Downstroke

Wahl’s fall: If you’re wondering why Chico City Councilman Larry Wahl (pictured) was sporting a bandage on his forehead and using a walker recently, it’s because he took a spill in the City Hall parking lot about three weeks back. He split his head open and messed up his knee pretty badly. The News & Review offered Wahl its sympathy and then cynically asked the burning question: Is he going to file a claim against the city? “No. I wouldn’t do that,” was the councilman’s surprised response. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Priority seating: Butte County supervisors issued what amounts to a statement of vision for the county’s future by approving a long list of priorities for economic development. Available online at http://www.buttecounty.net/cob/ web%20agenda%20061003/4.06.pdf, the list starts with upgrading Highway 70.

If you look closely, you can see the fingerprints of individual supervisors on each priority. Who else but Richvale Supervisor Curt Josiassen would have proposed priority A-17, “Create a strategy to site an ethanol plant in southern Butte County”? And is it a coincidence that some of board Chairman Bob Beeler’s pet projects, such as industrial development and construction of a business park near Oroville, wound up near the top of the list? And Paradise Supervisor Kim Yamaguchi apparently wants to “Fast track land use and environmental review of developments by pre-qualifying commercial and industrial property for targeted businesses” in Paradise.

Though Chico’s supervisors, Jane Dolan and Mary Anne Houx, often run in the same pack and thus are harder to pin down, they certainly were in on the push for more development around the Chico airport, which shows up all over the priority list, as well as for encouraging affordable housing, which Dolan has championed in the past.

Video Veirdo: The Durham pee peeper, formerly a perverted Paradise schoolteacher, is facing more charges related to his arrest for allegedly spying on female employees while they used the bathroom at his Whistle Stop video rental store. Timothy Klick may have gotten off easy in 1995 when he was fired and had his teaching credential revoked for making sexual advances toward students—he took a plea bargain and served 90 days. This time, he’s facing nine charges (seven of them felonies) and could reap 13 years in prison for allegedly exposing himself to and touching an 8-year-old girl, as well as making lewd advances toward his young, all-female staff.

Water, water everywhere: Even though the state is sending millions of gallons of water washing into the Pacific Ocean, the Sacramento Valley rice farmers who sold it won’t be out any money. The farmers had sold the water to L.A.’s Municipal Water District for $14 million, and the plan was to store it in Lake Oroville until needed. But the lake was too full, and, in what’s being characterized as a political move spanking SoCal for opposing Gov. Gray Davis’ water-sharing plan, state officials ordered the stockpile of the wet stuff dumped rather than sent south down the California Aquaduct.

The whole mess makes one think of the movie Chinatown.