Commission Impossible

CI Challenge: Tony Dow, AKA: Wally from Leave it to Beaver.

Dan Nguyen-Tan pretty well predicted the Planning Commission appointments...
http://www.norcalblogs.com/bullfight/archives/2007/11/appointments_1.html

Mark S.,

He sure did. It's almost like he had some sixth sense regarding what the Council would do. Truly amazing.

Lon

If we weren't such CI slackers, we would have gotten this Big Brother challenge. Derek called it again, but people who are checking the CI at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday (not that I am necessarily above that) seem to have beaten us out.

Also, I know that you are busy, and I didn't really have any suggestions for how you can improve that situation (personally, I walk around in my home office with an intravenous coffee drip into my arm), but I think a new video is long overdue.

Mark

The other day I visited your old campaign web site and was struck by your comment about the city being responsible for poor planning as it has grown.

My take on the poor planning is you are absolutely right, but If I recollect correctly from 50 years of living in Chico it was the county supervisors that allowed development on the cheap in the islands within the city. No side walks, no curbs, no gutters, no street lighting and no sewers would ever have been allowed by the city.

I remember admiring Fred Hignell for refusing to develop his projects outside the city after his first one adjacent to the Longfellow area. Fifty years later we who live in Chico owe him a great debt of gratitude for his foresight.

When we moved here we refused to locate outside the city where new developments had none of the essentials mentioned above. Living on a septic tank with several small children was not fun when we lived in Redding and we were not about to do it in Chico.

Question did I read you correctly?

Please say hello to your lovely daughter Anna. It was a pleasure to have her in a California government class on campus a year ago.

Jim Gregg

Tempra,

Yeah, I know reposting the video was pretty lazy. But I watched it again this morning and thought "what the hell" I've probably got some new readers since I put it up, and I don't have any appropriate local photos, so I reused it.

Knowing that I've diappointed you has left me deeply depressed. I will try to do better, if I can find the energy to get out of my bed. And if I can stop crying long enough to see my computer screen.

Lon

See what you started?

This one was a classic and definitely worth a rerun, but now the crowd is on their feet stomping and yelling for "More!"

This is no time for performance anxiety. Get out from behind the curtain and get back out in the spotlight before they storm the stage. Face the paperazzi, the madness and the screaming girls. Don't worry as long as there is more flying flowers and underware than there is flying produce!

Your friends with the Police will step in if it gets out of hand.

Prof Gregg:

I did not say that the City was responsible.

What I did say was that it appears that in response to the City’s apparent resistance growth occurred beyond the City borders. AKA: Squeeze the balloon and it will surely bulge where you’re not squeezing it.

You are correct. Those dastardly developers did it in the county and the supervisors let 'em do it. As I said, the growth happened without the City.

But, the growth didn’t just occur in “islands” of county within the City; it occurred in huge swaths of areas far beyond the city limits.

Some say that the “build in the county” efforts were to get away from City fees, some say it was because there was little developable land within the City Limits and because of the difficulty (time and expense) of annexation, sewer, drainage, etc, and some say that there was an otherwise overly high level of resistance from the City.

I imagine that the truth has all of those components.

I'll admit to being young and naive at the time, but I was fairly observant, and the way I remembered it was that the City was (and is again) in a distinctively anti-growth posture toward both commercial and residential development. Yea, this is where you counter by mentioning the recent approvals of Meriam Park, Foothill park, etc.

Life was dandy for me in the county in North Chico, growing up a couple of miles from what was then "The Mall", a couple of miles from Bidwell Park, walking distance to school, etc...

It is unmistakable that over many decades growth in the county ran far beyond the City Limits and City infrastructure, causing much of mess that we all know and love.

In deed the City has been annexing many of those areas which accounts for nearly half of our population growth over the past 10 years:
http://www.marksorensen.net/cic-pop-growth-2007.htm

Which also begs the question: On which side of Greenline is Durham?...Just curious…

Though, as I’ve said many times, in most respects I’d really like growth to stop. I really did like the Chico that I grew up in…

But the cold hard truth is that we are in a state (unless we secede) that is growing on the order of 600,000 people per year. I do not generally subscribe to the notion of manifest destiny, but I think that some number of those folks are headed for our area, and that there is very little we can do to change that fact. Our choices (I believe) are to do a decent job of planning, or not.

Meanwhile it would seem that the decades of generally tying to stop anything that might be growth inducing (including job growth) has kept us at the bottom rung of the economic ladder…

Dandy… The 2nd largest source of employment growth in our area (insert drum roll here) is: government jobs.
http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/article.asp?articleId=642
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/indhist/chic$haw.xls

Sorry to use a severely overused word, but, this is not sustainable.

At this rate there will be too many government workers, who are on average making far more than the serfs, and not enough working serfs to support them….

For decades, every time we invite some economist to study our region and come and give us a presentation, they specifically comment on the fact that other than a bunch of public sector jobs, we have a remarkably poor employment picture.

Though now, wondering how to increase tax revenues, and after more than a year of study the City itself is re-re-re-re-discovering this problem and is making some gestures regarding Economic Development, though, they have yet to talk about any real action items. And have not formulated any real plan of action.

Sorry… I probably wondered off your subject…. But, hope that clarifies your question...

Mark

Your points are well taken. Both the city and the county now face the issue of much additional growth as they tackle their general plans. No growth is an unacceptable alternative, some form of rational controlled growth should be a given.

Let's hope that down line folks don't have to look at the results of poor decisions as we now have to when we look back from today.

I remember both Chico and Redding with populations of 12,000. I also remember the resentment of those of us who were part of the greatest mass migration the world has ever known. For me Northern California was the end of the rainbow after first seeing it from the deck of carrier coming under the Golden Gate at the end of WWII.

If we are ever going to get things right, we had better be able to sit down and talk to one another
about our differences. That was the message of the lady from Texas who shared with 100 people at the League of Women Voters water fourm last Thursday. She shared how they have dealt with safeguarding ground water from an aquifer under 8 counties.

Thanks for your response.