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.”read more
Aldridge defends use of weapons obtained from military
by George Gold | Posted May 2, 2023
photo by Leslie Layton
Billy Aldridge
The Chico City Council approved the police department budget and use of military weapons earlier in April 2023, weapons that were obtained under the U.S. Department of Defense 1033 program.
Recent California statutes require the police department hold at least one community engagement meeting to discuss the purchase and deployment of these military-style weapons.
During the only “meet the community” on April 27, which was called to review the Chico Police Department’s use of military obtained weapons in Chico, Police Chief Billy Aldridge repeatedly called the use of these weapons a way to de-escalate a given situation.
With a lengthy recitation by the chief, recounting a huge array of military weapons, like unmanned Drones, Armored Rescue Vehicles, a variety of so called Kinetic Energy Launchers, many kinds of rifles (automatic weapons), a Remington 870, a battering ram known as kinetic KBT 3-1000, the chief repeatedly described each of these weapons as a tool to de-escalate a given situation.
From https://cops.usdoj.gov/:
“De-escalation refers to the range of verbal and nonverbal skills used to slow down the sequence of events, enhance situational awareness, conduct proper threat assessments, and allow for better decision-making to reduce the likelihood that a situation will escalate into a physical confrontation or injury and to ensure the safest possible outcomes.”
De-escalation is a non-weapons, verbal approach to policing. To say that breaking down the door of a house, or pointing a Sionics .223 rifle at someone is a de-escalation technique is ridiculous. The proper definition of de-escalation is accepted by police departments across our country.
Trying to change the definition and process of what de-escalation is and should be is just doublespeak and will not fool anyone.
George Gold is a Chico resident, police reform activist and a contributor to ChicoSol.
Deadline for returning the “Essential City Services” survey is April 22.
A mailer from the City of Chico with a survey to be returned by April 22 is a piece in a three-phase campaign to win support for a city-wide 1 percent sales tax. The survey asks city residents to rank their spending priorities in order of importance.
Chico is one of about eight “full-service” cities in the state that don’t have a local sales tax; it receives a small portion of state sales tax revenue only. Full-service cities provide public safety and other services.
ChicoSol was contacted by several readers when the Essential City Services survey began appearing in mailboxes earlier this month. The Chicoans said they didn’t know they were about to be surveyed and were confused by the mailer, which was signed by Matt Madden, Chico police chief who was then interim city manager.
ChicoSol then filed a Public Records Act request to find out how much the mailer cost.
The City responded to the PRA within the 10 days required by law, sending three documents, none of which were explicit about this particular cost. One of the documents, however, is the professional services agreement between the City of Chico and the Oakland firm CliffordMoss, which details how the firm will build support for a sales tax measure that will appear on the General Election ballot in November 2022.
A City staffer confirmed today that the City is in the third phase of a three-phase CliffordMoss program, and said many of the invoices involving the mailer costs haven’t yet been submitted. The contract between the City and CliffordMoss says the entire phase 3 — including a mailing to “listen, inform and engage,” stakeholder meetings and virtual town halls — may cost $32,500. The bill for the entire contract is not to exceed $91,500.
The survey struck some ChicoSol readers as so superficial it was meaningless. One Chico resident, for example, was annoyed that police patrols were lumped in with firefighting in the same public safety category and she couldn’t separate the two. The mailer asks city residents to rank spending on public safety, homelessness, road maintenance, parks, conservation and economic “vibrancy” in order of importance.
Angie Dilg, management analyst for the City, said people can submit more elaborate responses by emailing the City at betterchico@chicoca.gov and on this website.
“We want citizens to tell the city what’s important to them,” Dilg said. “The survey only [provides] so much information. We have gotten quite a lot of responses and are pleasantly surprised.”
Democratic Action Club Chair David Welch said the survey categories were too broad, but his wife returned it anyway. “It’s the kind of survey that, whoever compiles the results, can use it to justify whatever it is they want to do,” Welch said.
A 2019 city survey showed widespread support for a sales tax increase, and in September of last year, the City Council voted unanimously to place a sales tax measure on the ballot to help cover funding gaps for services.
If the measure is approved in November, it could increase revenue by $24 million to $27 million. The City’s Dilg said a presentation on the survey results will be made to the Council.
Welch believes it would be a mistake to place a sales tax measure on the ballot in November even though, he says, the city probably does need the revenue it would produce.
“No one trusts this Council to spend the money wisely,” Welch said, adding that there’s a sense that additional revenue would be spent on more police. “It will get clobbered this year and go down to terrible defeat.”
Democrats will likely be 48% of the City’s registered voters in the General Election, according to CliffordMoss, with Republicans at 30% and others at 22%.
The firm alluded to a lack of trust between the Council and voters in its proposal submitted to the City in November. In that proposal, it talked about pre-pandemic polling two years earlier.
“81% of voters agreed that after the Camp Fire, the city required more funds to deal with the aftermath. 71% of voters however were concerned that funds would be going to the general fund, as there seems to be a lack of trust between your voters and the city council, despite largely approving of individual city departments.”
The proposal said 89% of voters wanted infrastructure improvements.
CliffordMoss promised the City, “Deliberate, Ongoing Attention to Skeptical Voters and Those Who Represent Them” in the proposal. “Customizing this stakeholder engagement here (think Chico Taxpayers Association) where listening EARLY helps deliver a return on investment down line” the proposal states.
Welch said that since that pre-pandemic polling, anger has built toward the Council on the part of both conservatives and liberals because of how it has spent taxpayer funds.
A sales tax is “troubling” to liberals anyway, he said, because it hits low-income residents harder than it does affluent residents by eating up a larger part of their income. He says liberals might otherwise support a sales tax because they’re anxious to see infrastructure improvements, as well as investment in low-income housing, but the trust factor will an obstacle at this point.
The Camp Fire destroyed a great deal of the region’s low-income housing, Welch pointed out, and demand for that housing isn’t going to be met by the private sector.
Welch recently posted on Facebook a lengthy list of vacancies in city staff positions, and the City’s website shows some 20 vacancies. Signing bonuses of between $10,000 and $20,000 are offered for wastewater operator, police officer and dispatcher positions.
If the City isn’t able to fill those positions, Welch said it either reflects that, “we are not paying enough or the work environment is very toxic.”
Earlier this week, an email from ChicoSol to the City’s human resources director Jamie Cannon produced an automated reply stating that Cannon “is on a leave of absence until further notice” and an interim human resources director has been appointed.
Some rangers are not interested in undergoing police training.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever” – George Orwell.
At this moment, Chico’s unelected city bureaucrats are in the process of moving Park Rangers into the Police Department, arming them and sidelining their function as naturalists and stewards of our recreational commons. Apparently, “broken windows” enforcement of minor infractions is the preferred method of addressing very real and material social problems.
In a public hearing (April 24 Parks Commission), the assistant city manager tried to deflect the dissent of citizens in attendance, advising us that the Council had not approved it. Curiously, he also argued it was imperative to set Police Academy dates this calendar year.
Notwithstanding the citizens’ and two of three park rangers’ discomfort with transforming caretakers into armed agents of the state, he assured us that they will be trained–although “trained” officers killed Desmond Phillips not long ago–and that being deputized won’t take the rangers away from their park duties. This move is treated as a simple shuffle of personnel, but in reality it is an existential and ethical fork in the road demanding we choose, now, how we will respond to new economic and ecological realities unfolding before us.
The proposed increase of Chico PD personnel will make our population-police ratio on par with San Antonio and Wichita, but Chico suffers from few crimes in comparison. Also noteworthy, violent crime in Chico declined precipitously from 2015 to 2016 without an increase in personnel. So why is the city’s obsession with “public safety” holding the discretionary budget hostage without empirical need?
We should all use a critical eye on the monthly arrest record and crime statistics available on the CPD’s website. (See column on right of CPD website.) While people are certainly arrested for endangering the public’s safety, the majority of arrests are misdemeanor bench warrants and nuisance crimes, like being homeless and somewhere you’re not welcome or related to substance use and abuse. To simplify a complex subject, these problems are manifestations of an economy and society that treats our poorest as unwanted, disposable, deplorable.
Chico is not a dangerous city and we don’t need to deputize our park rangers. Bourgeois prejudice against the homeless and poor is rooted in the idea that if we don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. From Haymarket Square to Ferguson to Standing Rock, the modus operandi of the moneyed class is to ignore and mischaracterize fundamental inequities and injustices, respond violently to those who successfully draw attention to them (whether or not they practice nonviolence) and punish every minor infraction to remind the populace that order will be maintained no matter how hard it is to breathe under the loafer of the oligarchy or the boot of their enforcers.
We have to ask ourselves: what are the trade-offs of a police force that consumes almost half of the General Fund (fully twice the fire department budget, and not coincidentally, somewhat proportional to U.S. “defense” spending)? More nuisance punishment means less money to maintain our public spaces and urban forest as habitats of democracy, to cultivate cooperative housing and urban farms, and to incubate worker-owned enterprises as engines of innovation.
From the Okies who didn’t have that Do Ra Mi to single mothers of color in Oakland, we have long excluded from society those who are failing to succeed in an economic system that consumes biomes and livelihoods and vomits waste. “Public safety” as used by those in power is Orwellian doublespeak for the disposing of people inevitable in a predatory economic system. Safety can only be guaranteed in a vibrant, harmonious civic body nurtured through securing the bottom courses of Maslow’s pyramid for everyone. Our public safety priority should be a social worker, food, housing and healthcare for all those in need.
We are in a transformative moment in history and every decision we make now guides us through an uncertain future. It is critical that the City Council retains authority on questions defining the character and ethical priorities of our city. Cities belong to the people, not unelected bureaucrats. The council should agendize a full public hearing on the issues of broken-windows policing against the homeless and arming our park rangers. Instead of making excuses as to why monumental problems can’t be solved, the Council should place a resolution on the ballot asking if we should continue the status quo. A resounding “no” vote would give the city the mandate and power as chartered under the California Constitution to begin building a secure future where no one is disposable.
Steve Breedlove is a father, gardener, veteran and critical optimist. He wrote this guest commentary for ChicoSol and believes “an abundant, ethical, ecological society can be cultivated in perennial polycultures using appropriate tech and organized into bioregional confederal democracies.”
