The City Council majority voted at its June 3 meeting to staff Fire Engine 1, but the panel was divided over where to find the funding.
The 4-3 vote to cut the road repair fund — instead of cutting unoccupied positions at Chico Police Department or elsewhere in the budget — elicited sighs from some members of the audience. The road repair fund comes from Measure H sales tax revenue.
“I’m not going to lose sleep if we delay some road projects,” said Councilmember Mike O’Brien. “If we lose a neighborhood because our fire department is not adequately staffed, I will lose sleep over that.”
O’Brien, a former Chico police chief, made the passing motion, which defers road improvement projects to fund the engine staffing. His motion was supported by Mayor Kasey Reynolds, Vice Mayor Dale Bennett and Councilmember Tom van Overbeek after an alternative motion from other councilmembers failed.
The four councilmembers who were elected in last year’s General Election — Bennett, Bryce Goldstein, Katie Hawley and O’Brien — all said they wanted to fix the roads in their campaigns.
O’Brien first proposed to fund the engine staffing by “cutting whatever that amount is from some of our road projects.”
Councilmember Tom van Overbeek then suggested that instead of talking about “cutting the road budget,” the wording could be “implement them [road projects] at a slower pace.” O’Brien agreed.
Brendan Ottoboni, director of Public Works-Engineering for the City, noted that the road improvement budget was smaller than what was envisioned in the road rehabilitation plan.
“In 2023, the Council adopted the 10-year road rehabilitation plan, which assumed a $10 million contribution from Measure H (annually),” Ottoboni said, adding that the proposed budget was at “roughly” $8 million.
Councilmember Hawley suggested they remove some of the vacant police positions that aren’t now occupied by trainees to find the funding.
O’Brien was opposed. “I will support funding some firefighters, but not by cutting the police department,” he said.
Councilmember Goldstein was opposed to making more cuts in road improvement funding.
“We’re already cutting road projects. I don’t think it’s the solution to cut them further,” Goldstein said. “I also don’t think that just pushing them further down in the schedule is any different than cutting them.
“If we were cutting a police position and saying we’ll fill it next year — I don’t think that would be palatable either,” Goldstein added.
Goldstein wrote on her social media before the June 3 Council meeting: “Due to flat revenues, the proposed budget for 2025-26 cuts millions of Measure H dollars from capital improvements and instead uses them to fund the Police Department.”
Councilmember Addison Winslow was skeptical about the wisdom of delaying the road projects.
“If we hire these people [new police officers], we’re setting ourselves up to pay for these people,” Winslow said. “If we don’t identify now how we’re gonna fund that, then we’re going to be in a tough spot down the road.”
Winslow moved to fund Engine 1 with 70 percent of the funding coming from police budget cuts and the remaining 30 percent from cuts that would be identified by the Council. Winslow’s motion failed 3–4, with only Goldstein and Hawley voting in favor.
Yucheng Tang is a California Local News fellow covering Chico City Council for ChicoSol.
It is sad that the Council is breaking their promise to fix our roads.
Last time I vote yes on a bond that was majorly pushed as road repair.
The CPD is bloated.
Of course, O’Brien backs his buddies in law enforcement and ignores the taxpayer.
Something does not pass the spell test.
I agree with staffing the Engine but not by cutting the funds for road repair. The unoccupied police officer positions seems like a good choice to shift funds into much needed road repair. The Chico PD budget receives almost half the entire City budget. Too bad common sense didn’t prevail.