Local leaders solicit signatures

Shoppers at the Saturday Farmers’ Market March 13 saw an unusual sight: Chico city officials, including the mayor and the city manager, gathering petition signatures.

The officials, who were working on their own time, helped kick off a statewide signature-gathering effort for the so-called 2004 Local Taxpayers and Public Safety Protection Act.

Officials in communities across the state took part in the coordinated effort to place before voters in November a ballot measure that would require a majority affirmative vote by Californians before the state can strong-arm locally generated tax dollars from city and county governments.

Much to the frustration of city officials throughout California, the state has raided local coffers over the years to shore up its own bleeding budget, often at the cost of reductions in public-safety funding. City and county governments have lobbied the state in the past to stop the raids but have gotten nowhere. The state also has a history of forcing so-called “unfunded mandates"—required services with no money to pay for them—onto local governments. The measure would require that the state provide money for such services.

The referendum effort, sponsored by the League of California Cities, will require about 600,000 valid signatures, said spokesperson Kathy Fairbanks. The goal, she added, it to gather one million by the deadline of April 16 to make the November election. The first weekend resulted in “we estimate—and hope—tens of thousands” of signatures, Fairbanks said. In Chico, about 200 signatures were gathered at the market.

Assistant City Manager Trish Dunlap said the idea was to gather as many signatures as possible with the high-profile effort of local officials before turning the work over to paid signature gathers, who can cost as much as $1 per signature, but who have also become a required tool in the ballot-initiative qualification process.

“It’s a matter of self-protection,” said Chet Woods, special projects manager for the city, on the effort of local officials. Woods added that city officials must be very careful that they don’t promote the referendum while on city time or using city money. He said he gathered 36 signatures at his church in Tehama County on the Sunday after the Farmers’ Market. He said he expects police and fire unions will join the effort.

Other Chico city officials who volunteered their time at the market included Mayor Maureen Kirk, Councilmember Larry Wahl, City Clerk Deborah Presson and city employee Earl Keene, brother of former councilmember and current Assemblyman Rick Keene, R-Chico.

Brent R. Ten Pas, Rick Keene’s legislative director, said the legislator was attending a Republican retreat in Stockton and could not be reached for comment on the referendum effort by press time.

David Reade, chief of staff for Assemblyman Doug LaMalfa, said his boss was also in Stockton and that LaMalfa had not yet had a chance to read the referendum’s language.

“It would be premature to comment at this time,” Reade said.Enloe Medical Center was locked down for about 90 minutes Monday night when a man who was barred from a patient recovery area pulled out a handgun and took two unarmed hospital guards hostage.

Police say Christopher Jamal Berry, 33, tried to get past hospital security in an attempt to see his son, who had undergone an emergency appendectomy at the facility earlier that day. When he was refused, Berry reportedly produced a 9mm handgun and attempted to force two hospital guards to bring him to his son’s upstairs recovery room.

Hospital staff immediately a called a “Code Silver” over the building’s address system to alert workers to the presence of an armed intruder. The protocol for that code calls for essentially locking down the entire hospital, disabling all elevators and electronic locks, said Enloe spokeswoman Ann Prater, who added that nothing like this had ever happened at Enloe before.

“This is a high-stress area,” she said. “We have had incidents where we have combative family members, combative patients, but to my knowledge we’ve never had anyone brandish a weapon.”

Chico police were called at 9:45 p.m. and once on the scene located Berry and his hostages in a first-floor hallway near the building’s elevators. They established inner and outer perimeters and began to attempt to convince Berry to release his hostages. While the S.W.A.T. team took up positions, Officer Jose Lara engaged Berry in a conversation, which ultimately led to Berry’s surrender.

Police were also helped by hospital switchboard operators, who, from their position in a locked room near where Berry had taken the guards, were watching the incident unfold. The two workers in the switchboard office relayed their observations via the Internet to 911 dispatchers while continuing to route calls and keep workers in other parts of the hospital informed.

Police spokesman Lt. Mike Weber said the officers who responded made all the right moves.

“It worked out very well for us,” he said. “Our field officers made some really great decisions. Had the guy been able to get mobile in there, it really could have gone the other way. The logistics around something like this are just enormous.”

Berry, whose record shows convictions on drug and felony assault charges—including one for domestic violence—was already wanted on a warrant issued out of Butte County Superior Court last year. He was initially charged with two counts each of assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping, plus three counts of brandishing a firearm.

Prater said Berry’s son was stable and in fair condition. She praised the actions of hospital staff and police in dealing with the incident.

"[Security guards] Ben [Garrett] and Joe [Watts] did a great job last night. They were extremely courageous, and they were successful in protecting the safety of our patients and staff.”

Prater said trauma counselors will be made available to hospital employees and that administrators will conduct a review to make sure security at the facility is adequate. Emergency room patients were diverted to Enloe’s prompt-care clinic on Cohasset Road while the seige was underway.