Scrap move less green?
Re: “Finally scrapped”
Bummer. I’m a longtime customer of Chico Scrap Metal. For all the talk about “green” policies, I think [Karl] Ory and the “progressives” really missed the mark on CSM.
Having scrap metal and recycling within town saved tens of thousands of miles of truck travel and carbon emissions for people who recycle scrap metal or use recycled steel in their businesses. It also provided literally millions of dollars of income for poor people who didn’t have cars to drive farther to recycle beverage containers.
Recycling is dirty, it’s true, but I don’t really see a huge win in making the operator move their business to a new site so that place can get polluted also. If the city had millions to spend on a lawsuit, why couldn’t they do something creative instead like help the owners finance a building that would have solved the noise or dust issues?
I’ll think of Ory and his “green legacy” every time I have to spend an hour of my day and burn $20 worth of diesel to drive out to Durham-Pentz Road to buy recycled steel or drop off scrap for recycling.
Zeke Lunder
Chico
Overpass option
I biked through Lower Bidwell Park and saw a fallen tree leaning on the tarp covering a tent. Limbs and trees are falling all over town. There is only one place in Lower Park protected from rain, sun, falling trees and fire risk. That place is under the [Hwy 99] overpass.
The law says homeless people cannot be moved unless they have a legal place to go. The city and the park management could declare that, for safety, the overpass is the only designated area in the park where staying overnight is permitted, thus legally moving people currently camped illegally and dangerously close to the waterway. This may save people from crush injuries and the city from liability.
If campers were all in one safe area, it would be easier to deliver services like food, water, mobile showers, toilets and trash removal. It would help to keep the creek and swimming areas clean. Families would feel more comfortable bringing children to the park if they were not next to someone’s living space.
I know that the city is working on other solutions, but the wheels have moved so slowly on these projects. This declaration could be done immediately as a temporary measure.
Sandee Renault
Chico
“And I did not speak out …”
A world that witnessed the horrors of Auschwitz and said out loud, “Never again,” seems to be paralyzed in going full-bore to stop Putin’s atrocities in the Ukraine.
We are caught up in the “if we hit him too hard, he may hit us back” excuse, a question we always face when dealing with bullies. And, yes, he may, and it may really hurt, but the alternative is his growing stronger every time he succeeds in one of his bullying tactics.
If we walk away from the fight, he wins. If we call him bad names and duck and parry, he wins. If we continue to let him bully our weakest neighbors, he wins. If we negotiate and give him half the cookie he seeks, he wins—he’ll go for the other half at a later date.
The only way to stop him is to pick up a rock and crush his skull. But we’re too afraid he has a rock, too. Martin Niemöller’s warnings [in the poem “First they came…”] should ring in our ears, but we are too self-serving and engrossed in our Twitter accounts to heed them. Sad.
Dean Carrier
Eureka
Be the first to comment