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Chico City Council To Look At Budget, New Jail

The upcoming year’s budget, a strategy for using federal housing funds and raising fees for a new county jail are among the issues up for debate Tuesday before the Chico City Council.

While far from flush with cash, the city’s once-dire financial picture is on the mend. Department heads and the public will have opportunities to suggest changes in the existing draft budget, though it is unclear how much wiggle room exists.

City administrators are attempting to speed repayment of long-term debts and rebuild reserves, while the council recently approved a generous pay increase to its police force.

A new five-year plan mapping out how Chico would use a little over a million dollars in annual federal housing aid is also up for public review and comment. The 213-page report, required as a condition of receiving the funding, identifies a long list of priorities that far outstrip expected funding. The proposed goals include providing housing for the poor and homeless along with counseling and other services — creating a homeless shelter for alcoholics and substance abusers, rehabilitating dilapidated homes and providing guidance and some funding to low-income entrepreneurs. 

The council will also consider signing on to an initiative being pushed by Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea that would raise money to improve the county lockup. The proposal calls for tacking on a fee of up to $425 for each new single family home. Each new apartment, row house or town house built in the city would be assessed $339. If approved, the new fees would only take effect once every other municipality in the county has signed on. Paradise is the only city on board so far.

Honea said the county’s half-century old jail is functionally obsolete. A revamped or rebuilt facility would reduce energy and water use, require fewer guards and be able to more securely house more of the career criminals diverted to the jail from state prisons due to overcrowding.  

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