When it comes to political action committees (PACs) operating in this year’s Chico City Council race, some things have changed while one has remained the same: Big bucks contributed by big developers to a PAC backing conservative candidates.
In fact, three conservative City Council candidates and the developers’ PAC supporting them have hauled in an unprecedented $200,000 in contributions for the Nov. 6 election, compared to a total of about $85,000 for three liberal candidates.read more
(This commentary was adapted from a longer speech delivered by the author at the Sept. 11 International Forum at Chico State – Editor.)
by Tony Waters
Chico is a wonderful town. City and university leaders have spent endless time and money to remind us of this, and largely the campaign for us to stay in love with Chico has worked. But, I wonder if the glamorization of Chico has diverted us from broader interests.
To a certain extent, we have a “Chico First” focus, or “North State First,” which is nice, but can also be provincial. The reality is, though, that the world is a much larger place than Chico; our student population illustrates this. Only about 29 percent of Chico State’s students come from its “service area” of northeastern California and fewer will spend their careers in this part of the state where jobs for college grads are clustered in agriculture, beer production, Enloe Medical Center and social services. For the 71 percent from elsewhere, and even the 29 percent from around here, there is a statewide, national and international world of experiences, and jobs waiting for them too.read more
California Sen. Kevin de León at CSUC’s Trinity Commons.
by Leslie Layton
California Sen. Kevin de León, running an uphill battle to win a U.S. Senate seat, campaigned Thursday in Butte County, calling for debt-free higher education, immigration reform and Medicare-for-all.
De León also criticized his opponent, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for not acting sooner to stop Judge Brett Kavanaugh from becoming a U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee on the brink of confirmation. De León said Feinstein could have helped block the 2006 floor vote that confirmed Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.read more
The four Chico City Council candidates speaking at a forum Monday night agreed on the need for fundamental change at Chico PD, including increased crisis intervention training, greater citizen oversight, and more cops out walking and on bicycles.
Those candidates – Alex Brown, Scott Huber, Rich Ober and Ken Rensink – for two hours answered questions from Concerned Citizens for Justice (CC4J), which sponsored the forum, as well as from members of an audience that filled a meeting room at the Chico branch of the Butte County Library.read more
On Sept. 4, a group of local human rights advocates, organizing under the name “Housing Not Handcuffs,” expressed their outrage over Chico City Council’s consistent and enduring ineptitude on the matter of homelessness by disrupting the meeting in protest over conservative enthusiasm for criminalizing our unhoused neighbors even further.
The rich enjoy more polite means of gaining Council’s attention, the rest of us must purchase it with speech amplified enough to be heard above the deafening roar of their wealth.read more
ChicoSol Editor Leslie Layton sent a letter Tuesday demanding that Chico city officials “cease and desist” from barring ChicoSol journalists from covering City Council meetings and all other city government business.
Layton alleges in the letter, dated Sept. 11, that city officials violated the Brown Act, California’s open-meeting law, when Chico police officers barred ChicoSol News Director Dave Waddell from entering the Sept. 4 City Council meeting to which all other news media had been admitted. In addition, City Clerk Debbie Presson asked Karen Laslo, a freelance photographer on assignment for ChicoSol, to leave the council chamber, which Laslo did.read more
