Tag Archives: CARD

CARD takes consultant’s advice, sends out messengers to brighten it’s image before the public

2 Jul

Today Chico Area Rec and Parks District, aka CARD, is starting a public relations campaign suggested by a consultant they hired to run a survey a couple of months back, trying to “guage,” or more likely create support for a new bond or assessment on our property taxes. 

The consultant came back with a “negative” –  not enough support indicated for any kind of tax to float CARD.  For one thing, only 1800 of 10,000 surveys were even returned – you can interpret that however you want, they sure did. I interpret that as, people don’t even CARE about CARD, much less want a bond on their homes.

The reasons listed by the consultant – summarized from respondents’ comments: “bad economy; recent passage of Measure E, prop 30, and other tax increases; and ‘government spending’”.

Of course she didn’t elaborate on “government spending.” You can speculate there too. I will speculate that at least some people either read my letters to the editor or found out for themselves – the aquatic center held up as a prize for your correctly-answered survey was nothing but a rainbow – it disappeared before the survey had even been completed. Board member Ed Seagle sat right there at a meeting and said they were wrong to even suggest they had anywhere near enough money to even think about building an aquatic center, and that notion dried up quicker than spit on a griddle. But not as loudly – they never took out a press release or anything, they let it ride silently. They knew I’d sent those letters, and Seagle was just doing damage control, covering his own ass if you ask me.  

Seagle of course didn’t mention the $400,000 “side fund pay-off” to CalPERS for THEIR pensions. They act like they were buying something for us with that money – Scott Dowell keeps repeating, like some kind of snake handler, “we saved $40,000 with that pay-off.” Big fucking deal, Preacher Man. You saved YOURSELVES $40,000, you ripped the taxpayers off for $400,000, and counting. CARD staff does not pay one thin red dime toward their own pensions.

The consultant had some wisdom to offer the board and staff. She said they needed to get out  there and create a more positive image of CARD. I’d say, “an image at all.” How many people don’t even know CARD exists until they need an “after school program” to dump their school age kids in when school’s out?  That’s where CARD gets most of it’s “program revenues” – they get most of their money in property taxes and new home fees, but of the revenues they generate themselves, those after school programs are their Blue Ribbon Cash Cow. But recreation superintendent Monica Jameson loudly announced at one meeting, she doesn’t have enough staff to supervise your children properly – she’s going to have to turn hundreds of kids away. Good luck finding somewhere to dump your spawn this summer.  And, if you are “lucky enough” to get in, keep an eye on your own child – she said she only has two adults to supervise over 300 children in one program, and some 500 signed up! 

It’s going to take a lot more than some little gal sitting in the park handing out “free” flying discs and other stuff paid for by the taxpayers to untarnish CARD’s reputation with me. 

UPDATE:  I had errands to do in my car yesterday, so drove by Hooker Oak Park at 10:50 to see the CARD gal and get some of that free bling – she wasn’t there. “Almaguer will be at Hooker Oak Park from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. July 2;”    We drove all over the parking lot at Hooker Oak, looked around the playgrounds and the ball fields – nobody but the usual $5,000/year maintenance workers.   There was no place she could have been that we wouldn’t have seen her. If I’d rode my bike over there in that heat, I would have been pissed off. Why would she say she’s going to be there for a certain time block, and then right in the middle of it, nothing?

I’ll drop her a note.

CARD delving into community park-love effort

Staff Reports

Posted:   07/01/2013 12:55:40 AM PDT

Click photo to enlarge

Marketing coordinator Lisa Almaguer shows off the flying discs she’ll be giving away at parks…

CHICO — Lisa Almaguer will be staking out a corner of several Chico parks through July, hoping to talk to lots of people about what’s behind their feelings for Chico parks.She’ll be at Hooker Oak Park on Tuesday morning.

This is the unfurling of “I love my parks and recreation” campaign, which she is pursuing as a way to reinforce how important play and parks are to people. July is National Parks and Recreation Month, designated by the National Recreation and Park Association.

Almaguer works for the Chico Area Recreation and Park District, which owns Community Park and the others she plans to visit.

While she knows park users have an appreciation of CARD parks — because they’re already playing there — Almaguer hopes her campaign will bring a better understanding of how valuable parks are in people’s lives.

She’ll be asking park users what they love about the parks, writing down the comments on slips, and then displaying them on bulletin boards at each park. There will likely be a report to the CARD board as well.

The national association’s turnkey campaign came with minimal costs, so CARD decided to adopt it in July.

“Basically, we’re looking to find out why parks are vital to the users,” said Almaguer, who handles marketing for CARD.

Almaguer will be at Hooker Oak Park from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. July 2; at DeGarmo Community Park from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. July 9; at Wildwood Park from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. July 18; and at Community Park

from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. July 27.Initially, she’ll have give-aways like flying discs and stickers, and by mid-month, she’ll also have sunglasses, water bottles and more.

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Last week to get your Utility Tax Rebate – let them know what you think of a sales tax increase while you’re at it

22 Jun

Friday is the last day you can take in your Utility Tax rebate application. I will have to check in with the Finance Department and see what the totals were, once the dirt settles.  Even if you won’t get much back, it’s good to go down and let them know you don’t want them to have the money.

I can’t get over how desperate city council and $taff are to drum up revenues, any way possible, whilst holding us all off  by the forehead on the subject of paying their own share. Between the seven of them, council receives over $130,000 in health benefits, for which they pay two percent of their salaries – about $1,000. Yes, all of them split that $1,000, and walk away with health insurance packages ranging from $8,000 in value to over $21,000. Staff meanwhile spends about $2 million a year, of our money, just on the “employee’s share” of their pension premiums. The full cost of their benefits and pensions, according to a hastily departing Jennifer Hennessy, is over $10 million a year

Brian Nakamura says we have to cut about $7 million from out budget. Well, I see the solution right in front of his face – PAY YOUR OWN SHARE BRIAN! 

Brian Nakamura, with a $217,000/year salary, pays 4 percent of the premium on his 70 percent pension, and we pay the rest of his share, plus another 20-something percent (this figure goes up every two years or so), and then the other 70 or so percent rides the stock market. That hasn’t been working out lately – CalPERS needs a 7 percent return on their investment and they have been lucky to get 1 percent. So, they keep sending letters upping  the contribution for employers. They don’t care how much of that contribution comes from employees. 

It’s council’s job to determine how much the employee’s should pay of their pension premium. The current 9 percent “employee share,” which, of course, they don’t really pay, is “only a suggestion.” Our city council could ask the employees to pay the entire share demanded by CalPERS. Instead, they take the full 9 percent only from the lower-paid classified staffers, while management types who make upwards of $100,000/year get away with paying 4 percent and neither cops nor fire pay anything. 

But Mary Goloff has the nerve to stand up in front of the public, after what we heard about the misappropriation and outright mismanagement that’s been going on for the last six to eight years, and ask us to pay an increased sales tax? 

Is she on the hooch again? 

And then there’s Tom Lando, who walked unelected into a  board position at Chico Area Recreation District (CARD) because nobody else ran. Lando has made the rounds of many public agencies, oftentimes receiving a pretty nice “consulting fee” for serving as interim director of agencies like Feather River Recreation District. But what I see him doing, really, is networking these agencies – like the Chico Chamber, Enloe Hospital, CARD –  in support of raising taxes on the public to pay off the ever mounting pension debt at CalPERS.  His $143,000/year pension depends on keeping CalPERS afloat. (See Jan 30, 2012 “Here’s why Lando wants to raise your sales tax!”)

So, he keeps bringing up this sales tax increase idea at CARD, at every meeting we’ve attended. I don’t know if CARD can put a sales tax increase measure on the ballot, but a group of like-minded agencies could approach the city about it, and then run a pretty expensive campaign to pass it. 

We need to let them know, we will oppose it. We need to show them we’re ready to take out our wallets to fight it, just like Measure J. And we need to let them know, we’re ready to take our wallets to Paradise, Red Bluff and Oroville, Redding and Sacramento, to spend our sales taxes elsewhere. And, we’ll be shopping online. When we shop online, we may pay California sales tax, but Chico gets nothing, and Chico retailers suffer. 

So, write those letters, please. Write to the papers, but write to the players too –

  •  Mayor Mary Goloff at mgoloff@ci.chico.ca.us
  • Tom Lando at tlando@chicorec.com

If this campaign starts to pick up there are other people we should write to – including the full council, the chamber of commerce, DCBA, and CARD. We can’t just sit here while they run their propaganda machines against us. Get busy writing those letters. 

 

 

 

 

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CARD consultant says bond is a No Go, so Lando suggests CARD pursue a sales tax increase!

17 May

Despite the weird experience I had Monday at the CARD finance committee meeting, my husband and I rode our bike down to last night’s regular board meeting to see what CARD’s consultant had to say about the survey run a couple of months ago.  

CARD was testing the waters for a bond or property assessment, insinuating they would build a new aquatic center and gymnasium when what they really need is a bailout to pay their pension premiums. CARD employees get the same CalPERS deal as the rest of the public sector, and they pay NOTHING toward their own benefits. We the taxpayers pick up their entire “employee share”. Of course, that’s for the management who have benefits and pension – most of the people who actually do the work to keep your parks open and somewhat clean are part time workers with neither benefits nor pensions.

At Monday’s meeting, board member Jan Sneed loudly ranted at me that I was accusing CARD of being dishonest – yes, I am. Read the survey for yourselves – where does it mention the $397,000+ CalPERS side fund payoff, over $350,000 of which came out of the now-empty capital projects fund?  They try to tell us they’re going to build an $8 million aquatic center off of a $20 – $52 assessment?  Maybe Sneed would like to explain why the pension fund pay-off is left out of the survey paperwork?

I guess that’s because these survey people like to, as the consultant from SCI Consulting Group  put it, go at it “blind.” Meaning, they make no attempts to educate the survey respondents, they just ask them leading questions. When I’ve studied the consultants that do these surveys, I’ve found, it’s not set up to find out what people really want or think, it’s set up to lead people into wanting or thinking what the client wants them to want  or think. Got that? It’s part of the consultant’s job, not to gauge a community’s willingness to pay more taxes, but to make them think they’re willing to pay more taxes.

From their website, http://www.sci-cg.com/index.html

“SCI is proud of our industry leading success rate with new ballot measure for funding public agency capital improvements and services.“

Part of their service includes “implementing a comprehensive strategy for clearly communicating the issue to the public.”

So, I wish I’d thought to ask this consultant (actually, a very nice woman name of Melanie Lee), “why did you throw up all that stuff about an aquatic center and gymnasium instead of being honest about wanting the money for pensions?” I would think that question kind of answers itself, but Ms. Lee is a professional analyst and very honest and forthcoming – I think her answer would have been interesting.

I did hear what I wanted to hear – she reported that the results of the survey were disappointing. For one thing, they sent out 10,000 surveys and only got about 1800 back. I’d call that a wash, but I remember past surveys that have run with less than 500 respondents, so I won’t discount this one. I just kind of wonder what CARD spent on it, is all – just to send a giant wad of tree pulp to the land fill. 

But for another thing, the surveys that were returned indicated there’s little support for any kind of leech on our property taxes, whether it be a parcel tax, or an assessment. Both came back with less than the recommended amount of support to pursue a ballot measure. 

Ms. Lee also summarized the remarks people made at the end of their surveys – bad economy; recent passage of Measure E, prop 30, and other tax increases; and “government spending”.  

And before she left, she offered the board some great advice –  spend the next couple of years “maintaining and improving the park district”. In the meantime, open up a dialog with large property owners and apartment dwellers – the groups who least supported the idea of a tax.   Above all, she reminded them, “a good campaign starts years ahead.” 

With that Ms. Lee gathered her stuff and headed out the door. Before she was even out of the building, Tom Lando moved that the board consider having the CARD attorney “look into” a “sales tax measure.”  It was as if he missed the consultant’s last words – “the economy, other tax increases, and government spending.” Is he deaf? Dumb? Or really, really smart? 

He brought up the survey he’d run over a year ago, when he wanted the city council to put a sales tax increase measure on the local ballot. He said at last night’s meeting, he’d got over 60 percent approval.  And I guess that sounds accurate – the idiot majority passed Prop 30.

I’m assuming Lando was afraid to run his sales tax increase on the same ballot with Prop 30 – so he thinks waiting two years is going to do any good? Prop 30 raised sales tax to 7.5 – now what, 7.75? 8? 

I know, that doesn’t sound like much. So I have to remind you again what it pays for – for example, the general manager of CARD makes over $112,000 in salary, and we still pay his entire “employee share.” They bottomed out the coffers, of our tax dollars, to pay their pensions. To me, that’s stealing. They’ve stolen from the funds that were supposed to pay for the upkeep and replacement of public facilities to enrich themselves. 

I know my comments weigh heavily on the staff down at CARD, I’m sorry, they think I’m just a bitch. Well, I’d be an idiot to put up with what they’re doing. Steve Visconti, in his closing remarks, wanted to make sure everybody knew, the results of that survey “in no way reflect the way people feel about CARD…just bad timing…”

Then he went on to laud “staff”, meaning himself, I believe, for a recent award from some award givers regarding their website and the transparency of their agency. I must admit, Visconti and finance director Dowell have given me answers to my questions and also documents I’ve asked for. But never once in these “public” conversations has the true reason behind this tax grab come up – they keep talking about needing money to “fund this” or “fund that.”  And when I’ve brought it up in letters to the papers, I’ve gotten attacked. That’s not transparency, that’s a cloud of suspicion, as far as I’m concerned. 

As the meeting was ending up, Lando made one last forceful pitch, even a motion to have his sales tax measure idea brought to agenda, or at least agendized for a committee. I’ll keep you posted – their next meeting is June 5. 

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Watch your step Downtown!

26 Apr
Wow, I better take one or two of these before I head out to another city committee meeting.

Wow, I better take one or two of these before I head out to another city committee meeting.

The most exciting thing I have to report about Wednesday’s Economic Development meeting is, I made it! Early! Sat for 10 minutes.

This is big news to me cause lately I been so busy I have had to leave post it notes here and there to tell me what to do and where to do it, what time, and who’s going to be there. All day I reminded myself – don’t forget that 4:00 meeting!  

I got there to find Laura Urseny and CARD recreation supervisor Ann Willman chatting away like two old school chums. This is why Laura Urseny does not write hard news, she’s too friendly with everybody. Her stories always tell you whatever the subject of the story wanted you to know. She covered the CARD meeting the other night, and all she wrote about was the dog park memorial plaque. CARD is broke, they spent all their reserve funding on their own pensions, they’re trying to attach a bond to our property taxes like some kind of nit,  and all this “reporter” has to talk about is a memorial plaque?  Tsk, tsk.

They finally got everybody in there and the meeting started about 4:04 with a quick introduction of the man from Wizard Manufacturing. I didn’t catch his name, but $taffer Shawn Tillman introduced him as “a significant employer,” and “one of our top 25 sales tax providers!”

Let’s talk about that right there. An “employer” is something for us, the citizens. An employer provides jobs! But sales taxes are for the suits Downtown, to pay their salaries, and especially, their pensions. Tillman makes over $120,000 a year to pound his own phlegmatic chest. He takes his salary out of the supposedly dismantled RDA. All he thinks about around the clock is how to get more money in here for salaries and pensions.

Mr. Wizard told us he’d bought the business, which fabricates machinery like hullers for farm operations,  only 6 years ago, intending to move it to Woodland, lock, stock and barrel. He and his family are from Woodland, many generations in Yolo County.  But, then he went on about how friendly this area is. Oh oh,  I thought, and my Bullshit Detecter started to go off like a fire alarm.

He wanted to impress the c0mmittee with how much sales tax he hauls into Butte County and Chico.  He said that while he does most of his business out of the country (60 percent of his machines are sold in Chile and Mexico) he “writes up” his sales so that the sales tax goes to Butte County/Chico. Wow, is that legal?

He showed us an aerial photo of his factory and described the property – adding that part of the property is still on septic and needs sewer – OH, THERE IT IS! He’s milking the city for a cheap or even free sewer hook-up, and who knows what other fees he wants to get around. He also mentioned, part of his property is zoned residential and he wants to develop it. Now, I get it, Mr. Wizard. 

He said he employs “40 plus” people here, so  I had to ask him, “where do your workers live?”   He said, without missing a beat, “10 percent Durham, 30 percent Paradise, the rest in Chico proper.”  I don’t know what he means by “Chico proper” – do they live within the city limits, or halfway to Durham? Just this side of the Oroville city limits? Maybe just this side of Dairyville? But I was not allowed to question any further – Mr. Wizard looked at the crowd – a bigger audience than usual because of the grant funding discussion – and admitted he was not expecting to “be written about in the paper.” He started to act real rabitty, which offended me, frankly. I don’t like people who are offended at  being asked a few simple questions. This guy tried to act like it wasn’t public business. 

Furthermore, he warned the committee to keep wages down here. Yeah, we see – that’s why he really located here, the wages are lower than the Sacramento/Woodland area. Woodland is a booming little town, you stop at a gas station, you can tell – the people around you are EMPLOYED. Chico is a sleepy little unemployed town, and the kids coming out of the high school are pretty desperate for jobs alright. There aren’t any! So, this man has hooked up with the high schools to train his employees. That’s just great, but he can only provide 40 jobs? 

I asked him where his workers live because a few years ago, in that same room, I listened to outgoing Chamber of Commerce CEO Jim Goodwin tell the committee that manufacturing isn’t coming to Chico because our housing is too expensive. I didn’t get a chance to bring this up at the meeting – we need either better wages, or cheaper housing, that’s the bottom line. We’ve already tried to develop “cheap starter housing for families,” but somehow, that just raised the price of housing in town, along with everything else.  Chico is an expensive town.  If manufacturing comes to Chico, those jobs will just fill up with people from Gridley, Live Oak, Palermo, Tehama and other cheaper places to live within commuting distance. We who have to live and eat in Chico can’t afford to take Mr. Wizard’s wages. 

All I did was ask a simple question and busily scribble down his answer, but Mr. Wizard got really uncomfortable at this point, gathered up his stuff, thanked the committee, and left. I couldn’t help but notice – he has what we used to call in Princeton/Butte  City, ‘truck butt”.  That’s what a white farmer gets from driving his truck around all day supervising his Mexicans.  I thanked him for sponsoring the hockey rink, but he still looked at me like a snake. Well, snakes have some rights too, buddy, especially in their own dooryard.

I wish he had stayed for the rest of the meeting. He would have heard what the arts crowd thinks of real jobs – for gawdsake Man! It’s the arts that bring people here to spend money in our restaurants! Boy, Debra Lucero gets NASTY when you cut her salary – that’s where all the money goes, to pay HER. For Artoberfest? Look at the picture in today’s paper – look at that “crowd.” Come on!   And then Ann Willman, from CARD, making her pathetic ploy for $2,000 for 4th of July – Ann, take a hat around the CARD office, ask Steve Visconti to pitch in! You people suck up all the money with your salaries and perks, come up with that $2,000 from among yourselves! 

I love 4th of July too, but I wouldn’t go near One Mile because it’s a cluster jam of the kind of people who go to the park like twice a year. The next day there’s still garbage to pick up, and the place looks like it’s been had over by a herd of buffalo.  It’s just a “be seen” event where you can’t even have a decent conversation for the mayhem all around your ears. 

Nakamura cut these two entities off cold but still handed the Chamber /DCBA over $100,000.  Katy Simmons from the Chamber offered to help both Lucero and Willman but Lucero went bitch on her. Lucero is a bitch, she whines long and loud about “working” – look Debra, sitting in meetings and carping about how hard you work is not “working.” A

Ann Willman, who admitted she is leaving CARD shortly for a job with Feather River Parks and Rec, seemed to be receptive to Simmon’s offer. But again, she’s leaving soon for another job and we’ll see what they get in her place.  As Urseny reported in the paper, there was a lot of kidding around about putting Nakamura in a dunk tank to raise money for CARD. I offered to go in the tank, but when I got home and thought it over, there’s no way I’m going to help CARD. They need to come clean about their salaries and pensions, and pay their own benefits, before they’re going to get anything more out of me or my family. I’d also like to know Willman’s real reason for switching jobs – she’ll have to commute to Oroville, so I’m guessing, there’s more pay being offered. 

The whole idea that these entities bring tourists to town is a fantasy. The events and marketing campaigns they undertake are attended by them and their friends and hangers on. These entities are formed to suck up grants and other public funding to pay their own salaries. That’s all they do, pander for money for themselves. They don’t serve anybody. Look at Downtown, and ask yourself, what is the Chamber/DCBA doing with that $100,000?

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Letter: Here’s why CARD wants more money

7 Apr

Here’s a letter I sent to the Enterprise Record a full week ago. I don’t know why it took so long for Little to run my letter – I could speculate that he wants the CARD tax to pass. We’ll see when he endorses it in 2014.

My family received the Chico Area Recreation District’s survey regarding their proposed tax hike. We wanted more information, so asked for their 2012-13 budget figures.  

 
CARD says they need a new tax because of falling property tax revenues and a “disappearing RDA.” What they don’t mention is the recent $400,000 “side fund payoff” to the California Public Employees Retirement System. CalPERS has demanded public employers pay more toward their employees’ pension premiums, offering some savings on interest if they pay a certain amount immediately.
 
CARD, employing about 30 people full time, also paid $375,000  in regular pension premiums last year, and $300,000 in healthcare premiums. Salary and benefits totaling about $5 million dollars  eat over half their $7.2 million budget. 
 
They earn about $3.3 million of their annual revenues from their programs and rental of their facilities. The other $3.5 million  comes mostly  from taxpayers –  county taxes ($2,3456,782), homeowner assessments ($162,753), fees on new homes ($23,750), and $924,000 from the RDA credit card. 
 
CARD currently suffers a $420,000 deficit. Their capital projects reserve fund shows a sudden negative balance of $344,500. It appears to me they took money from their capital projects fund to pay their CalPERS “side fund payoff”, and now they want us to replace that money. It seems misleading to offer an aquatic center when what they are really asking for is money to pay for their pensions and benefits. 
 
I’ve posted the budget spreadsheet at chicotaxpayers.wordpress.com
 

Juanita Sumner, Chico CA

I know, I said I’d post the budget here – I can’t get it to come up right on this blog, so here’s the link to my other blog:

http://worldofjuanita.com/2013/03/31/card-2012-13-budget/

and here’s the link to the survey:

img003

This survey is completely loaded – essentially, they tell you, if you don’t pay this tax, your kids will end up on dope. Read it yourself.  They also promise “this measure would include strong fiscal safeguards and oversight, including that less than 5% of the proceeds would be used for administration.” 

CUSD stupe Kelly Staley said that about the school bond voters just extended. Chico Unified said they’d form some kind of citizens’ committee  to “vet” a list of projects, but the administration has already announced projects that have never been vetted in any way. And don’t forget, when the school district originally floated that bond about ten years ago, they said the money would be used exclusively to build a third high school. Then they changed their mind, and we’ve never been shown an actual accounting of how much they’ve raked in over the years or where any of that money has gone. 

In this case, you can see that CARD has taken money out of their capital projects fund and used it to pay their CalPERS obligation. When Steve Visconti sent me that budget,  I could tell from his attached letter he really didn’t expect me to read the budget, or thought I was too stupid to figure it out. I had asked him about revenues. 

“Our funding sources come to us a few different ways. One is a small portion of property taxes from each homeowner in our District. The other main revenue source is from programming fees. Those are also shown on page 6 of the attached budget.”

But the budget says otherwise. Like I said above – they get over half their revenues from property taxes and assessments – including $924,000 in RDA money. That RDA money is about to disappear, that’s just another reason they want this tax. Besides the $400,000 they stole to pay their own pensions.

You can print that survey from that link, fill it out, and send it to Visconti at the CARD center – 545 Vallombrosa Ave, Chico, 95926. You can e-mail him for more information at svisconti@chicorec.com

And here’s the funny thing – guess who’s on the CARD board – Tom Lando, the same guy who’s been proposing a city sales tax increase.

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