May 08, 2008
ONE SOLUTION FOR THE CITY'S "STRUCTURAL BUDGET DEFICIT"
Since most of the City Council had support from the Police and Fire Unions, I’m surprised that they haven’t met with their friends and secured a simple solution to the City’s “Structural Budget Deficit”.
Agreements with the unions to change the working hours of the Fire and Police employees would go a long-way towards solving the “Structural Budget Deficit” problem.
In the case of Fire Department employees, change the present 24 hour shifts to 12 hour shifts 12 hours; and in the case of the Police Department employees change the present 10 and 12 hour shifts to 8 hour shifts. Fire employees would work approximately 14 shifts per month instead of 8 shifts. Police employees would work 5 days per week instead of 4 or less days per week.
These two simple changes would provide a very substantial budget savings and would allow the Departments to maintain their existing level of staffing; and would not require a reduction in services that has been discussed recently by the Council Finance Committee. Overtime could disappear and each department would have more than enough personnel to maintain a high level of services for City residents.
Posted by Fred at 09:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 26, 2008
SIMPLE SOLUTION TO CHICO'S "STRUCTURAL BUDGET DEFICIT"
Since most of the City Council had support from the Police and Fire Unions, I’m surprised that they haven’t met with their friends and secured a simple solution to the City’s “Structural Budget Deficit”.
Agreements by the unions to change the working hours of the Fire and Police Departments would go a long-way towards solving the “Structural Budget Deficit” problem; change Fire Department personnel working 12 hours shifts instead of the present 24 hour shifts; and in the case of the Police Department change the shifts to 8 hours rather than the existing hourly shifts.
These two simple changes would provide a very substantial budget savings and would not require any lay-offs (and reduction in services) that have been discussed recently by the Council. Overtime could disappear and each department would have more than enough personnel, even with employee retirements.
Posted by Fred at 09:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 24, 2008
The "Great Hoax" against the Neighborhood Plans
The “Great Hoax” against the Neighborhood Plans
The majority of the City Council recently approved The Avenues Neighborhood Improvement Plan (Plan). I doubt that the City Council understands or read the documents (80 plus pages) that they approved at their meeting on April 15th. The “Great Hoax” is that the costs relating to the improvements desired by the property owners and residents of the neighborhood are well in excess of 50 million dollars (my estimate, since the expensive Consultant and novice City staff didn’t make any realistic estimates).
By the way, the Council allocated 7.5 million for improvements within the Plan before the Plan study started. This method of budgeting is unique, considering allocating funds well in advance of determining what The Avenues Neighborhood Improvement Plan and other neighborhood plans would cost.
This is one more example of the majority of the City Council mismanaging the finances of the City rather than correcting the “structural budget deficit” which is bringing the City to the brink of bankruptcy. The majority of the Council “wrings their hands” and holds hearing after hearing without determining how the City will get out of its disastrous financial problems.
More to come in future Blogs.
Posted by Fred at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 17, 2008
DOES THE CITY REALLY NEED A PLANNING COMMISSION??
After watching the majority of the City Council overrule the Planning Commission (on many occasions), perhaps they should eliminate the Commission and speed-up the planning process without its hindrance.
A couple of recent examples include the Fogarty property development (now in litigation) and more recently the approval of The Avenues Neighborhood Improvement Plan (PLAN) which was recommended to the City Council after several time consuming public hearings and discussions.
The Commission recommended eliminating from the PLAN changes to The Esplanade which included reducing vehicle lanes to 10’ and placing a bike lane of each side of the northbound and southbound vehicle lanes (not withstanding that bikes have the side drives available for their use), obviously, setting-up a dangerous and accident prone situation. This recommendation, originally included in the PLAN, is contrary to the City’s General Plan and was completely ignored by the majority of the voting Councilmembers, since a novice planner told them that it conformed to the General Plan.
Posted by Fred at 06:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 02, 2008
CONSULTANTITIS--Suffered by the City Council
CONSULTANTITIS—Suffered by the City Council
One of the costly annual expenditures of the City is the hiring of CONSULTANTS for studies that rarely, if ever, result in any improvements to the City’s Structural Budget Deficit problem. In the last several years the City has hired, expensive, Consultants for the Neighborhood Plans, Downtown Access Plan, Opinion Surveys and now the General Plan Revision; which approaches a cost of approximately 2 million dollars (recognizing that much of this cost can be spread to funds other than the General Fund). There are other Consulting Services that are not listed here.
Each of these projects requires the City to allocate a substantial number of Staff to oversee the projects and to provide much of the information necessary for inclusion in the plans.These projects should have been handled by the existing City Staff, with little, if any Consultant expenditures. The existing well paid Staff should have the capabilities of conducting these studies, or perhaps the City’s hiring practices need improvement.
It is very obvious the City Council does not seem to understand the seriousness of the City’s Structural Budget Deficit. There are so many examples of the reason for the Deficit that has been obvious for at least the past 5 year; employee wages with annual increases that consume approximate 80% of the General Fund Expenditures; a lack of recognition of the fact that General Fund Revenues have been outpaced by its Expenditures for several years; and unwillingness to rein-in other expenditures, such as Consultant Services.
Posted by Fred at 08:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
March 19, 2008
THE CITY COUNCIL SHOULD TAKE THE LEAD--NOT THE FIANANCE COMMITTEE
Tthe City Council should consider doing away with its Finance Committee hearings relating to the City's "Structural Budget Deficit" problems which have been discussed, meeting after meeting, without any real solutions to the disastrous, short and long-term, "Structural Budget Deficit" in the General Fund. The taxpayers now learn, for the first time, that there are at least another 12 funds that are also in a deficit position, including the Redevelopment Fund with a 10 million deficit.
In the meantime, the Finance Committee meetings are tying-up valuable staff time—six or more staff at each of the meetings.
The deficits and the solution is a City Council problem; not a committee problem; and the Council knows that the only long-term solution is to reduce the cost of salaries and benefits or ask the voters for a tax increase, which they probably believes would not be approved at this time.
The only real solution is to secure a voluntary salary and benefit reduction from its unions, which is probably unlikely, unless the City Council threatens bankruptcy.
It appears that the Finance Committee meetings are a way of delaying a solution to the "Structural Budget Deficit" until after the November elections.
Posted by Fred at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
March 06, 2008
CITY OF CHICO--IS BANKRUPTCY ITS FUTURE?
Is the City of Chico slipping, slowly but surely, toward bankruptcy as is one of California cities; Vallejo, California.
Bankruptcy being discussed by the City of Vallejo was mentioned by Chico’s Director of Finance, during the recent update of the City’s financial status. Many of Vallejo’s problems, relating to police and fire salaries and benefits as well other employee contracts, are the same problems of the City of Chico. The City recently enter into a new contract with its Firefighter, giving them a 5% salary increase for the first year of the contract and 4% for next 5 years. And the Police union has a “me too” contract that provides them with the same increases as was given to the Firefighters. I don’t write this to place blame on the Firefighters for the City’s structural deficit problem, since other employee contracts are a portion of the employee’s costs that are major contributors to the City’s fiscal problem.
All blame for the City’s financial problem belongs to the City Council that has the final authority on all fiscal matters of the City.
Although there has been much discussion and many meetings about actions that may save the City from bankruptcy, I have not heard of any real leadership by the City Council attempting to resolve the financial disaster that faces the City.
Without City Council leadership, the “ship” may well sink into bankruptcy.
Posted by Fred at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 22, 2008
Is Downtown Chico about to become a Pigeon Haven?
As I was walking Downtown, the other day, I was hit on my shoulder with a white blob of something as I watched a Pigeon flying overhead. This had some meaning to me since I’ve had a number of business and property owners complain about the increasing number of Pigeons on their roofs and sidewalks. If you’re careful as you lookdown when walking on the sidewalks in Downtown, you’ll notice the white blobs scattered on many of the sidewalks.
It’s about time that the City and the Downtown business and property owners get together to develop a program to minimize the damage from the Pigeons and before they become a serious problem; similar to those that Downtown has had in the past.
Posted by Fred at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 12, 2008
CITY COUNCIL IGNORING BUDGET CRISIS
Since the Council has stated publicly that the City has a budget crisis, how could they approve approximate $70,000 or more for two opinion surveys; one relating to the General Plan and a second concerning City Services etc.?
Without the $70,000 opinion surveys, they could have easily put together a representative group of Chicoans and secured relevant answers to the same questions asked in the expensive opinion surveys.
Now the Council has embarked on an update of the General Plan that is estimated to cost in excess of $1,000,000 for consulting services. With the slowdown in building activity, the City planning staff should be capable of updating the General Plan without using the expensive consulting services. Even when using consulting services, the planning staff is assigned, much of their time, following and helping the consultants.
The Council hasn’t yet come to grips with the seriousness of their budget crisis.
Posted by Fred at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 07, 2008
Architectural Review Gone Haywire--Downtown Transit Center
A new Downtown monstrosity is in the making on 2nd Street, between Salem Street and Normal Avenue. I believe the City calls it a Transit Center (many of the residents that have asked me about it have referred to it as the “thing”). How did it ever get through the Architectural Review Committee? It is completely incompatible with the surrounding buildings and takes-up some of the most valuable Downtown parking spaces, and I understand it cost in excess of $1,000,000. What happened to the usual required landscaping? Also it would be interesting to know what that glassed copula is sticking-up above the skeleton.
The “thing” has stood as a skeleton for sometime; but I assume the City staff responsible for the project will come-up with some excuse for the delay in completion; just another example of the delays in completing the City Plaza.
Isn’t it such a wonderful addition to the Downtown as well as a beautiful entrance to our University??
Everyone with the time should watch the 10 or more buses leave the “thing” without any passengers. And even during peak hours few passengers get off or on the buses.
This Transit Center, as in many other towns, will require costly additional and continuous policing; day and night.
Posted by Fred at 06:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)