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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

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

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

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