Tag: Butte County

Lucero: Public discourse on Tuscan Water District comes — but late

"The public had not been part of the formation process"
by Debra Lucero | Posted September 7, 2021

photo by Karen Laslo
District 2 Supervisor Debra Lucero

The Tuscan Water District story is unfolding in Butte County. This isn’t the first time large landowners have joined together to try to “preserve their way of life and heritage.” It has happened all over the state and more recently, in San Luis Obispo where the proposition to form a new, powerful California Water District failed.

So, how did this current effort in Butte County get birthed?

The former Butte County Water Conservation & Resource Department director, Paul Gosselin, (now the State of California’s deputy director of SGMA – Sustainable Groundwater Management Act) and a former longtime Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission executive officer, John O’Farrell, came up with another idea — one that could circumvent the arduous San Luis Obispo process and even the Board of Supervisors. read more

COVID-19 outreach events reach hundreds of needy families

Ethnic disparity in positive cases appears to drop
by Leslie Layton | Posted October 19, 2020

photo by Kate Sheehy/Semillas
Reyna Nolta from the Hispanic Resource Council at the COVID-19 prevention event in Orland on Saturday.

A COVID-19 prevention campaign targeting low-income and minority communities in the region — that public health officials believe has been effective — is reaching hundreds of families as it winds down for this calendar year.

Spearheaded by the Hispanic Resource Council of Northern California, staffers from a host of social service agencies and Butte County Public Health have distributed more than 2,000 masks, more than 1,000 bottles of hand sanitizer, information packets and educational materials translated into Spanish at events throughout the North State. The latest events, held Oct. 17 in Orland, Chico and Oroville, were the last big projects in the 2020 prevention campaign although other facets of the campaign will continue. read more

Dismissing public health metrics, Gallagher says open up

Reporter's Mlog: lawmaker's district torn over path forward
by Leslie Layton | Posted October 3, 2020

photo by Karen Laslo
Assemblyman James Gallagher, who represents most of Butte County and much of the Northern Sacramento Valley, preaches civil disobedience.

Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) preached civil disobedience Thursday in front of the Chico Council Chambers, suggesting to unmasked constituents at an “Open Butte County” rally that opening up for business can be a necessary act of protest.

Speaking to almost 200 people, many of whom waved American flags or “Recall Newsom” signs, some sporting MAGA caps or Reopen T-shirts, the 3rd district assemblyman again said, as he has before, that shops and schools can consider reopening as acts of civil disobedience if they’re in violation of public health regulation.

“If laws are unjust … if we’re under an autocracy which it sure looks it is right now, then we are left with nothing left but civil disobedience,” Gallagher told his cheering crowd. read more

Voter turnout critical in Butte County; vote early, officials say

Experts say mail-in voting is safe; voter suppression is the problem
by Leslie Layton | Posted August 27, 2020

So-called “voter suppression laws” made it difficult for millions – many African American – to participate in the 2016 election. Turnout will be key in the upcoming General Election.

If you’re eligible to vote in the Nov. 3 General Election, Butte County Clerk-Recorder Candace Grubbs has a single, simple piece of advice: Don’t procrastinate.

To make sure your vote gets counted on election night, register or update your registration now. Vote when you receive your ballot in October. Call the Elections Office with questions, whether you speak English, Spanish or Hmong, Grubbs says.

But in what some people are calling a “vote-because-your-life-depends-on-it” election, there is plenty to worry about in terms of national polling. In some states, millions of people who have voted previously must re-register — and may not know that — because of tough and suppressive voter registration laws. read more

Butte County Latinos hit hardest by pandemic

City of Gridley now claims 35 percent of county's total cases
by Leslie Layton | Posted July 4, 2020
Butte County Public Health says 41 percent of the total COVID-19 cases, through June, were people identifying as Hispanic.

Butte County’s Latino residents are becoming infected with COVID-19 at an alarmingly disproportionate rate, a reflection of the disparities surfacing throughout the nation that show low-income, immigrant and other minority communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

Figures released earlier this week to ChicoSol in response to a Public Records Act request show that people identifying as Hispanic comprised 41 percent of 164 Butte County residents who had tested positive for COVID-19 through June 28. Latinos and/or Hispanics make up less than 15 percent of the county’s population, according to estimates, but belong to what is by far the county’s largest minority group. read more

County releases Micalizio documents

ChicoSol requests officers' records under SB 1421
by Leslie Layton | Posted October 1, 2019
Myra Micalizio (left) with her daughter, Hali McKelvie.

In July 2018, a Sacramento civil rights attorney noted just how much information had been withheld in the shooting by Butte County sheriff’s deputies three months earlier that had killed a Palermo woman.

Myra Micalizio, 56, died in April of that year during an encounter with a pair of deputies who together fired 13 rounds. Attorney Mark Merin, representing Micalizio’s family, issued a press release noting that Butte County had “refused to produce any interviews, investigation reports… statements of the officers, coroner’s report…”

Journalists and the public in general have been forced to rely on reports issued by Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who often, after a law-enforcement killing, acts swiftly to give an initial media statement and to issue preliminary findings that justify the actions of officers. And in the case of Micalizio, it wasn’t until Feb. 11 of this year – almost 10 months after she had been killed – that Ramsey ruled there had been no criminal wrongdoing by deputies Charles Lair and Mary Barker and provided the results in detail of his investigation. read more