT&T, we’d be without either phone or internet service for days at a time.  We felt forced to switch to cell phones. When my son was looking for a job, they expected him to have his own cell phone, mom or dad’s number was a real turn-off to employers.  So, yes, in this day and age, not having a cell phone has become akin to not having a car – what’s wrong with you?

This cell phone tax is a matter of TAKING, by people who just expect to TAKE. The city does nothing to guarantee or improve or even cheapen the cost of your cell phone service. They’ve actually refused to permit cell phone towers on occasion, citing “aesthetics.” But they expect to add a 4.5 percent TAX to a service you contract with a commercial provider?

We need to get the word out on this TAKING. Ann Schwab and her friends are billing it as a TAX DECREASE! You know better, and you need to tell your friends, your co-workers, and people with whom you do business – you need to start telling everybody you know who lives in the city of Chico, that they are about to be had.

I’m starting with my close friends, and then I’m going to mail letters to people like my dentist, my auto shops, my vet, etc. You would be surprised how many people don’t know what this phone tax is all about. People who don’t have time to educate themselves often depend on their friends to give them the heads-up. Be a good friend, tell everybody you know about this tax.

That’s Measure J, Ann Schwab’s plan to stick her little pig nose into your phone bill.  Bad Pig! Time to give her a sharp rap across the snout – No on J!

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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss! $217,000 a year, plus benefits. And he’s a liar, to boot.

19 Aug

I got a comment a couple of weeks ago from a person who identified themself as a resident of the town of Hemet, Ca, and said that our city was about to hire their city’s manager. And what do you know – our council went right ahead and did that the other night. And it was unanimous, so Sorensen and Evans went right along with it. 

This Nakamura dude only made it in Hemet for three years. And when their financial ship appeared to be on the rocks, he kept it a secret that he was looking for another job, here in Chico. 

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/hemet/hemet-headlines-index/20120815-hemet-city-manager-accepts-chico-job.ece

In fact, according this story, he lied to his bosses about his intentions when they found out he had visited Chico – he told them it was just to “share with the council my experience on how we made our city a wonderful place, and that’s it.” For one thing, Hemet isn’t such a wonderful place, it’s a shithole with piles of problems. 

According to the story, “Two weeks ago, (Nakamura)  said he was no longer involved in talks with Chico, but on Wednesday said Chico officials contact [sic]  him last week and negotiations moved swiftly.”

Hemet lies in the middle of SoCal, out in the wasteland east of San Diego. It’s one of those towns that has grown by leaps and bounds over the boom years. In the 90’s, they actually allocated $800,000 in RDA money to begin building a LAKE, to draw tourism.  And now there Hemet sits, LAKESIDE! revenues dropping, and up to it’s ass in debt. In fact, if you scan over their agendas and records, you find Hemet is in the same kind of mess Chico is in  – they’ve  been using their RDA like a credit card too.

So, why are we hiring a guy to replace Dave Burkland that is just going to continue us down the same road to Perdition that Dave Burkland had us on? A guy who is jumping the ship he helped sail into the reef? Just like Burkland.

And, at 47, you know he’s just coming here to retire. Mark my words, in three years, this POS will retire at over $150,000 a year. 

Ask your mayor, Ann Schwab. You can e-mail her at aschwab@ci.chico.ca.us, or drop her some snail mail at 555 Vallombrosa Ave, #74, Chico CA 95926. Decisions this woman is making are killing our town. Write to the other council members too – they also voted to hire this man. You can get them through Debbie Presson at dpresson@ci.chico.ca.us. 

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First Mate Dave Burkland declares MUTINY! Schwab too busy campaigning to take the helm.

15 Aug

As you may have read, local business owner and city council candidate Toby Schindelbeck has been after  Finance MisDirector Jennifer Hennessy and City Mangler Dave Burkland to comply with the city code and hand over monthly budget updates that include all the pertinent information demanded by the code – including our revenues. 

Maybe you’ve lived here long enough to remember a string of embezzlements that made the news – several local non-profits and a couple of long-time local businesses – all hookwinked by older women bookkeepers, for  10’s of thousands of dollars. One popular Esplanade business owner recently said he’s still suffering the effects, almost 10 years later.

Besides the fact that they were all older ladies with good reputations, the common thread in these crimes was how they did it – they just didn’t report all the revenues they were taking in, taking the money themselves instead. That sounds like an old trick, doesn’t it? Well, obviously, it still has the potential to work.

Those of us who’ve been watching the city $taffers consistently have heard budget reports that just didn’t make sense – most recently, the vast discrepancies in the budget report Hennessy gave early this year, and a May report in which she was suddenly short so much money the city had to close Fire Station 5.  Now, if she was doing the job for free, that might fly, but we pay this woman roughly $160,000 a year, and you’d think she could do the job for that kind of dough. 

So Schindelbeck’s request for the monthly finance reports required by the code is not only reasonable, it’s necessary. We need to press this woman to make better explanation of where all this money is going. 

I’ll tell you where it’s going – Hennessy’s salary has increased by over $30,000 since she gave her first warning of “deficit.” 

But Hennessy will only do the job her bosses require, and Dave Burkland tells Schindelbeck in this e-mail below, he’s not going to make her do it, even while admitting it’s perfectly do-able.

From: “David Burkland” <DBURKLAN@ci.chico.ca.us>

Date: August 10, 2012 5:26:26 PM PDT

To: “Toby Schindelbeck”
Cc: “Jennifer Hennessy” <jhenness@ci.chico.ca.us>, “Lori Barker” <LBARKER@ci.chico.ca.us>
Subject: Re: Public Records Request response

 Mr. Schindelbeck,
 
I am responding to your email dated August 7, 2012, to the City’s Finance Director, Jennifer Hennessy.  As you know, the Council directed the Finance Committee to agendize an item to determine the form and content of monthly financial information that would best benefit the Council and community. As I mentioned at the Council meeting, staff researched Section 908 of the City Charter and found that monthly reports provided to the Council over the years had varied significantly and had included the monthly claims and investment reports that the Finance Director recently provided you. 
 
In your email you acknowledge the receipt of information which Ms. Hennessy provided you in response to your Public Records Act request for monthly financial reports as defined by the Chico City Charter section 908. 
 
You then repeat your request for such monthly reports and state that you understand the Public Records Act to allow the City 10 days to provide the requested information and that “[t]his applies to Public Records which are created, or which should have been created…..”
 
The Public Records Act requires the City to provide records which are in existence at the time the request for those records is received.  It does not require that records be created.  To the extent that you are requesting the City to create records in a form that you feel should have been done in the past, there is no requirement that the City create those records. 
 
At this time, the City has provided you all of the records that it has which we believe are responsive to your request and, therefore, has fully complied with your request. 
 
I believe that the Finance Committee will take this opportunity to focus on financial information needs going forward.  Any recommendation from the Finance Committee will go to the full Council for final action.  We’ll keep you informed of the dates and times of the meetings and hope you have an opportunity to participate.  If you have any questions, please call me at 896-7201 or email: dburklan @ci.chico.ca.us.
 
Dave Burkland
City Manager
Well, there it is – a guy who is paid nearly $200,000 a year telling us he’s not going to do his job.  And where’s his boss, Ann Schwab? 
Currently Schwab is too busy running her re-election campaign, playing Evita! for the students, to do anything about running the city of Chico.  
But you can make use of the above mentioned e-mail addresses to let Burkland and Hennessy know how you, the taxpayer, feel about this. Notice how they both took steps to make it harder to figure out their city e-mail address – most employees just use their first initial and last name – notice how Burkland does his all in caps, and both he and Hennessy leave off the last letter of their name. They don’t like their e-mail addresses given out, so be nice.  But be firm. Tell them we want to hear the reports Burkland admits are do-able EVERY MONTH, like it says in the charter.
Like Toby Schindelbeck often reminds us – the city Charter is our constitution, and we should take it more seriously. 

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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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