Tag Archives: Utility Tax increase

Hope everybody is having a great weekend!

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I have been so busy this week, I can’t even remember what I did.  Between chores and visitors and unexpected illnesses, I’ve been trying to order some signs for the “No on Measure J” campaign. Whew-ieeee, what a week I’ve had.  I won’t bore you with the details, cause I know you’ve all had a three-ring circus or two run across your living room rug.

I hope to have some signs pretty soon. The folks at the print shop have been really wonderful, I’ve seen their work around town, and I think we will get some very nice signs.

I’m also trying to plan a Taxpayer’s Association meeting, and hoping to get the signs before then. I will keep everybody posted here and at chicotaxpayers@wordpress.com.

Well, this may be the last nice weekend to hang out in the yard and soak up the sun around the old Intex pool, so I’m headed outside. There’s a fundraiser for Butte Humane Society over at One Mile, and while passing by, I saw some tricks I must show Biscuit!  I  hope you are all having a lovely weekend!   Bark Bark!

Schwab supporters post sign illegally in front of my house

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This sign, placed illegally by an Ann Schwab supporter, is an example of how NOT to place a campaign sign. The phone pole is the boundary to the public right of way, if you look hard, you can see they’ve placed it right under the wheels of my mail carrier’s vehicle.

My husband came home from some errands yesterday to find some joker had placed an Ann Schwab sign in front of my house.

I’ve just been looking into getting some signs printed for the “No on Measure J” campaign, and I must say, whoever did this must be financially well-off enough to literally throw money in the street.  This sign stood in front of my house for less than two hours, and now it’s in my garage, where nobody can see it. I guess whoever it is got the satisfaction of doing something ILLEGAL and getting away with it, and if that’s worth money to them, well, good for them.

I don’t have that kind of money to throw down, sorry. Signs are expensive – the cheapest little signs I’ve found, printed online, are about $3.30 a piece. That’s three tacos, which would constitute my lunch and a snack for later. $3.30 is more than I pay for a pound of boneless chicken. $3.30 is about a gallon of gas, which really goes somewhere in my little car. $3.30 is still money to me, I don’t go around throwing it on the ground.

See, this is just what I’ve been trying to tell you – money means nothing to Ann Schwab and her friends, they are swimming in it. They can throw away a perfectly good campaign sign just for the shits and giggles of harassing somebody.

Well, I’ll tell you what – today I am going to take $3.30 to the store, and buy me a can of red spray paint and give my Ann Schwab sign a little makeover. I’ll post that too. But I post my signs legally and on my own property, which is more than I can say for Ann Schwab and her crowd.

Hey folks, send me pictures of  illegally posted signs, and I’ll post them too. Dave Kelley is all over the place, I’ve heard from property owners that have taken his signs down.  There are also signs in the public right of way – you can remove those.   Let’s take pictures, and then if you don’t have any other use for the signs, I’ll take them to remake “No on Measure J” signs out of them.

Hey Ann $chwab! – NEWSFLASH! – Lincoln freed the slaves!

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Lately I been busy with my own junk and haven’t had much time to talk about  the upcoming election. My two priorities for November are to defeat the phone tax and get Ann Schwab to mooo-oove along to greener pastures. 

Well, Sue Hubbard got mad enough over various issues to sit down and set up facebook pages – see the links below:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vote-NO-on-the-Phone-Tax/378830468848573?ref=hl

http://www.facebook.com/DefeatAnnSchwab?ref=hl

I get kind of flustered when I am faced with a bad situation. Sue goes right out and posts a facebook page. I “like” that! And it’s really that simple – we must DEFEAT THE PHONE TAX,  and we must DEFEAT ANN SCHWAB in order to end this spiral of  tax and spend before it collapses on us. 

Ann Schwab is leading us toward bankruptcy with UNSUSTAINABLE spending, and her only answer is to make us pay more taxes. This kind of thinking has led to bankruptcy in cities across the United States, and bears down on the entire state of California, whose credit ranking has sunk to the level of Greece. 

Both Brown and Schwab say we don’t pay enough taxes – Schwab is trying to tell us that the phone tax was concocted because some of us aren’t paying our fair share of utility taxes!  

What Brown and Schwab both want is slaves. They want US to be THEIR slaves. Work and pay, pay and work – while our kids are in their social programs!  

Say NO this November, loud and clear.  Say NO to Schwab, say NO to the phone tax, say NO to  SLAVERY. 

Those eligible have until June 30 to get their Utility Tax Rebate – a chance to show council and $taff you are not happy with the way they spend your money

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Well, with no fanfare and no trip to Shuberts afterward (!), my husband and I went in to get our Utility Tax rebate yesterday.

It was very inconvenient. I had to take my husband because, despite numerous attempts to add both of our names to our PG&E account, PG&E keeps dropping my name from the billing. It’s like being declared dead.  Don’t ask me why PG&E does anything – I don’t argue with sexist antiquarian morons. So, I dragged the Old Man Downtown in the middle of his work day, made him wash up and put on a fresh shirt – he refused to shave, and I didn’t press it. I had to promise him the money too, after I filled out the spread sheet!

Forty Four Bucks! And oh, you know I had plans for that money!

The $taffer who helped us was very nice, but not completely professional. I don’t want to hear what people think of my income, not when they work in that building, that’s for sure. “That’s it?” she says. I wanted to ask her if I was allowed to comment on her income, but, she was in charge of the cash drawer, so I held my tongue.  What I’d like to hear from any of them, is “Thanks for paying those property taxes that pay our salaries every year Juanita, no matter what financial shape your family is in!” Just once, knowhatimean?

Dave Burkland reported that only about 110 households out of thousands eligible comes in to take this rebate, to which they are totally entitled.  That’s because you have to come down to the city, during hours when the average person is at work, in person, with all your bills, a handy little spreadsheet filled out in two directions, columns added up both ways, and a copy of your latest tax return.

Your other alternative would be to load ALL YOUR UTILITY BILLS, or copies thereof, along with all the other stuff I mentioned above,  into an envelope, and SNAIL MAIL THEM. I know, and they know, how stupid that is.

Instead, they should offer an exemption to anyone who has qualified two or more years in a row. Like the low-income rate assistance programs available through utility companies, a person should only have to file an eligibility form every three years or so.

But the city of Chico would stand to lose MILLIONS if they allowed eligible people to be permanently exempted from this program. They depend on the poor to pay their $100,000-plus salaries, benefits and retirement packages.  Most of the residents of Chico would qualify for such an exemption, with a median city income of around $35,000.  Right now, Utility Tax is one of the city’s three biggest revenues. Such an exemption would tank the fund by what – half or more?

So you eligible folks must get in there and get your rebate. Please do it. Show the city you are not happy with the way they spend money. Your money. 

Here’s the form you’ll need, and the eligibility requirements: http://www.chico.ca.us/documents/UUTRefundPackage.pdf

My husband and I took our rebate over to  Mangrove Plaza and patronized several businesses there, even buying items that generated sales tax. If we had let the city keep our money, it would have gone to salaries, many of which leave town every day at 5pm. Or earlier! The city attorney’s office had been vacated by noon last Friday. 

UPDATE 6/5, 8-ish pm: I’m listening to the council meeting online, and Jennifer Hennessy just said that UUT accounts for 15 percent of city revenues! She also said UUT revenues were consistently down by 1 – 2 percent over the past few quarters. 

Ann Schwab says pay the phone tax or she’s going to cut public safety again

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At last night’s council meeting, Ann Schwab, Andy Holcombe, Scott Gruendl and Jim Walker all threatened public safety with further cuts if the phone tax is not passed.

When speakers brought up salaries and non-essential expenses, such as the $84,000 and roughly $40,000 in benefits attached to the Sustainability Task Force, the council ignored them, opting instead to threaten public safety again and again.

Ann Schwab made it clear that if the voters don’t pass this tax, she’s going to cut the safety budget.

Then she promptly voted to allow the Nature Center to defer payments on their $800,000 loan for another two years. As I have said previously, the Nature Center has yet to make one payment on that 5 years plus old loan, and they get over $40,000 in Community Grant funding every year without having to open their books to any kind of public scrutiny. They use the money to run a for-profit operation, and I believe they siphon some of the money into political donations.

Why didn’t more people  come to the meeting last night to speak up? Maybe you all want to pay more taxes?

Thanks to Sue Hubbard, Toby Schindelbeck, Larry Wahl and Stephanie Taber for speaking up.

Why is the Enterprise Record trying to deceive us regarding the phone tax?

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To David Little: 

 In this morning’s Enterprise Record, reporter Katy Sweeny omits part of the story about last night’s council decision regarding the telephone tax – council voted to send it back to be rewritten because Sorensen said it doesn’t tell voters that the phone tax will actually be expanding to cover more services and people who aren’t currently paying. Council voted to have Lori Barker rewrite it.  Sweeny doesn’t even mention the motion or the vote on the subject. The headline actually says, “Chico voters could lower telephone tax.”
 
What a clever way to word a lie. “could” – I see, that gets you off the hook from a hard lie to a little white lie.  
 
This is the kind of slant I’m talking about in your reporting David. I don’t consider this “sloppy” reporting, I consider it to be a pretty point blank deception. 
 
This is going on my blog. If you want to respond, you will have to respond to my blog instead of bullying me privately in my mailbox. 
 
Thanks, Juanita Sumner

Our city is OBESE, but all $taff wants to do about it is buy bigger pants

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Tonight city council will discuss the implementation of a tax on your telephone. Don’t take it! We can make a difference. 

The meeting starts at 6:30. This item has been place in the “4′s” – the regular agenda – and will be heard after the weed abatement report and right before the request to allow the Nature Center to further slouch on their $800,000 taxpayer financed loan. 

I find that ironic – they want us to pay a tax on our phone so they can be completely asinine with our money. That’s just gin-cheee!

I hope I’m not the only person who is angry about this – please come Downtown tonight and protest these two completely contrary actions on the part of council – again, they are raising a tax on our telephones, and most likely, our computer usage as well, eventually even e-mail, in order to pay off bad debts for people who have made political contributions to their campaigns – Dave Guzzetti and John Merz, to mention a couple. These guys have turned a kids learning facility into a PAC, and here we’re financing it out of our taxes – FORGET IT! 

Just say NO! to bad taxes. That’s tonight, City Council Meeting, Downtown, starts at 6:30 but ought to get interesting around 7:15.

You said it Ron!

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Ron Paul’s got it right – government needs to get smaller.

We don’t need more taxes, we need to get the government monkey off our backs. Make that, Government Gorilla.

I’m already looking forward to the Tax Day Rally at City Plaza, April 15, an all day extravaganza guaranteed to have a little something for everybody. An opportunity to show our elected “leaders” that a diverse group can get together behind one common  theme: we’re taxed enough, but we’re not receiving the services we pay for.

In the meantime, you can write to city council, or write a letter to the ER or the News and Review, and make it loud and clear you will not support tax increases. We’ve got a proposal to raise our local sales tax, put a tax on our phones, and some kind of liquor tax I don’t even understand – all to pay these outrageous salaries, benefits and pensions.

I’ve got it on good authority that the money from Tom Lando’s proposed sales tax increase  can be used any way council sees fit, despite promises to save our schools, fix our streets, or  build a new baseball stadium. For Pete’s sake – I’ve sat in meetings and watched them transfer money from one pot to another to circumvent legal restrictions on usage, as easily as you lose a pea under a walnut shell. They’ll promise the public a bag full of rainbows to pass the thing, but they’ll use it to pay off the pension debt and cover the salaries they were paying out of the RDA.

Unfortunately, the City of Chico’s idea of “shrinking government” means laying off the lower level, lower paid employees that actually do the work, while leaving the talking heads that make the onerous salaries for doing nothing. So, we must unite in our demands that they rewrite contracts, cut overtime, and make employees pay their own benefits and pensions. Then maybe they’ll have money to hire some workers, ya think?

At any rate, we have to keep at it.   Please write those letters.

And, by the way, nobody comes to my blog to read about Scott Gruendl, I get the stats. People are far more interested in what’s going on out at the airport, so I’ll post some stuff I found out about  that when I get the chance. 

Scott, what we’d like to talk about is whether or not it’s appropriate for you to sit on a committee that is formulating the plan to fill your upcoming vacant seat. Don’t try to change the subject.