Tag Archives: Bob Evans for city council

Hardest election ever!

21 Oct

I received my mail-in ballot Tuesday of last week, and I’ll remind everybody – those are due in about two weeks, so I’d get mine in the mail by next Tuesday if I were you.

I usually fill mine out and send it right in, but this time I’ve been having a hard time deciding on some of the candidates.

I’ve been waiting for Bob Evans to be honest and  tell us what he knows about Tom Lando’s plans to increase our local sales tax, but you’ve  probably heard that old adage about skinning a cat. Bob won’t answer me on that, I’ve asked him point blank and he just avoids the question, slicker than a whistle, that dawg. I know Bob has signed the “argument against” Measure J, but I sure haven’t seen him out  there making any other noise about it. Sometimes I wonder, did he just tack his name onto that argument? Or does he really want to defeat Measure J? I’ve offered him a yard sign, we’ll see if he takes me up on that. I wish he would have given the issue some space on one or two of those billboards he’s got around town.

Almost the first thing Bob said after he mounted the dais was that he’d like to work to get a formal policy by which we replace a council member who steps down before their term is up. Remember, Bob got on council two years ago by default, really. He didn’t win the election, he was appointed to Larry Wahl’s vacated seat.  That was a big fight because currently there is no written policy to fill a vacant seat. It caused a big fight when Colleen Jarvis died with only months left in her term. Her friends in the Esplanade League tried to get her boyfriend appointed by getting “guaranteed” votes from Scott Gruendl, Maureen Kirk, and Dan Nguyen-tan  – but  this turned out to be a Brown Act violation, and Jarvis’ seat remained empty until the following election.  That meeting was nasty, with the liberals mobbing the chamber, shouting insults, etc.

Ann Schwab and her friends tried to have Sor Lo, a local businessman with no local political history, appointed to Wahl’s seat.  The chambers were packed for that meeting and the conversation went on and off the track for hours.   Bob was finally appointed on what I’d consider a shoo-in – he had come within 100 votes of winning in the election, trailing Goloff by only 61 votes, and Gruendl by only a couple of hundred. This seems like a sound enough policy to me, but it was a wrestling match getting Evans in that seat and it will be another wrestling match next time we have a councilor step down. It’s divisive, the liberals have driven the wedge deeper into our community with every push they’ve made to install somebody without the consent of the voters.  We told them that after the Jarvis mess but they didn’t listen, and we had to go through it all again with Sor Lo, amid accusations of racism and some pretty ugly talk from the liberals. And don’t forget the money that went into $taff time. 

This is an important issue, and I’d like to see it go forward. As I recall, it was assigned to the Internal Affairs committee, of which Evans is a member. That committee has been taken up with issues like “corporate personhood” and the smoking ban since last February. While I admired Bob’s comments on both of those issues, I have to say, where’s the vacant seat policy? I couldn’t find it anywhere in the 2012 minutes. They shelved that committee all summer, not one meeting. What happened there? 

Well, that committee is back in business, and discussing important issues, like sunshining the contracts and allowing a certain private developer to develop city-owned parking lots into residential/commercial buildings.  I don’t really like the direction either conversation is taking. The contract talks remain behind closed doors, we get to see the contracts and comment on them but we have no idea what kind of promises or threats are being made behind those doors. Meanwhile, our new city manager is laying the way for New Urban Builders to put “live-work units” on heavily used Downtown parking lots – a sudden switch in gears from the old “we don’t have enough parking Downtown” bullshit. 

I don’t know if I can vote for Evans, I’m sorry. This whole election is going to be tough.

Tags: , ,

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

12 Jul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

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

11 Jul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well Bob, is that what you’re up to?

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

Tags: , , , , , , , ,