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!
Chico Taxpayers Association 