Downstroke

Nice work, if you can get it: We’ve gotten a couple of calls from folks wondering what kind of sweet deal recently retired Chico State University President Manuel Esteban has landed for the coming years.

Here it is: The former president will be earning his pre-retirement salary of $208,248 a year as a consultant to the CSU Chancellor’s Office at the system’s expense. That runs from Aug. 2, 2003, to Aug. 1, 2004, after which he’ll spend a year at .45 time and pay, also doing projects for the chancellor. His benefits package will be less comprehensive than before, but he will retain his car allowance of $750 a month.

It’s a deal that Esteban negotiated at the time he became president and one that’s typical of CSU campus presidents, said Chico State spokesman Joe Wills.

Esteban has set up shop in a converted conference room, No. 407, in the O’Connell Technology Center. “It’s a modest setting,” said Ken Derucher, dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science and Technology. According to state formulas, Derucher’s college had the most “extra” space. Derucher disputes that idea but is happy to have Esteban nearby. “He’s a good guy and he deserves an office,” he said.

Esteban and his wife, Gloria, are traveling the world until November.

Remains of the day: Student leaders were a little miffed by TV news reports showing locals complaining that students weren’t doing anything to remove the trash left after a Labor Day full of inner-tubing college-age revelers. They had planned to comb the riverbanks for trash all along. They just weren’t going to miss class to do it.

The community’s cleanup effort worked out well, said Adam Dondro, Associate Students executive vice president, because by the time the 45 student volunteers got out to the river on Saturday, Sept. 6, a lot of the discarded tubes, bathing suits, cans, condoms (hey, at least they’re using them) and random spoils had been toted away. “It allowed us to do a more-detailed cleanup, so by the time we were done it was pretty much spotless.” In previous years, Dondro said, student volunteers had to leave some stuff behind because of the sheer volume of refuse.

City to examine nudity law: Nude sunbathers in Upper Park beware: your au naturel repose may be offensive to some locals—namely two members of the Chico City Council Internal Affairs Committee. Councilmembers Dan Herbert and Steve Bertagna voted to move forward this week with an ordinance, which if passed by the full City Council, would ban all public nudity. Currently public nudity is allowed as long as it does not include actions of a sexual nature.

But some late-night skinny-dippers at One-Mile raised someone’s ire, and that person complained to Bertagna, who is now pushing for the nudity ban. A couple of nude enthusiasts appeared at this week’s committee meeting—fully clothed—to protest the possible ban. But they didn’t sway the two councilmembers. And an anti-nude ordinance restricted to the One-Mile area, as suggested by Councilmember Coleen Jarvis, wasn’t enough. Jarvis countered that the cops had their hands full enough as it is trying to enforce laws. “I’m not willing to endorse law enforcement going out and looking for naked people,” she said.