As you read this, unless you’re doing so days after publication, I should be in Vancouver. I left for SFO on Tuesday so I wouldn’t need to get up predawn to catch a Wednesday morning flight. Yet, here I am at home, my laptop unpacked and back on my desk, not relaying views from afar.
Travel tip: Don’t rely on a passport card when you have a perfectly good passport. Turns out, despite what I read online and what an airline phone rep told me, a passport card is NOT an instrument of entry for American fliers. The ticket counter agent processed a refund request after explaining the error of my ways.
At least dinner was delicious and the hotel was nice. I used the WiFi to follow election returns, then check what happened at the Chico City Council meeting — where I would have been, on the clock, had I not taken four days off.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
That’s also the reaction a number of folks undoubtedly had in the wake of an eventful Tuesday. Having caught up on the news, I have a few takes.
• The only surprise from Valley’s Edge is the margin. Regular readers may recall predictions in this space that opponents had a better chance in an election than in litigation and that, absent neutral polling, letters to the editor offered a harbinger of the plan’s doom. The split between letter-writers was 11%; at last count, the voters’ gap was more than double (62-38 on both measures).
Valley’s Edge did itself no favors by resorting to negative campaigning. The mailers reviving the needles furor from the 2020 council election — with a personal attack that singled out a particular advocate — degraded its messaging with mudslinging. “Dirt is fun” may be one of the plan’s mission statements, but as an electoral strategy, not so much. It fell somewhere between desperation and tantrum.
Referendum organizers had the advantage once they got their ballot measures qualified. Visceral reactions spur voters. That’s why a conservative PAC — supported by developers — scored a council sweep by promoting syringes as a scourge and secured three of four seats for its favored 2022 candidates by focusing on homelessness. It’s easier to sway with emotion than exposition. (See: negative campaigning.)
Opponents of Valley’s Edge tapped into deeply rooted fears including fire, water, housing and nature. Those issues impact everyone; they inspire passion. Who gets as passionate for a private project? Besides developers, realtors and potential homebuyers — a decade or more from now — not as many.
It’s not over, however. Valley’s Edge has multiple options to move forward, under a revised plan or county standards. That’s unless the Stop Valley’s Edge / Valley’s Edge Resistance folks find enough funding to buy the property. We’ll see.
• Equally unsurprising is the fate of incumbent supervisors in Butte County Districts 1, 4 and 5. In the former, Bill Connelly ran unopposed; in the latter two, political newcomers challenged well-established officials. Valley’s Edge showed money isn’t everything, yet the 2-to-1 margins in the vote counts happen to correspond with the 2-to-1 advantages Tod Kimmelshue and Doug Teeter built in fundraising.
• Almost as polarizing as Valley’s Edge — and, more pertinently, parking kiosks — the Downtown Chico Complete Streets Improvement Project hit a speed bump Tuesday. That should have surprised no one except those who think councilors barrel ahead with whatever they want regardless of public sentiment … which this group does often, but not always.
Main Street and Broadway are the sticking points. The council, via its Internal Affairs Committee, initially envisioned a two-way bike lane on Main rather than single-direction bike lanes on both thoroughfares. Pushback from businesses in particular shifted thinking to bike lanes on Salem and/or Wall streets — but each of those poses challenges, too. So, it’s “back to the drawing board,” engineers!
I’m glad this proposal is getting so much vetting. There are a lot of moving parts in planning this consequential. I’m reminded of a lesson from leadership training: Play to the objective, don’t play to the constraints. It’s still early in the process; Public Works Engineering Director Brendan Ottoboni called Tuesday’s review “step 2 of 100 maybe.” Getting bogged down in details at this juncture risks losing the forest for the trees.
• Is it too early to anticipate the council races in November? District 3 promises a rematch of Dale Bennett and Monica McDaniel. Bryce Goldstein perked up District 7 by exploring a run for the seat held by Deepika Tandon. District 5 will most certainly get someone new, as the new boundaries place Andrew Coolidge in District 1, where Sean Morgan endorsed Mike O’Brien as his successor. Expect things to heat up soon.
Reach weekend editor Evan Tuchinsky at etuchinsky@chicoer.com
