Money matters

Tom Lando’s ears must have been burning Tuesday night (May 20), when the former city manager took a verbal drubbing at the Chico City Council meeting for allegedly allowing the faulty construction of Fire Station 5 to go unchallenged when it was discovered.

“It was well-known from day one that the building had problems,” said Vice Mayor Mark Sorensen. That was in 1997, and now it’s too late to collect damages from the construction company.

“I wish someone would have invited Tom Lando to this meeting to explain why nothing was done,” said Stephanie Taber, a regular attendee at council meetings. “The people of Chico should be very, very angry.”

The station across from Wildwood Park developed a dangerous mold problem due to multiple water leaks, and firefighters posted there are currently living in an onsite trailer. Interior dry wall has been removed and the mold re-mediated, said Public Works Director Ruben Martinez, but the exterior problems—flawed flashing, a freestanding brick veneer that allows water intrusion, leaking windows and a deteriorating roof—need to be fixed before the interior can be restored.

The council had three options, he said: (1) authorize restoration of the roof, the interior and the brick veneer, total cost $220,000; (2) authorize that plus repair of all construction issues causing leaks to the interior, including windows, gutters and brick veneer cladding issues, total cost $300,000; and (3) restore the roof and interior only, total cost $150,000.

Option 1, which is already funded in the budget, will do the job for now, Martinez said, by fixing all water-intrusion problems that lead to mold buildup, especially in the living areas. And it will save the city $80,000 this year, when money is tight, but the additional work will need to be done soon.

Council members couldn’t agree on whether it was better to take the financial hit and do all the work now or hold off until the next budget cycle. After much discussion, they voted 5-2, with Mary Goloff and Ann Schwab dissenting, to go ahead with Option 1 so the station would be functional by the end of summer and to complete the work later.

The debate over the fire station spilled over into discussion of the next agenda item, a request from the Chico Creek Nature Center to defer an additional two years of quarterly loan payments to the city, which lent it $185,000 in 2005 to help finance construction of a new building.

The overriding problem, of course, is that if the nature center goes under, the city will be left with a couple of empty buildings in the middle of Lower Bidwell Park, as well as the unpaid loan.

One of the options—favored by City Manager Brian Nakamura—was simply to forgive the loan. The center is “a public facility that serves the public,” he said. He later acknowledged, however, that the city would have to repay the development-impact-fee fund, the source of the loan money, out of the general fund.

Several audience members objected to loan forgiveness, questioning why the city would forgive a $185,000 loan while balking at spending $80,000 to complete the restoration of a fire station. Besides, they said, the center keeps making promises to pay but doesn’t.

The council considered two other options: (1) continue deferring the loan payments as requested and lower the interest rate to 3.2 percent; and (2) allow interest-only payments and lower the rate. The latter option would cost the center about $6,000 annually.

Don Krysakowski, the center’s treasurer, said the agency’s operating budget was improving, going from $140,000 two years ago to nearly $200,000 now. But the cost of the loan interest payments, combined with the expected loss of $34,000 in city funding, added up to a $40,000 hit.

But council members felt the center needed to make some payment effort and voted unanimously in favor of the interest-only option.

Earlier, the council had voted 5-2, with Sorensen and Sean Morgan dissenting, to pass the final reading of the ordinance restricting the use of plastic bags at certain retailers. It also voted unanimously to approve a new set of user fees designed to recover 90 percent of the city’s costs for planning, building and engineering services. The fees will be phased in over time.