Split becomes a chasm

There are times when the liberal-conservative split on the Chico City Council seems irrelevant because the players aren’t following the script, instead crossing over to vote with members of the other group.

Then there are times when the split is like a chasm, with the two conservatives—Mark Sorensen and Bob Evans—being on the short end of the vote every time. The council meeting Tuesday (May 1) was one of those times.

On four different matters, a couple of them involving millions of dollars, the council’s liberal majority prevailed. Here’s the rundown:

Taking a TRIP: The city has a number of capital projects underway, and two of the bigger ones—the downtown couplet and the widening of Highway 32 between the freeway and El Monte—have received grant funding totaling $5.6 million. The catch is that the city has to match it by this summer. In the past the city would have used redevelopment funds for the match, but that money is no longer available. Without the match, the grants will be lost. What to do?

One option, said Capital Project Services Director Tom Varga, would be to participate in the Total Road Improvement Program, or TRIP. It’s a financing pool for public infrastructure created by the League of California Cities and the County Supervisors Association of California.

The city could borrow the matching funds from bonds issued to TRIP. The loan would be paid for out of the city’s gas-tax revenues at an annual cost of about $400,000 for up to 30 years. Currently the city receives about $3 million a year in gas-tax revenues.

Sorensen and Evans didn’t want to do it. They thought it was too risky. What if the state hijacks the gas tax funds and the city can’t afford to maintain its streets and roads, they asked.

But the four-member council majority (Mary Goloff was absent again), though also worried about going into debt, thought $5.6 million in grant money and the jobs construction would bring were too much to give up. They voted to authorize spending $15,000 from a special transportation fund to take the first step toward participation in TRIP.

Phone tax update: The city is worried it could lose as much as $900,000 a year in phone-tax revenues if cellular carriers balked at collecting it, as they could do legally under the city’s outdated law, which doesn’t cover technologies invented since 1970. As it stands, only one carrier, Metro PCS, isn’t collecting the tax, but that could change, explained City Attorney Lori Barker.

A public vote is required, and city staff was recommending that it be for a lower tax rate (4.5 percent instead of 5 percent) because it would cover more services (text messaging, VOIP, etc.). The goal was not to increase the amount of tax collected, Barker said, but to keep it about the same—and secure.

Sorensen and Evans were skeptical. They thought the lower tax rate was “a deceptive measure designed to get a positive vote,” as Evans put it, and that some people—those who used more services—would pay more.

“It’s definitely an expansion of the tax,” Sorensen said.

The mild-mannered Jim Walker disagreed as forcefully as he could. “The idea is to preserve tax revenue, not expand it,” he said. “For people to pretend this is a huge tax increase and then criticize us for failure to preserve city services is silly. It’s just … silly.”

The council voted 4-2 to move forward on the ballot measure, but not before the majority agreed to add language to it explaining which services would be covered by the tax.

Other matters: Two other issues illustrated the council split further. One, the deferral of construction loan repayments from the Chico Creek Nature Center for another two years, saw Evans and Sorensen both voting no. They thought one year was sufficient, but the other council members believed the center’s new director, Courtney Farrell, and new board should be given more time.

Finally, Bob Linscheid and Jon Gregory had a deal the council majority couldn’t refuse: If the city would give them free rent, their organization, Innovate North State (formerly CEPCO), would use unoccupied space at City Hall to create an “innovation and commercialization center” called ChicoStart that “would function as an all-inclusive office environment designed for new media companies and startup businesses focusing on web, software and mobile applications.”

The duo said they would invest heavily in the space and the project would generate new businesses and jobs. The city had tried to rent the space and nobody wanted it, they said, so why not let us make good use of it?

Sorensen would have preferred to put it up for rent again at a reduced price, but even Evans liked the ChicoStart idea. “I’m banking the return on this will be worth it,” he said.