Tag Archives: Mark Sorensen Chico City Council

City mounts it’s tax increase campaign

21 Jun

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble – the Chico City Council is at it again. I’m pretty sure, the public has let them know, they will not vote themselves a sales tax increase. So, Mark Sorensen, “fiscal conservative,” has pulled a bond out of his ass – a special use bond! For street repairs!  A measure that can be passed with 51 percent of the vote!

Sorensen has balls of brass these days – you can actually hear them click together when he walks – because he has announced he has no plans to run for re-election. Good plan Mark!

Somebody should remind Sorensen that his tenure as councilor has coincided with the most incredible downward spiral any town has ever seen. But we’ve got work to do folks, no time for finger pointing.

Unless it’s your middle finger – go ahead and point that in the general direction of city hall every morning when you get up. Better yet – do what I did – write a letter to the Enterprise Record. That’s letters@chicoer.com  Cut a few words and send it to the News and Review if you like – that’s chicoletters@newsreview.com

The city of Chico is running a tax increase campaign in the form of quick-fix, highly publicized road repairs. First, city officials want to stop the November repeal of SB 1, the “gas tax”. Furthermore, they want to put their own revenue measure on an upcoming ballot.

Contractors are scraping 4 inches of old asphalt, chewing it up, mixing it with tar, and spreading it back over major thoroughfares like Esplanade and Cohasset Road. That’s nothing but a patch job – those roads need to be scraped to the base and completely resurfaced, as were East and Palmetto Avenues, back in the 1990’s. Those are still among the best roads in Chico. Meanwhile, the “resurfacing” job the city did on Vallombrosa last year is already crumbling to pieces, with major road hazards.

The city of Chico has deferred maintenance on roads in favor of paying pensions. On June 19, council voted unanimously to put $1 million (from where?) into a fund that can’t be used for anything else but paying the pension deficit. City Finance Director Scott Dowell set it up so that “We can’t use the (funds) for operations. There’s value there. If we had dollars available there’s a temptation to use it for needed things.” 

At the same meeting, council referred the concept of a “street maintenance bond” to the finance committee.

Here you see their real priority – fund the pensions. The road work they are doing now is nothing but posturing – it will be over as of November 7.

Repeal the gas tax.

Juanita Sumner, Chico

What we need to watch for Folks, is any indication they are spending taxpayer money to push this initiative. In the meantime, write those letters!

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Looks like Marysville has beat their tax proposal – but it was a squeaker due to low turnout. We’ve got to get ready for a tax blitz in 2016

12 Nov

Looking at the election results for Yuba County, I see Marysville just barely turned back a sales tax increase proposal – Measure W. It looks like only 1800 people voted in that race, and almost 900 voted YES. It only seems to have been beaten by only about 60 votes.

I know, Marysville is a small town, but I think they have more than 1800 registered voters. 

I’ve been following Dan Walters lately – don’t tell him – and he’s warning that the Democrats might make a rebound in 2016, and bring a lot of tax increase and tax extension proposals along in their little knapsacks. I’m sure Chico will pursue a sales tax increase. Council will vote almost unanimously to put it on the ballot without petitioning the voters. 

Randall Stone has contacted me on several occasions to tell me he won’t support a sales tax. We’ll see. 

In the meantime, get ready to RUMBLE! 

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CPOA MOU – cops asking for 5 percent raise, other cherries

17 Oct

I received the agenda for the next city council meeting yesterday, and there at  the bottom is a discussion of the cops latest contract proposal. Here’s the report summary – I’ll admit, I edited in the slashes in that first date, they’d been left out and it looked like nonsense:

Chico POA
Proposal – September 24, 2014
The following is a proposal for a successor MOU to the one expiring 12/31114 between the
Chico Police Officers’ Association and the City of Chico. This proposal is intended to begin the
bargaining process and introduce several ideas that the POA believes can create a better
environment within the City of Chico Police Department, specifically the Departments ability to
retain and recruit police officers.
When possible, the current MOU provision that would be affected is listed. Wording is NOT
final and will be edited to reflect any changes prior to submission to the City in formal
bargaining.

1. Three year term ofMOU: 11/11/15-12/31/17. 1.3A 

2. Salary. 5% increase effective 1/1/15, 1/1116 and 1/1/17. 5.1 and Exhibit B
3. Longevity. Add four new longevity step increases of 4% at the following length of time
of employment with the city: 10 years, 15 years, 20 years and 25 years. New Article
5.12 “Longevity Pay”
4. Pay Step Addition and Adjustment. 5.1C
a. Add a Step H at 5% salary increase.
b. Add a “training pay” step equivalent to $18 per hour.
5. Cash out Holiday Time Banlc Reinstate policy of allowing employees to cash out
unused holiday time bank hours each year. 6.2
6. Vacation Cash Out. Allow employees to accrue vacation above the maximum caps and
to cash out any unused vacation accrued above the caps at the end of each calendar
year. 6.5
7. Holiday Hours. City shall provide ten hours of Holiday Time Bank pay for holidays.
6.1A
8. OT Pay for Holidays. City shall pay employees overtime rate for working holidays. 5.2
and 6.1
9. FICA and Dental to be paid by City. 6.3

I had to ask Debbie Presson to reload the reports yesterday, because she’d “accidentally” loaded them so that they could not be cut and paste. She complained that it would “take hours” to reload the reports properly, but she did it. I think they are required by law to do that, even though she tried to avoid doing it for years, telling me, she was afraid I’d edit them if they were available in cut and paste. I swear to God, she told me that. All the sudden Chris Constantin showed up and now she has to load them the way I ask. Every now and then I catch her loading them wrong and all I have to do is ask – she reloads them. She claims it’s a matter of a little button being switched. If a private sector worker made that mistake constantly I think they’d be out of a job, but Debbie not only stays hired,  she gets over $135,000 a year in salary and only pays 9 percent of her loaded benefits package.  I know it seems petty – but just think, what does “hours” of her time cost, to load reports into a computer? 

Of course when I cc’d Chris Constantin, he sent me the whole MOU, in cut-and-pastable format.  The summary only highlighted stuff the cops want to change – they want a 5 percent raise (bust a snicker!), they want their holiday and sick leave banks restored, they want, they want, they want. They  remind me of the bums on the street corners, hand out, mouth open, ass slackened.

Michael Jones provides a good commentary on the summary here,

http://chicopolitics.com/2014/10/16/police-staffing/

but doesn’t discuss what I found in the whole MOU – the city will still collect union dues, including those  officers who don’t want to join the union (they call that a “service fee”), and then handing the money over to the same union that dumps money into every election. And, Jones reports, the CPOA has missed the filing deadline for their campaign report.  It was due October 6, but still is not posted. Jones dug into the muni code and found this to be a misdemeanor. Wow, let’s call the cops!  Jones was the one who busted the news that such an agreement, according to administrative law judge and ex-city council candidate Joe Montes, is a blatant conflict of interest. 

Here’s our dilemma: these contracts will not come up for discussion on council until AFTER THE ELECTION. And, I will remind Jones, they spend and collect late, so they don’t post their biggest report until AFTER THE ELECTION.  I hope he’s not too disappointed when his candidates, Mark Sorensen, Reanette Fillmer and Andrew Coolidge, are shown to be the biggest recipients of the cops’ attentions, and then all turn around and sign this contract with very little editing. They will also be first on board for the sales tax increase, that’s my next prediction. 

 NOTE – I didn’t catch all the weird typos in the summary, but it’s readable

 

 

 

 

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Nakamura and friends want to sell Bidwell Ranch to pay their pension obligation – NO WAY SAN JOSE!

17 Nov

(Chico Enterprise Record) Letter writer Kathy Moran innocuously suggested we sell Bidwell Ranch. Is this just a thought that skittered across her brain, or is this the beginning of a campaign? 

Twice now I’ve heard Brian Nakamura suggest selling Bidwell Ranch. This is just another indication that Nakamura is incompetent to manage our town. He wants a quick fix – what? $20  million or so? To cover a $48 million pension deficit? $20 million is less than half the city’s operating budget for a year.  The money would be gone before the ink dried on the sale agreement. 

He also fails to mention what 1500 homes built on that constricted property would do to traffic, schools, our water system, etc.  He also fails to mention the environmental restrictions.  Scott Gruendl once opined that houses built on that property would be so expensive only the very wealthy could afford them. 

Nakamura will tell us we need the property taxes – to pay his pension and benefits. Nakamura currently pays only four percent of his pension out of his $212,000/year salary. He wants to sell off our resources to enrich himself. 

When asked if he would demand concessions from city employees during current contract talks, Nakamura professed a fear of the police and fire unions. Instead of fixing the root of the problem – over-compensated employees – he wants to empty our cookie jar to keep making the CalPERS payments. 

 We deserve better leadership. 

 Juanita Sumner, Chico Ca

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