Caught in the middle

When the Chico City Council began to consider what it thought was an innocuous item on its consent agenda for Tuesday’s meeting (July 11), its members had no idea they were stepping into the middle of an emotionally fraught political tussle with overtones of historic racial injustice.

But that’s what happened when the council considered a simple request from City Manager Greg Jones that he be authorized to begin negotiations with the Mechoopda Indian tribe for the city eventually to provide police and fire protection for the tribe’s proposed casino 11 miles south of town.

The council’s primary interest, it soon became clear, was in tapping into a new source of revenue—with the side goal of helping Chico’s historic Indian tribe realize its dream of a casino.

But as council members quickly learned, Butte County is vehemently opposed to locating the casino at the proposed site, on 630 county acres of what is now grazing land near the intersection of Highways 99 and 149. That’s why it has refused to provide public-safety services for the casino. And it worries that the city, by agreeing to provide those services, will improve the tribe’s chances of getting the facility through the federal entitlement process leading to authorization.

“I think you’re being used, to be honest,” Supervisor Mary Anne Houx, of Chico, told the council in no uncertain terms. “The tribe is looking for leverage in Washington, and if you put your imprimatur on this, you’re giving it to them.”

The site, she explained, is an environmentally sensitive Tuscan aquifer recharge area. And the casino will require a stoplight on Highway 149, impeding traffic flow and increasing the danger on a highway the state is now spending millions of dollars to make safer.

The county, she said, has offered to help the Mechoopda find another location, but tribe hasn’t budged.

At one point, Councilwoman Ann Schwab took umbrage at the county’s relocation effort, noting that “the white man has been telling them where to go” for a long time.

Arizona-based attorney Robert Rosette told the council the tribe was well through the entitlement process. It had prepared a solid environmental assessment, he said, and such agencies as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers had signed off on the site.

Council members were concerned about being drawn into a discussion of the entitlement process, something that doesn’t involve them. And some of them seemed surprised to learn how passionately the county opposed the project. Councilman Dan Herbert recalled being at a dinner “three or four years ago” hosted by the tribe where the casino was being discussed. Everybody seemed enthusiastic about it, he said, including at least one supervisor who was there.

“Then, in the last 60 or 90 days, we’re hearing the land’s not right,” he said. “What happened?”

Board of Supervisors Chairman Curt Josiassen, of Richvale, replied that “as communication became more prevalent, a myriad of issues came up, and it became abundantly clear that was not a good place.”

Assistant county administrator Star Brown told the council that the county had learned about the agenda item only on the previous Friday and so had had little time to prepare a well-organized presentation on the subject. She asked for a “time out"so the county could present more information to the council.

The council voted to take up the matter again on Aug. 1, but before that Mayor Scott Gruendl concluded by noting that, to its surprise, the council had found itself thrust into a “fine game of chess” between the tribe and the county. Ultimately, he added, the city’s interest was in getting a good financial deal for its citizens.