Tag Archives: Chico Police Department

Furthermore…

24 Jul

I couldn’t have timed my letter to the Chico Enterprise Record better – Stephanie Taber wrote a complementary letter to the News and Review, printed today.

Re “Who you gonna call?” (Letters, by Jane Martin, July 17):

Chico taxpayers provide police officers with a generous salary package including overtime starting after eight minutes, 10 minutes of paid time to put on and take off “protective clothing,” compensated call-back time, court time (even if canceled), and telephone standby time (three-hour minimum).

“On-call” is compensated at $100/week or compensatory time off. Salary compensation also includes: 5 percent differential if working out of class, alternative assignments earn a basic pay increase between 5 percent and 10 percent and a 5 percent bonus for a bilingual assignment. There is also additional compensation for POST certification: 2.5 percent (intermediate officer) or 5 percent (advanced officer).

CPOA’s basic compensation package includes worker’s compensation and long-term disability. There is medical, vision and dental coverage with minimal employee compensation. The life insurance policy provides full salary coverage. There is a $50/month payment for membership in a qualified health and fitness program with no requirement to show attendance. There is also a uniform allowance of $900/year.

Police officers also serve because of tradition and honor, but they get paid handsomely for it.

Stephanie L. Taber
Chico

 

I remember the letter to which Stephanie is responding – I remember getting a big laugh out of it:

Who you gonna call?

Re “Take note, union president” (Letters, by Stephanie L. Taber, July 10):

Once again Larry Wahl has his paid staff person, Stephanie Taber (a political appointee with handsome benefits we subsidize), write a letter attacking law enforcement.

Yes, our military troops and police officers are public employees. And I have no doubt that they complain about their level of pay, too, for the service they render. They serve because of tradition and honor and love of country. But military personnel injured on base in the U.S. or in a war zone are provided services and compensation, possibly for life. All first responders in harm’s way should be guaranteed basic services now and in the future!

It is interesting that Ms. Taber does not mention that she and Mr. Wahl are both local public employees with nice salaries. When citizens suffer serious car accidents or have their homes broken into, they call 911 for help from law enforcement. We don’t call Larry Wahl or Stephanie Taber. So what do these two do to earn their fat paychecks and benefits? Do they put their lives on the line?

What hypocrites—always attacking law enforcement. If Wahl or Taber hears someone breaking into their house at 2 a.m., who do you think they’re going to call? A private security firm in the Yellow Pages or 911?

Jane Martin
Chico

 

I don’t know if Jane knows, Larry Wahl was about as cop friendly as you could get when he was on council.  He voted for all those fat contracts. He admitted to me that he signed the MOU that linked salaries to “increases in revenues but not decreases…”   He apologized, his voice cracked – he said he didn’t understand it.  I just let him tell me that, I didn’t have the nerve to ask him what his reading comp score was in high school. It was a three sentence memo, just as clear as the nose on your face. 

He also proposed the steps promotion plan, saying it would curtail the salaries – instead it seems to work as automatic promotion for these guys. They get automatic raises. There’s supposed to be a performance review, but it’s not spelled out. I’ve seen so many fat, unhealthy cops, I can’t believe there’s any such performance review. Let’s see Peter Durfee jump over my back fence a breath ahead of  my nippers. 

I also have to laugh at her comparing Larry and Stephanie’s income with the salaries these cops are taking home. The smallest salary I’ve seen is about $63,000, that’s starting. That’s also about $23,000 a year more than the median income. And then there’s the health benefits and pensions – they expect to get 90 percent of their highest year’s salary, at 50, for the  rest of their lives, and they don”t expect to pay more than  9 percent. And we had to yank that out of them, kicking and screaming.  That indicates to me some sort of mental dysfunction on their part. 

I don’t want to talk about what cops are worth, or how dangerous their job is – how can we go on paying these salaries? Are their heads made of wood, or what? Can they do math? What are we supposed to do for more money – start pulling cars over on Hwy 99 and shaking down the out-of-town drivers? 

I’m just glad Stephanie Taber is out there. She reads the paperwork, compares what they say with what they  write down. I wish we had 10 more like her. 

 

 

 

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Please write letters to Anthony Rendon – we are conserving, but we’re still getting squeezed by Cal Water

1 Feb
I was happy to find, when I removed the freeze cloth, my nopal cacti had grown alot.

I was happy to find, when I removed the freeze cloth, my nopal cacti had grown alot.   The little one at right front was a leaf that fell off. I threw it in the compost pile, and about two months later, I realized it was growing, so brought it back. The big mother plant is there in the left foreground, the original plant is hardly visible behind all the new growth.

I’ve been reading newspapers in little towns around Greater Los Angeles – Downey, Cudahy, Hawthorne – looking for their reaction on the drought. Alot of them are well-aware of their natural surroundings, one man chastising his neighbors in a letter to the editor for trying to have lush green lawns using imported water.

Here at my house, I realized a year or two ago, we needed to start getting rid of water-intensive landscaping – in our case, an acre or so of lawn between our little domicile and our  tenants’ up front. So, we just stopped watering huge sections, let it go, and went about trying to find some sort of mitigation for the resulting stickers, dirt and mud.

First we laid a lot of gravel and rock. I like that, it keeps the areas directly around our houses fairly neat and easy to clean. I also like rock collecting, and we go alot of places where we find really great rocks for rock gardens. I got all kinds of cool rocks from all over California. 

We also started looking for “drought tolerant” plants. I had this nopal cactus from my mom, I’d dug it out of her front yard when I sold her house, and put it in a plastic pot. There it was for years, toted from one house to another, like a mummy. Sometimes it would grow a nopalito, which would usually shrivel and fall off. Finally I decided to plant the poor old thing. I found out, there were three separate plants in the pot. I can’t get over how well they’re doing now.

I placed my mom’s old strawberry pots among the nopals last year, having had them for years and never used them for strawberries. Wow, they worked fantastic.

I took all the old "mother" plants out of my strawberry pots and replaced them with the babies they'd had, which were growing in the ground all around the pots.

I took all the old “mother” plants out of my strawberry pots and replaced them with the babies they’d had, which were growing in the ground all around the pots.

I cleaned them out and added some fresh dirt and started planting the babies. They had been growing on no water in the cold cold ground, and as soon as they got into that peat moss and perlite mix I used, and I gave them a big drink of leaf tea from my rain barrel, they perked up like they’d never been anywhere else. Hello Sweetheart!

Mmmmm! That last storm left me with 55 gallons of leaf tea from my rain gutters. Wow, I got to get more of these barrels.

Mmmmm! That last storm left me with 55 gallons of leaf tea from my rain gutters. Wow, I got to get more of these barrels.

My husband and I bought a kit to turn these old plastic barrels into rain barrels. We bought the hardware at Home Depot, less than 10 bucks.

We cut a hole in the bottom, no rocket science required, and easy-as-pie, inserted the valve kit. Remember to put it on a raised pedestal so you can get pressure in your hose.

We cut a hole in the bottom, no rocket science required, and easy-as-pie, inserted the valve kit. Remember to put it on a raised pedestal so you can get pressure in your hose.

 

I was amazed, that little storm we had, I got a full 55 gallon barrel. This I will use on my container plants. Right now we’re planting seeds for our Summer garden.

Ah, here-in lies future tomato sauce.

Ah, here-in lies future tomato sauce.

I conserve in times of drought, and try to save some aside in times of plenty – that’s a lifestyle I was raised with. But Cal Water is using the drought to take advantage of us. Don’t be a sap, write to Anthony Rendon, Assemblymember.Rendon@asm.ca.gov    Mr. Rendon sits on a committee that is participating in hearings regarding water rates. Cal Water is gouging us, and it’s not only hurting us all personally, it’s going to start hurting our economy. Between this and the upcoming garbage rate increase, we will all have less “disposable” income. That’s going to trickle up when sales taxes continue their steady dive. 

Me, I’m going to buy more rain barrels, and keep writing letters. I hope you will do same. 

 

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Yes, many city of Chico employees are overcompensated

27 Dec

NOTE: a person recently tried to get my contact information from the ER editor saying they wanted to discuss this piece – look for the “comment” button at the bottom of the page. If you want to be anonymous, let me know, or just use an acronym. 

Right now, our city “leaders” are kicking around the city employee contracts, and as everybody knows by now, the most important of those contracts are police, fire, and management in general. These employees are not only our most highly paid, but currently pay little to nothing for their  very generous benefits and pension packages. The “public safetly” employees also manage to bolster their agreed-upon salaries with 10’s of thousands in overtime. They also get some pretty ridiculous perks – for example, police officers are paid to put on and take off their uniforms, paid to shower (including the water and gas bills that put the department over budget), paid to work out at the gym, and if their hijinks get them sued, we pay their lawyer and pay them to sit in court. They get vision, dental, life insurance, rest-home insurance, etc, etc, etc. And out of their average $90,000 a year salaries (before overtime), they don’t pay squat for their pensions – 9o percent of their highest year’s salary, available at age 50.

Meanwhile, any cop will tell you, fire employees get paid to sleep, shower, sit on their X-boxes, eat, shop, whatever they want to do over their shifts. They don’t work a normal eight hour shift like private employees, they’ve manipulated a guaranteed overtime system by threatening us with “slow response times.” Sure, they’ve got that hook and ladder at the grocery store around the corner from your house, but they’re all inside the store loading up groceries they don’t pay for to eat on our dime. Sorry, but everybody knows this is true. They chase ambulances, with no recompense from the ambulance companies, who charge somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 per mile for your patient to be transported. And then you pay for the  fire department too, isn’t that funny? And you pay for their medical and legal expenses, and you pay for them to sit on their asses into perpetuity when they turn 50 years old. 

So, excuse me if I feel these people need to be taken to task, I don’t care if they are insulted. It hurts my feelings when I have to pay my property taxes to foot the bill for a bunch of guys to sit around farting in front of a big screen tv.

There’s been some discussion in the letters section, I hope there will be more. Below I’ve got a few letters I’ve seen, although I’ve missed others, I wanted to get these out here, get some more conversation out of them. The ER not only dumps letters after a day or so, but the forum they run demands that you have Facebook, and isn’t available to those who don’t have an online subscription. So, here are a couple of pro-employee letters, and one from Michael Jones that I think says it very well. 

Letter: Police, fire not overcompensated

Chico Enterprise-Record

POSTED:   11/30/2013 10:39:31 PM PST
 
 

One letter printed Nov. 24 (“Stone sticks up for taxpayers”) was reported that, “The average police or fireperson in Chico makes three times as much in wages and benefits as the average Chico taxpayer.”The city of Chico is currently advertising for a police patrol officer position. The listed salary range is $53,000 to $71,000. City of Chico firefighters are close to that same salary range, from $55,00 to $77,500.

Even using the higher Chico firefighter wages, a third of their listed salaries would be just over $18,000 (low) and nearly $26,000 (high).

The lowest Chico-wide mean salary (i.e., average Chico taxpayer) I’ve found online was $36,000 (“Simply Hired”) and the highest was almost $69,500 (“Salary List”).

While I recognize that the level of contractual benefits that can be earned — above and beyond the base salary — can vary significantly from one career to the next, I believe it is somewhat disingenuous to suggest that Chico police officers and firefighters are grossly overcompensated in relation to the average Chico taxpayer.

On a side note, due to the Windfall Elimination Provision, police, firefighters and public school teachers receive virtually nothing in Social Security benefits — even if those benefits were rightfully earned in work done prior to the public service employee’s pension years.

— Mark S. Gailey, Chico

I’m sorry, yes they are too!  Gailey tries to play the numbers, but it’s all there. Yes, a lot of private citizens in Chico, including my family, live on less than $30,000. The average cop makes about $92,000, and many firefighters as much as double their $55 – 75,000 salaries with overtime.  That’s about three times the average or “mean” income. And, we’re comparing one person’s wages to a “household” income. 

He says they receive “virtually nothing” in social security – “virtually” is in the eye of the beholder. Read the contracts yourselves, you won’t believe all the perks they get. Gailey is using the facts he likes and leaving the rest out.  He’s betting nobody really reads those contracts. Please do, they’re available on the city website, under Human Resources.

Now, here, Don Grant says we must not blame the employee, it’s the politicians’ fault:

Letter: Blame politicians, not employees

Chico Enterprise-Record

POSTED:   12/11/2013 09:59:37 PM PST

 Read a letter the other day from a Joseph Neff concerning his ideas on public pensions. I have seen several letters targeting public pensions and workers and it seems that is a favorite target for individuals to vent toward.What almost all of these people don’t realize is the pay and pension programs for these public employees were not just handed out to them. These are all negotiated pay scales and benefit packages that elected or appointed officials have negotiated with the respective groups of employees. These are the same employees who year after year have gone without any raises and usually each year have had to give just to be able to stay employed. Most of these individuals make under $45,000 per year and still have to contribute a portion of that to their health coverage and public pension.

I would like to see Neff provide for a family of four all the necessary basics on that salary and still be able to save for retirement as he suggests. He also says that SSI will make up the rest. Who’s to say SSI will be available in the future. Invest in 401(k)? Does the crash of 2008 ring a bell?

Stop lambasting the public worker. They do a very fine job. I hope this blame game will run its course and get these sour grape people off their necks, and no I have never held a public works position. Private sector only.

— Don Grant, Oroville

Maybe Mr. Grant is talking about city of Oroville when he mentions employees who’ve gone without pay raises – not Chico or Butte County. I was just looking at the salaries for managing the county dump, and those guys have received $10 – 20,000 in raises over the last few years. City of Chico employees, especially cops and fire, have gone right along getting their scheduled raises – they just promoted a bunch of cops, and I’ve seen two now retire within a year to six months of promotion – Dye and Laver. That’s called “spiking,” and now those two will retire at 90 percent of their newly inflated salaries. 

Mr. Grant seems to be trying to use the lower paid “classified staff” as shields – yes, the lower paid employees get less salary, but they also get a benefits and retirement package for which they only pay nine percent of the cost. I will leave my little violin in it’s case. 

Finally Mr. Grant, I will continue to lambaste a group of people who expect to be kept like prize pigs. PAY YOUR OWN BENEFITS, SOOOOO-UUUU-IIIIIIEEE!  Then I’ll stop basting you. Oh, excuse me, I guess I meant lambasting!  It’s just all this pork folks, it gets me a little excited.

Finally, I’m so glad to see Michael Jones getting in there. Mr. Jones is more patient than I am, he is willing to take the conversation further without stomping on the floor until his foot gets stuck. That would be me.

Letter: Big pensions lead to big expense cuts

Chico Enterprise-Record

POSTED:   12/16/2013 09:16:55 PM PST

No one begrudges the public employee who makes $45,000 a year, and retires on less than that. But Chico firefighters on average make $80,000 a year and retire on $90,000 a year. And can retire at age 50.

That’s why the public employees over in maintenance and parks are being laid off. The City Council needs to correct this misallocation of resources. Mayor Scott Gruendl is up for re-election next November. Here’s his chance to earn it.

— Michael Jones, Chico

Yes, he’s put his finger right on it – we have a misallocation of resources.  I don’t want to talk about “what people are worth.” If you want to go there, I’ll tell you what – I’m worth a lot more than that little shit, Ken Campbell. So, like I say, let’s not go there. Let’s just set a wage that’s available for performing a certain task. Let’s say if you don’t like that  wage you can hit the road and give somebody else a chance. And, given a reasonable wage, we should expect our employees to take care of their own retirement and medical expenses, with some compensation for years of service, but not just a guaranteed free ride all the way through. 

The real problem here is management. Our overcompensated city manager also plays double as our contract negotiator. I think I finally understand the expression, “in the catbird seat…“

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Divvying up the city pie

25 Nov
This is a "pie chart" of the city budget.

Imagine this as a “pie chart” of the city budget.

When we went to the Tea Party meeting at Marie Callender’s last month, we picked up a pie heading out the door. I told my husband, make it something decadent, so he got this chocolate cream pie, pictured above. When we got home and divvied up three little pieces among ourselves, I said, “Wow, police and fire get the rest.”

The picture above is a pretty good representation of the “public safety” portion of the City of Chico budget. Last time I looked, the annual expenditures were around $43 million, and the police department was getting over 21 of that, or roughly half. The fire department gets less than the police department, but between the two of them, they eat about 84 percent of our communal pie.  Imagine – all the other departments, I think seven other employee groups in all, get to fight over that last little piece. Give you a little look-see what the contract negotiations are all about, eh?

Tomorrow morning I’m going to try to make it out of here by 7:45 to get to a Finance Committee meeting. I’ve already looked over the agenda and reports, available here:

www.ci.chico.ca.us/document_library/minutes_agendas/finance_committee/11-26-13FinanceCommitteeAgendaPacket.pdf

According to the monthly finance report, the police department is more than $100,000 over budget for overtime.  I’m looking forward to hearing Trostle’s explanation, I’ll keep you posted.

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Time to take back the cop shop

24 Nov

In past I’ve been friendly with Tea Party members, and I still will be. But when I got this notice today, saying Randall Stone should be dismissed from the Police Advisory Board because he made public harassment by a Chico police officer, I had to tell them, we’re 180 degrees apart on this one Folks.

Below is the section of the code pulled out by Tea Party maven Stephanie Taber. It says member of the PAB must sign an agreement promising to lie to the public about what’s going on in the police department. Yep, that’s what it says – PAB members are not allowed to tell the public when there’s a problem in the cop shop. Read it yourself.

219.11 CONFIDENTIALITY
(a) Matters relating to personnel issues are governed by various laws of the State of
California and the City of Chico as well as various labor contracts. Personnel matters
are confidential. No member of the Police Community Advisory Board may divulge
any information regarding a personnel matter that has been deemed confidential by
the Chief of Police.
(b) Every new member of the Police Community Advisory Board, prior to hearing any
personnel matter, must sign an agreement, as prepared by the City Attorney, agreeing
and promising to maintain the confidentiality of any personnel matter.
(c) Only the Chief of Police or City Manager (or City Manager’s representative), with the
advise of the City Attorney, has the authority to determine what information related to
any personnel matter may be made public.

I think I know Stephanie Taber well enough to say this – if she’d found out something she didn’t like in one of those meetings, she’d squeal like a pig.  And of course, that would be legal, because she’s a member of the public. Of course, those meetings were not being properly noticed to the public until I squealed like a pig to city clerk Debbie Presson.  I had to bitch about it a couple of times, but finally she said, “As of yesterday, Police Department staff was asked to include the agenda (as had been past practice) under the “Minutes and Agendas” page as that is where citizens look for such items.  They will be doing so for all future meetings. “

See where she says, “as had been past practice“?  Trostle just dropped the notice from the notice page, apparently he didn’t think it was important to let the public in on these meetings. When I’ve been to these meetings I’ve noticed Trostle is uptight and hates answering questions. I’m sure he’d just drop these meetings if allowed. 

Presson offered to put me on the notice list, but I realized, maybe it’s not so smart to be on that list. I thanked her for getting the notices put back up, that’s enough. 

And, I told Mark Sorensen too, but he didn’t seem to think it was important. He told me, “Police Advisory Board Meeting is on the web site”  and sent me a link to the obscure police page it was listed on. That’s what Sorensen always does when I point out a problem to him – admits I’m right, but gives me private band-aid information instead of getting the problem fixed.  Does he just expect me to disseminate this info? No, here’s what he thinks – the public doesn’t care enough to pay attention, that’s what he thinks.  Sorensen can be a really snotty little prick when you press him, no holds barred. When he wants something, he’s going to get it, and he wants to be credited with “turning the town around.” Instead, I think he’s going to be that kid who knocks the puck into his own goal – Sorensen and Nakamura are going to put the last nail in our coffin.

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Where does the money go?! Chico councilor Randall Stone offers some answers

19 Jul

Thanks Councilor Randall Stone for sending me an interesting link to a table he’s posted regarding average salaries, by department, Downtown.

You can see it at this link:
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=524942580893900&l=bf000f939b

But I’ll summarize – the fat paychecks are in “Public Safety”, police and fire.  Number One, Public Safety Management – and I’m not sure, but I think this covers everybody over the rank of “officer” – is paid an average, average, of $128,900/year.  Those salaries range from about $98,000 to the police and fire chiefs’ salaries at about $185,000/year.  

Peter Durfee, president of the Chico Police Officer’s Association, wants us to remember that these salaries include overtime. He makes the same circular argument the cops and fire have always made – if you’d hire more officers, we wouldn’t need so much overtime…but overtime is cheaper than hiring new officers…”  They won’t take structured overtime out of the contracts – the CPOA was just screaming for MORE structured overtime last year. Former CPOA president Will Clark said they needed to schedule overtime for EVERY three-day weekend. This is NOT cheaper than hiring new officers, especially if the new officers are paid their agreed-upon salaries of $63,000 – 80,000. Instead, everybody through the rank of sergeant is allowed to spike their checks with OT. The lieutenants just demanded and got raises because their underlings were spiking their paychecks so high as to be getting more salary.  But Durfee insists that overtime is not the same as pay. I can’t follow his reasoning, it’s like chasing a greased pig. 

Management certainly ain’t doing too bad, averaging $96,000 a year. Considering the city manager makes $212,000, and his immediate subordinates like Assistant City Manager make  $185,000 a year, you realize there has to be ALOT of management to average that out to $96,000.  At this point, Brian Nakamura has trimmed so many of the worker bees, about all we got left down there is Management.

As Randall Stone has reminded us, these figures are just PAY. They don’t include the pensions, benefits, and other expenses we pay to float these salaries.  

Thanks again Councilor Stone, and hope to see you again soon at an upcoming CTA meeting. 

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April is Taxpayer Appreciation Month – thank you Sue Hubbard and Harold Ey!

3 Apr

As I sit down today to make out the last of my property tax payments, I want to thank Sue Hubbard for writing and submitting the following:

Proclamation

 

WHEREAS, The approximate 47% of Americans who pay no income tax are supported by the 53% of those who do

WHEREAS, Five percent of Americans are paying 60% of all income tax

WHEREAS, America’s top tax rate is the second highest in the world

WHEREAS, Taxpayer’s money is used to fund government services

WHEREAS, Taxpayer’s money is used to pay salary and benefits to government workers

WHEREAS, Taxpayers are the ones who are paying for all the entitlements so generously given out in this country

WHEREAS, Taxpayers pay America’s bills

NOW THEREFORE BE IT PROCLAIMED, that the Chico Taxpayer’s Association hereby recognizes April as Taxpayer Appreciation Month.

This was supposed to be an official proclamation, Sue had asked the city clerk for the proper format etc, and sent it off for approval from a proclamation happy council – Mary Goloff turned it down. Oh well, one woman’s trash is the entire town’s treasure.  We don’t need those dummies to run our town – so be it, April is Taxpayer Appreciation Month. It’s just too good an idea to pass up.

Our first activity will be the usual First Sunday meeting at the library, or as I prefer to call it, The First Church of Democracy.

Harold Ey is not one of our standing members, but he’s our kinda guy. Harold has always lit up the letters page with his pokey wit, he tells it like it is. Here’s a letter of his I found in the ER this morning:

Letter: Taxes won’t solve homeless problem

Chico Enterprise-Record
Posted:   04/03/2013 12:05:04 AM PDT

 

One of the more off-the-wall suggestions we heard at last week’s 90-minute gabfest between Mary Goloff and Ann Schwab was the idea of taxing liquor sales. Schwab thought this could be a solution that might possibly reduce the number of down-and-out downtown drunks. Leave it to a liberal to attack private business with more taxation because; isn’t greedy capitalism the root cause of the homeless problem? However, as Schwab was rambling on, she brought up another point about how to deal with the perplexing problem of bicyclists riding on the sidewalks (there’s a cause of homelessness).However, you know her tax idea might actually work here. First, City Council puts a hefty tax on bicycle shops in the downtown area. After all, the sale started the problem to begin with, right? Then we require the shop owner to register each bicycle sold (another government fee) and keep a database for an undetermined number of years.

Then when a police officer stops someone riding on the sidewalk and runs the registration number, the shop selling the bicycle gets fined as well as the operator of the bike, and we double up the fine when a plastic bag is involved also. Makes sense, doesn’t it? The bicycle shop contributed to the scofflaw’s actions by selling the bicycle to begin with. Makes about as much sense as the first 90 minutes of last week’s “study session.” Yes, Mayor Goloff, the public is very upset.

— Harold Ey, Chico

I have to add here, this liquor tax is not Mary Goloff or Ann Schwab’s idea. It came to us from Chico PD, when Mike Maloney was chief, and now Kirk Trostle has picked it up. It’s called the ACE initiative, “Alcohol Compliance and Education,” and it’s to be administered, and I believe collected, by Chico PD. They tried to get us interested in it before the 2012 election, but they saw all those other tax increase proposals on the ballot, and they backed off, planning to bring it back around in 2014.

This is a fee collected from “alcohol related” businesses. It is at the discretion of Chico PD WHO pays,  and HOW MUCH they pay.  Here’s the slick pamphlet they’ve been handing out:

http://www.butteyouthnow.org/public/uploads/City%20of%20Chico%20ACE%20Issue%20Brief%20%232(1).pdf

Now take a look at the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control website:

http://www.abc.ca.gov/programs/grant.html

As you can see, the ABC is fully funded from fees collected from alcohol related businesses. Chico PD seeks to place additional fees on the industry in order to duplicate the actions of the ABC. I don’t see the sense in this. The police are supposed to be out there enforcing the laws, preventing and solving actual crimes – providing special consulting services to one industry in town does not seem appropriate to me.

Chief Trostle and his management staff spend a lot of their high dollar time yakking, I’ll say that. I just attended the Police Advisory Board meeting last week and tomorrow I’m headed to a Chamber of Commerce “luncheon with the Chief.” This guy is paid over $160,000 a year to run the cop shop, but he seems to be some sort of Public Relations expert. Same for Linda Dye and  Jennifer Gonzales – both paid around $100,000 a year to give reports at meetings. I know, they put on their vest and gun and go out for the photo ops – in fact, Dye was carrying her riot stick, which she handled absentmindedly, while she spoke at  the Police Advisory Board meeting. 

The cops are management heavy. They also DON’T PAY ANY OF THEIR OWN BENEFITS OR PENSION PREMIUMS. This is why I have said we need to reorganize the cop shop, but yeah, last night, Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan voted along with the rest of the fist puppets to renew the cop contract as is, with all the perks and benies. Sorry Harold, I think that booze tax is a done deal too.

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Brian Nakamura wants to keep the public out of the contract talks – some sunshine!

20 Mar

Several years ago, because of inquiries and complaints on the part of various citizens, including myself, Chico city council made a verbal agreement with the public, recorded in the minutes of the meeting, that they would “sunshine” future cop contracts  before they voted on them.   So, if you look at the agenda for March 5, you will see the proposed cop contract.

I went over this in a letter to the Enterprise Record:

The tentative Chico police contract is available in the March 5 city council agenda packet at 

http://www.chico.ca.us/government/minutes_agendas/city_council.asp

 Some highlights:  
 
Page 33: the taxpayers will continue to pay most or all of the health insurance premium. 
 
Page 34: the taxpayers will pay the employee’s full life insurance premium based on salary plus lesser policies for spouse and children. 
 
Page 35: the taxpayers will pay the full long term care insurance premium.  
 
Page 42: the taxpayers will continue to pay both the “employee’s” and “employer’s” share of pension premiums, for current employees only.   For employees hired on or after January 1, 2013,”the city shall not pay any employee contribution, and those employees shall pay the entire employee contribution rate of 50 percent…”  
 
Page 43: “City agrees to the establishment of a retiree Medical Expense and Health Insurance Trust…funded by monthly contributions made by the city…” of more than $300/employee. 
 
Chico Police currently boasts 147 full-time employees. They claim to be short of staff, but still demand very generous salary and benefit packages for current employees. Their demands place not only the public, but the police themselves, at risk. This contract also creates a dangerous disparity between existing and incoming employees.  There’s already an issue of “compaction” between lieutenants and sergeants, two lieutenants have filed formal complaints.  
 
Brian Nakamura recently announced a $50 million deficit  related directly to the “unfunded pension liability”. When will the CPOA bring a rational proposal to the table?
 

Juanita Sumner, Chico

I read  the entire contract, and was really interested in what the council had to say about it – turns out, “sunshining” does not mean, “public discussion.”  They posted the contract on the agenda for the public to see, but when that item came up at the end of the meeting, Mayor Goloff simply closed the meeting. She didn’t even mention that the contract was available for public review.

I’m not the only person who’s miffed about that. Below read Stephanie Taber’s e-mail to city council and Brian Nakamura:

6.3 on the agenda last week was the sun-shinning of the new CPOA MOU.  Apparently based on a conversation between the City Manager and the city’s chief legal strategist there was no mandate that there be an open discussion regarding the contents and that is now sufficient to just place it on the agenda.  I do not recall that as a decision by council during discussions regarding transparency and sun-shinning.  I object.  I think it is necessary for the City Manager to justify why this MOU is being placed on the agenda for apparent approval without regard to the cost to the city taxpayers.  No fiscal impact – really?

There is no dispute that Public Safety consumes the majority of the General Fund budget.  There is also no dispute that those employees under the Public Safety umbrella deserve the wages they make.  But that is where the consensus ends for many of us.

Why has the city not mandated that current Public Safety employees pay their share of retirement benefits?  The County was able to negotiate a gradual down-tick of employer pick up of their retiree benefits over a three year period.  Why hasn’t the city taken the same approach?

Why hasn’t the city discontinued the $300 per month per employee toward the employees “retirement trust fund”.  That is an incredibly costly benefit – $3,600 per year for one employee, in ten years that is $36,000; 20 and that’s $72,000.  And how many Public Safety employees do we have?  Do the math. What is the justification for that?  What private employer in Chico provides a similar benefit?  And this has been in effect since 2007.

In these tough economic times, City employees who make 2, 3 and even 4 times the wages of those working for private employers, not including very generous city benefits, need to consider shared sacrifice.I see no evidence of that in this current agreement with Chico Police Officers Association.

Perhaps it is time for the city to consider the hiring of a profession labor negotiator to deal with the unions.

Stephanie Taber

Apparently, Stephanie found out, this was Brian Nakamura’s decision.

He’s Mark Sorensen’s pit bull, Sorensen needs to answer for this too. 

UPDATE: Mark Sorensen responded to my e-mail query, but I’m out of town this weekend – I’ll get back to it on Monday. Unless there’s wi-fi in my cheap motel room. 

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New police chief’s contract signed last Tuesday, made available to the public Friday – gotta love that “sunshine”!

9 Jul

Last Tuesday night we got a new police chief – Kirk Trostle. Only a month ago city manager Dave Burkland issued a statement – “police chief candidates not knockouts” according to the Enterprise Record. Trostle is a refugee from the Oroville police department, where, as chief, he certainly had his critics. He came to Chico only about a year and a half ago, from a department that was not without it’s problems. The council made their appointment without any elaboration – he was essentially the best thing they could come up with on short notice.

But shouldn’t we be able to negotiate a better contract with this man? Retiring Chief Porky Mike Maloney is getting over $165,000 a year, just in salary. He will be getting over $100,000 to retire, for the rest of his life, plus medical benefits.  Frankly, I predict he’s carrying a colostomy bag within five years. 

Have you seen Trostle’s contract? They signed it at council last Tuesday. But when we asked for it, they said we wouldn’t be able to look at it until Friday. I was invited to go down to the clerk’s office, at her convenience, 9 – 5, during MY WORK DAY, to look at a contract that had already been signed. Why in the hell would I want to do that? They don’t even offer you a decent cup of coffee. 

So no, I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m guessing, it’s worse than Maloney’s contract.  A fellow taxpayer went down Friday and reports he has the contracts, but has not given me any details. I don’t know if he had to pay for paper copies or what, but you can view it for free if you want to go down there. I’ll get back to you when I got something. 

 

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