Downstroke

Crisis averted: Enloe Medical Center nurses are close to approving a contract, just days after local members of the California Nurses Association voted to authorize a strike.

“We got an offer that was good enough that we recommend our members accept it,” said David Welch, an Enloe nurse and member of the bargaining team. “We ended up with some substantial improvements over where we’d been.”

Welch said that after the strike vote, negotiations showed progress, and Enloe yielded on some key issues.

“The improvements in retiree health care was what really brought it over the line,” he said. There were also compromises made in the matter of nurses “floating” to departments outside of their usual area of expertise.

Welch said a few issues were left unresolved, but he’d rather not dwell on them now.

The nurses will vote on the contract March 16, and since CNA leadership is endorsing it, it’s pretty much a done deal.

The deal includes salary increases of 6 percent a year, and this year’s will be retroactive to when the contract expired in January.

Edifice complex: The debate over the planned downtown parking structure resurfaces March 23 with the start of the city of Chico’s Downtown Access Planning Charrette.

Designed to involve the public in the planning process, the four-day event will take place in Chico Junior High School’s multi-purpose room on Memorial Way and include a 6:30 p.m. kickoff event on Thursday the 23rd, an all-day charrette and evening open house Friday through Sunday and a closing presentation on Monday, March 27.

The charrette “is intended to comprehensively address automobile and bicycle circulation and parking, as well as improvements to transit and pedestrian access” in the downtown area.

Methin’ around: County Sheriff Perry Reniff gave the Board of Supes an update on what his office is doing in conjunction with county health workers, probation officers, drug treatment providers and others in dealing with what some refer to as an “epidemic” of meth use in the county.

Reniff said that, in his estimation, as much as 80 percent of crime in the county is related to meth use. Dealing with its after-effects costs the county millions every year. Cyla Nelson, program manager of the county’s Prop. 36 courts for drug-addicted criminals, told the board that the problem is multi-generational and cannot be solved by law enforcement alone. The county’s multi-agency Meth Strike Force will kick off a campaign soon to enlist parents and teachers in the fight.