What a week. Two PG&E power shut-offs at our house on Wednesday and Friday for safety upgrades. While I’m grateful for anything that will protect Manton from fire, we will all help pay for the new poles, insulated lines, and labor that may or may not prevent disaster. At least maybe they won’t cause the disaster.
Photo by Janet Perry – soconews.org
PG&E has been fined billions of dollars for burning people alive and incinerating or poisoning towns – remember Erin Brockovich? Where do they get the money to pay those fines AND continue to dole out bonuses to their executives and lobbyists?
They also just restarted dividend payouts on preferred stocks for the first time since declaring bankruptcy. The dividends hadn’t been paid since November 2017, when they were suspended due to pending lawsuits for all the wildfires they caused. The dividends are cumulative and qualify for the reduced tax rate of 15% – 20%. How nice.
So how do they do it? The company only profits from new infrastructure, not from maintaining the old equipment that usually causes the fires for which they are then fined. Guess what happens when neglect is incentivized?
“Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” had a great segment on it you can watch here. Fortunately, Oliver separated the universal hatred for the company from the love for the workers. I have never met a PG&E worker who wasn’t dedicated to serving their customers. So, they have excellent hiring skills, at least.
Since the power was off Wednesday, we made our first hike of 2022 in Lassen Volcanic National Park. Mr. Standish and I are avid hikers and are in Lassen Park as much as possible. The park road is still not open to vehicles all the way through, but entering from the north side (Manzanita Lake area), the road is open to vehicles all the way to the Devastated Area. From there you can walk or bike to Summit Lake.
From the SW entrance, the road is cleared but closed to vehicles from the Kohm Yah-Mah-Nee Visitor Center to the Lassen Peak Trail parking lot, but we only walked as far as Lake Helen – a 12 mile round trip. Ouch. It was glorious and we vacillated between joy and tears all day.
Photo by Aaron Standish
Photo by Liz Merry
photo by Liz Merry
Lake Helen with Lassen Peak photobomb – photo by Liz Merry
We hiked the Peak Trail last fall when the park reopened after the Dixie Fire to survey the damage from above. The burn scar was overwhelming, of course, but there were also patches of green scattered about like a crazy quilt of hope and despair. The road to Butte Lake is now open to vehicles, so we may head over there next and see how that area fared.
Broken record alert – we are all lucky (or smart) to live so close to a National Park. Grab some comfortable shoes or your bicycle and head on up to our shining gem before the snow is all gone and the damage from the fire becomes even more visible. Dixie Fire damage – brought to you by PG&E.
Greenville before and after the Dixie Fire. Before by Liz Merry – After by Brandon Clement
Last week we talked a bit about the failed Tehama County Measure G 1 cent sales tax increase. I was reminded by an alert reader with a better memory that the tax was initially supposed to be a ¼ cent sales tax to pay for ongoing costs to the jail expansion. It was estimated to bring in $1.9 million a year, which was projected to be the budget shortfall for the expansion’s operations. It would have required ? of the vote to pass.
The citizens of Tehama County really want that 64 bed expansion and I am certain the ¼ cent increase would have been approved by the voters. But the County got greedy because their spending habits had created a much bigger budget shortfall than a mere $1.9 million. Instead, they put the full 1 cent no-strings-attached measure on the ballot and it went down in flames. A clear message from voters to stop spending like drunken sailors.
Measure G was the brainchild of former CAO Bill Goodwin, but he definitely had help. There has been lots of misremembering about it lately, mostly coming from those who blame the decimation of the sheriff’s department on the failure of Measure G. I went back to the minutes of the meeting where the initiative was presented by Goodwin, and not one penny of it was going to be used for deputies’ salaries.
I copied and pasted the following directly from the minutes of the board of supervisors meeting of Oct. 1, 2019 – my input in parentheses.
“Mr. Goodwin said in June of 2016 staff issued a memo to the Board of Supervisors identifying a $2.6 million increase in annual expenses. Specific examples of new, ongoing expenses listed in the report included:
A new Elections system with an annual cost of $163,000 to replace an antiquated system as required by the Secretary of State, an annual cost of $93,421 for maintenance of Megabyte, the property assessment system to replace the Crest system for the Assessor’s office, an ongoing commitment to jobs development of $76,300 per year. (Jobs development? Covid took care of that. Now there are more jobs than people to fill them, so that will be renamed “Economic Development”. Eye roll emoji.)
An increase to Public Safety of $542,000 to cover anticipated costs related to the new courthouse and increases to staffing for District Attorney in response to AB 109 and Prop 47 (not TCSO). Additional expenses will be needed in the future for staffing and operations of the jail expansion (The additional expenses related to the jail expansion have now been calculated to be $2.7 million annually.) An ongoing commitment of $556,797 (now around $1 million) to Code Enforcement, an increase of $63,000 to Veterans’ Services; $97,000 for non-public safety positions increased since FY 2014-2015.”
Goodwin tried to make a few hallway deals to labor bargaining unit reps to get their support for Measure G, but those folks knew better after years of employee concessions and back stabbing.
Anyhoo, just a little reminder of what has led us to where we are today. Years and years of mismanagement by people who know – or should know – better. And it’s not just the Supes. They make policy, but they aren’t professional finance folks. The Auditor should have made them understand the spending was unsustainable. He didn’t. Candy will. Vote Carlson for Auditor.
photo courtesy of Candy Carlson
In other Tehama County news, former Redding police officer Joshua Siipola has been hired by the Red Bluff Police Department. You remember Siipola, right?
Josh Siipola (left) is welcomed bye RBPD Chief Kyle Sanders (right)
photo from RBPD Facebook page
He got into trouble while he was a Redding cop for allegedly using information he got on a special law enforcement database to harass an ex-boyfriend of his fiancé. It’s a story right out of a Dr. Phil or Maury Povich episode. R.V. Scheide did an excellent job covering it.
Photo from RV’s story
Siipola was charged with 6 criminal misdemeanors and acquitted on all charges, of course. It’s almost impossible to get a guilty verdict against local law enforcement personnel in Shasta or Tehama Superior Court. Michael Peters, the fiancés ex who was allegedly harassed, sued Siipola in February of this year. That case is still active with a series of hearings set.
And now he’s a Red Bluff police officer, shifted around like pedophile priest. More on this to come – I have so many questions. Why is Siipola so obsessed with a man his fiancé broke up with a decade ago? How many children have been hurt by all this unnecessary drama? Why are there two letter “i”s right next to each other in his name? He’s like a walking typo.
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