Commission Impossible

My guesses for your comments:
" Isn't that the guy who hates kites?"
"I knew Wahl was a disc golfer!"

Responses to other comments:
" I've never heard him better prepared." Not a compliment.

"(the wind whistles down the valley..." Gregg, right?

"I thought this guy was a liberal!" What I've been saying all along. He campaigns left, he governs centrist.

"Larry came off too negative."
"Larry was the only one honest" Don't necessarily see these comments as contradictory.

I thought Greg Jones did a great job. I must observe, though, that city staff give an uncanny impression of cage-bred fowl who've been suddenly given free range. Most of them seem to be staying safely in the coop. It remains to be seen whether or not the city manager can get his legacies to empower themselves. I understand why they aren't used to sovereignty, but I would have thought that they'd be covetous of it.

If I were paid enough, I'd advise the city manager to compose some cross-functional teams and offer some meaningful incentives for team performance in achieving impossible stretch goals. Perhaps that only works in the private sector.

Alan,

The disc golfer comment was mine. You'll have to keep searching for number two (it's pretty obvious).

I thought Jones did fine. But all of the cute organizational gimmicks and leadership mantras won't make people work harder (or reduce the number of appeals they deal with). He's got a lot of work to do. And it sounds like a lot of "studies" to do to get to the point of doing work.

Larry Wahl got his own ER story today to go along with his diversion from the other councilor's comments.

In the story it references $1.5million spent on Bidwell Ranch. I think that is an error, and the $1.5million references Comanche Creek which was a different piece of "open space" purchased without a plan for use. I'm not sure if Wahl mentioned Bidwell Ranch (if he did he should stop kicking that dead horse).

Lon

Yea, I was disappointed with today's ER story…. Larry Wahl did not refer to Bidwell Ranch. That was a $7.6 million purchase made almost 10 years ago (still fenced off), with a present day opportunity cost of many tens of million…. He was referring to the $1.5 million spent for the Thomasson property along Comanche creek... Wait ‘till you see what ultimately runs through that land purchase, it will be quite ironic : - ) , but, that is a story for another day.

And then on the Fogarty/Oak Valley situation: I believe that Mr. Wahl did mention that the legal costs to the City have passed $200,000 (very noteworthy, yet not in the ER) but the real story (That Mr. Wahl did not specifically mention) is the $37 million dollar law suit and its connective issues.

I'd bet on one of two outcomes on the Fogarty lawsuit. 1) He Wins; 2) He Wins by virtue of a favorable (to Fogarty) settlement. Either way, we the taxpayers loose... But, it could take years for it to play out to a conclusion.

Whatever the total on all these expenditures might end up being the real question is: will the balance of responsible citizens remaining in Chico be enraged enough to vote the irresponsible spenders out?

You know I was looking on Google Earth recently at the Comcanche Creek "greenway" and the site of the proposed bridge.

I've posted the image, click link below.

View Commanche Creek Bridge image

If the ER had published a photo like what you can see from Google Earth, showing just how sensible it was to link the two industrial parks you can see from the air, and also showing that the NIMBY alleged traffic patterns just wouldn't have happened, I'll bet it would have never lost by vote.

Anthony,

You might be putting too much stock in our voter's desires to understand the issues.

What I find more interesting is that a liberal majority City Council seems to have come to the conclusion that the bridge might now be a good idea.

Here's my prediction.

The City will build the bridge in conjunction with infill development plans for the Diamond Match property. The greenway will be identified as a potential neighborhood park. The nearby neighbors will elect to put in some grass and picnic tables, but will not want to foot-the-bill for more developed recreation facilities.

All-in-all not a bad plan. But I suspect the same things would have happened years ago at a much lower cost.

Mark alluded to having some knowledge of what might be in the works. Maybe he could fill us in, or point me in the right direction offline?

Lon

Anthony, Anthony, Anthony… you’ve seen enough to know that facts and logical thought can easily be overcome with emotional lies and deceptions. We’ve certainly seen that demonstrated enough times.

While you hear a lot of talk about actually fixing traffic problems and actually planning ahead and building solutions before the problem fully develops (and makes the solution more expensive and more complicated) Those who have their head in the sand on growth and want to wish it away, actually oppose traffic solutions at every turn. Reason: smooth running traffic and transportation systems would be growth inducing.

Conversely, if we have horrible traffic problems, they can use those problems as reasons to oppose virtually anything. A rare forthright admission of this thought process can be found here:
http://www.becnet.org/nodes/issues/transportation/hwy_149_faqs.htm
“…infrastructure projects are heavily growth inducing…�

Of course these are the same folks who would have opposed the creation of the home in which they live, the stores in which they shop, the places where they work, and roads that they themselves drive on.

Over the course of many decades this entire flawed thought process is precisely what created the vast majority of our current traffic (and other) problems… Our City failed to plan for reality.

The same folks preach connectivity of roads, high density development and then quite often do a 180 if it is anywhere near their home.

Now, on to Barber Yard…. This is all shear speculation on my part....But, yes Lon, I think that you have the right idea.

www.barberlandco.com

First you must take in all that our general plan says, and take in the concepts of new urbanism and “Smart Growth�. To a very very great extent they match up wonderfully with what is being proposed for Barber Yard. Highly land use efficient, the current concepts appear to propose something on the order of 1200 housing units and 400,000 square feet of office and commercial on that 136 acres… Exactly the sort of high efficiency land use sought by our general plan. Exactly the sort of mixed use core sought by our general plan, but finally on a scale large enough to possibly support the concepts.

Barber Yard is a text book perfect example of a place to do this sort of thing. It is 6-8 blocks from Downtown and the University. Utilities and infrastructure are there. “Traffic� is the subject that needs a bit of external help. A road from the SE corner of the Barber Yard/Estes Area up to meet with South Park Avenue would appear to me to be a huge logical contributing solution. That along with an honest look at the entire area and the development of a vision for that entire SW area.

The South West Area.
http://www.barberlandco.com/SW-Project-Map-031905.pdf

Yeah you guys are right, what was I thinking?

Logic and sensible economic planning doesn't apply here when dealing with emotional arguments, and the Edgar slough/ditch turned Commanche Creek riparian ecosystem/homeless camp was about the most illogical/emotional argument as one could imagine.

Conversely, there's a lesson for all of us in that.

Its too bad the Barber yard buildings were torched by that punk kid, it would have made a perfect model for us to follow like the The Old Mill District in Bend Oregon. You may remember a letter to the editor I wrote in 2003 about it.

http://www.theoldmill.com/