Category: Point of View

City explains process for tiny homes on church parking lots

Email to ChicoSol from Brendan Vieg
by Brendan Vieg | Posted December 14, 2025

ChicoSol asked City Community Development Director Brendan Vieg to explain the process that is required for the placement of tiny homes on church parking lots. The following is Vieg’s Dec. 11 response to our story and request.

“Council did not “approve” NSST’s tiny home project for church parking lots as stated in your article.  Instead, Council voted to support the idea in general and directed that NSST bring forward an application and that staff do everything they can, within reason, to support a successful public process and outcome.  read more

Town Monument

by Danielle Alexich | Posted December 11, 2025
Photo courtesy of Chico Fire.

On the first anniversary of the fire that destroyed the iconic Bidwell Mansion, we’re posting a poem written and contributed by local poet Danielle Alexich.

Sleep-drunk, we hear sirens from bed
and at dawn check our phones.
I stride the neighborhood avenue
to find Bidwell Mansion,
Victorian landmark,
yesterday pink,
now charred and smoldering,
grieving itself,
collapsed into a Dalian dream.
Light seeps through majestic trees.

Locals line the sidewalk.
Girl Scout alumni who toured
ornate, eerie rooms
with a blind and brilliant docent.
Old-timers holding hands.
Unwitting parents whose kids
cut class to smoke weed on the veranda.
Amid the rubble, steps survive,
once slick from generations
of events, spontaneous picnics,
first kisses, erased footprints
of those who were conquered. read more

Butte County needs a Public Defender Office

Attorney Ron Reed: A Public Defender Office would save taxpayer money
by Ronald Reed | Posted December 1, 2025

Attorney Ron Reed has worked as a public defender in Butte County since 1986. This guest commentary was extracted, with Reed’s permission, from a report he prepared and mailed to about 150 interested parties.

In 1989, a group of 10 local lawyers formed a consortium in Butte County to handle indigent defense. They operated independently, kept private practices, and renewed contracts every three years as caseloads grew. Today, 18 attorneys each receive $14,000 per month to cover a share of indigent defense. read more

“I’m an immigrant – this puts me at risk”

Gold on fascism: "We are already there."
by George Gold, guest commentary | Posted August 26, 2025

When I was about 7, my family was on a camping holiday in Queensland, Australia, when my father took me aside and relayed in detail the events that led to his escape from Nazi relocation camps in Austria.

My parents were Holocaust survivors, and part of their worldwide escape took them through several countries to Australia, where they had finally settled and where I was born. I’m an immigrant, and in the United States today, just saying this now puts me at risk of summary arrest and deportation. read more

Maze gates and right-of-way rules worry cyclists

South Park Drive makeover to be reconsidered
by Ann Bykerk-Kauffman, guest writer | Posted July 24, 2025
A driver on South Park Drive where cars would not be allowed. Photo by Yucheng Tang.

Opposition to the recent Chico City Council decision for South Park Drive near One Mile Recreation Area has been immediate and fierce, mostly focused on the plan to extend the car-free portion to the entrance gate.

On June 17 the Council approved the following proposal for that portion of South Park Drive:

  1. Repave it, maintaining its current width
  2. Extend the motor vehicle-free portion westward to the Bidwell Park entrance gate at Cypress Street 
  3. Repave the driveway to the Sycamore Pool parking lot and build two new driveways to the Sycamore Field and Caper Acres parking lots
  4. Pave the parking lots with permeable pavement
  5. Abandon and re-vegetate the parking areas along the north side of South Park Drive and the egress driveway located just east of Caper Acres.

But the Chico Safe Streets Coalition, an active transportation advocacy group, opposes the plan, too. Why? Although, on the face of it, the closure of South Park Drive seems to facilitate bicycle and pedestrian transportation, the current implementation plan does the opposite – the devil is in the details.  read more

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is America’s Gulag

Guest commentary
by Laszlo Bartus, Amerikai Népszava | Posted July 1, 2025
A photo posted on the official X page of the US Department of Homeland Security depicting ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ a new immigrant detention facility located in Florida’s Everglades National Park. photo courtesy of American Community Media.

It is no secret that Donald Trump has a reputation for cruelty. In that vein, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis could not have come up with a more pleasing gift than a prison for undocumented immigrants located in the Everglades National Park.

Let’s be clear, Alligator Alcatraz—as the prison has been dubbed—is set to become the most inhumane prison in the world.

The Everglades National Park is a vast swamp stretching between Florida’s east and west coasts. It is teeming with massive pythons, alligators, swarms of mosquitos, and panthers. Summer temperatures regularly top the triple digits. read more