Abdication

One man's reflection on a 9-year effort

Introduction

For nearly a decade, I have been a witness to, and sometimes a participant in, the workings of our city government. I have educated, persuaded, proposed, objected, explained, campaigned, spoken, written, and even sued, all in the interest of improving the quality of life for our community.

I am a slow learner. I am an optimist. I generally believe what is easy to see should be easy to do. But, of course, that is wrong. It is much easier not to do. Sometimes, without even realizing it, we all understand it is easier to swim downstream than to fight the current.

As life events sometimes encourage, recently I’ve been reflecting on my second stint here in Chico. As some of you know, I lived here between 1972 and 1976, when Chico was considered a “Norman Rockwell” city, with a population of 25k. (In 1850, the total population was about 4,000 with only 250 women; half of the men were foreigners.)

I retired here in 2016 and bought a fixer-upper in the Avenues. Before the Camp Fire, about 95,000 people were living here. Afterwards, it jumped to 110k. Now it’s about 100 thousand. Chico had changed in my absence in ways I didn’t imagine.

In my first month here, I learned about our homelessness issues. In 2017, others and I founded Chico First. As of today, we are nearly 6,000 mostly local members. We’ve been through a lot together.

As you probably know, I have focused my attention mostly on the local scene. I believe we can best control what happens immediately around us, because that level of direct experience is the most understandable and actionable. Besides, local society is a microcosm for what we think we know about the state and national macrocosms. Nationally, we only know what we are told, but locally, we can see for ourselves. “Local” is a metaphor for the higher levels of society, and people are the common denominator.

People are people at all scales of society. The difference is power. Much of the legal framework under which charter cities like Chico work is imposed upon us by the state government uniparty in Sacramento. As we learn from the most recent redistricting effort by our Governor, California is a big club, and we in rural N. Cal. aren’t in it. (h/t George Carlin)

After all this time and effort, I have come to accept some facts. Just about every theory I’ve tried has fundamentally failed. I believed that given a choice between “right” and “wrong”, everyone chooses wisely, especially those we consider our friends. But, what is “right”?

That is not so complicated as you might think. We have already said it in this city, in the halls of government and the homes of our community.

“A Safe place to raise a Family, an Ideal location for Business, a Premier place to Live.”

In November of 2022, the Quality of Life Act was placed on the ballot as Measure L. Although its original purpose was hijacked (more on this below), it did manage to keep the core premise in Section D of the adopted ordinance. It reads as follows

“D. That the vision for Chico is, "A safe place to raise a family, an ideal location for business, and a premier place to live." The citizens of Chico hereby reaffirm that these qualities of life expressed in our vision represent our aspirations and goals for the future of the City of Chico. These qualities of life require improving the conditions of safety, economic vitality, cleanliness, and beauty. It is hereby reaffirmed that policies and actions which protect and enhance these conditions are favorable to those that are dangerous, dirty, ugly, or detrimental to our local economy.”

Measure L was approved by just over 60% of voters.

But the sad truth is that it failed to have any lasting effect. It turns out that while the reign of progressive councils accelerated disasters like the Brown New Deal and tolerating needle giveaway in our parks, the theory that electing conservative members would make a big difference turned out to be wrong. That has been a bitter pill for me to swallow. Yes, the progressives made things worse, but the conservatives didn’t make things better. That is the sad truth. But why?

I love a good mystery. I have tested many theories to solve this one over the years. I have finally arrived at what I see as the final conflict between the immovable object of Chico’s culture and the irresistible force of lawfare. As an attorney, I have said that the only way to make people do what they don’t want to do is to sue them. That does not always result in justice, but it certainly results in a level of transparency not available otherwise.

If you are inclined read on, I offer my assessments and conclusions reached after years of trying and failing to move the needle in local government.

As a final note, let me say that while I could talk at length about individual actors in local government, staff, and elected officials, each of whom has played their personal roles in navigating to the key moments in Chico’s recent history, this is a step back from individual personalities and a look at government actions and their results.

Although the character of the key individuals explains much, my purpose here is to understand outcomes, not intentions or motives. Motives are important, but invisible. We judge by what we see, experience, and know to be true. It is the actions and outcomes that matter, not the good intentions of the actors.

Part One

Abdication (noun)

the fact of no longer controlling or managing something that you are in charge of:

The city denied that its decision represented any abdication of responsibility.

It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant abdication of duty.

dictionary.cambridge.org

Cultural significance: Signals that abdication has material costs and legal consequences — that leadership cannot be avoided without penalty.

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What happens when those entrusted with public duty choose safety over responsibility, process over substance, and inertia over leadership?

The City of Chico has confronted several defining moments, moments that demanded courage, wisdom, and action. Again and again, it failed to rise to the occasion. The City was repeatedly called upon to lead. Consistently, it stepped back instead of leaning forward.

The Warren Settlement.
When sued over homelessness, the City didn’t defend its authority or its people. Instead, it tried to surrender its police powers—powers it had no right to delegate. California law is clear: a City cannot contract away its sovereign duty to govern. Yet Chico attempted exactly that. Not out of principle. Not out of necessity. Out of fear. Abdication came disguised as compromise and expediency.

The Camp Fire and AB430.
After the Camp Fire, tens of thousands of displaced residents poured into surrounding Butte County cities, mostly to Chico. The State gave Chico a tool—AB430, a housing streamline measure designed to cut red tape in a crisis. This was Chico’s chance to lead. To step up. But the City said no. It opted out, leaving the responsibility to smaller towns, while it turned away from its role as the region’s urban center. At the very moment when leadership mattered most, Chico abandoned its post.

The Harm Reduction Crisis.
Needles were being distributed in Chico parks and neighborhoods under a state permit. The City had the power to act. It refused. The community itself was forced to sue the State Department of Public Health—and the community won. The permit was revoked. The program was shut down. Only after victory was already secured did the City pass an ordinance banning harm reduction giveaways. And even then, when the rebranded NGO defied that ordinance under the pretext of a “doctor’s prescription,” the City delayed more than two years before issuing a tepid response. Leadership was abdicated before the lawsuit, and again after the victory won by others.

Simplicity Village.

Because it was ideologically favored by elected officials and city staff, a proposal for a “tiny home village” was facilitated by ignoring or violating every state law the city is otherwise bound by duty to enforce. By using a “temporary use ordinance” to bypass building and environmental laws, it was left up to citizens to sue to stop the abuse. When legitimate development is proposed, the city strictly enforces all relevant state laws, but when it finds it convenient, it refuses to enforce those same rules on itself. It took the courts to force the city to abandon this illegal action.

Valley’s Edge.
The City developed the General Plan. It certified the Environmental Impact Report. It approved the Specific Plan. But when challenged by factional interests, it refused to defend its own work. Instead of standing by its Charter City, general plan, and its CEQA authority, or enforcing state laws designed to prevent this very harm, Chico shrank back into the low-risk bubble of avoidance, waiting for others to fight its battles, as if its discretionary powers include the right to ignore laws it finds inconvenient. Again, the city retreats and leaves it up to the courts to tell it what it must do. Ironically, it takes actions in support of opposing factions over itself. This is the City’s fight. It is its duty. But it chooses abdication instead.

A Betrayal of the City’s Own Vision.
A community effort, supported by at least one councilmember, sought to codify a lasting framework for Chico’s future: “A safe place to raise a family, an ideal location for business, a premier place to live.” Four policy pillars were proposed: Safety, Cleanliness, Beauty, and Economic Vitality. This policy framework could have anchored governance beyond election cycles. But the council majority hijacked it. They stripped it of vision, reduced it to a feckless “public nuisance” ordinance. And when citizens tried to use that ordinance to hold the City accountable, the City claimed its “hands were tied” by the Warren settlement—the very abdication that created the problem in the first place.

Critical moments. Critical failures. An unmistakable pattern.

This is not about caution or prudence. It is abdication—systematic, deliberate, and pervasive. A government that would rather delay than decide. A government that would rather deflect than defend. A government that has mistaken cowardice for caution, and abdication for wisdom.

But the law does not permit abdication. Government cannot contract away its core powers. It cannot refuse to act when duty is clear. It cannot hijack its own values, then claim helplessness. The people are entitled to leadership. The law requires leadership.

And when the irresistible force of law collides with the immovable fortress of bureaucratic inertia, the fortress is shaken but does not crumble. But, when the culture of a city and the people of our community demand justice, there is no shield for abdication. There is only a duty to lead through the powers created by the people and vested in government.

The Damages of Abdication

When a city abdicates its duty to faithfully “manage municipal affairs,” the harm does not remain hidden in court filings or committee minutes. It spills into the streets. It scars the land. It erodes the daily life of its people.

First, trust is broken.
A government that refuses to lead forfeits the confidence of its citizens. People see it: the excuses, the delays, the cowardice. They begin to believe that City Hall exists only to shield itself, not to serve. From that recognition comes cynicism, and from cynicism comes apathy — the slow withdrawal of a people from the hope that their government might ever be a partner in community life.

But the damages are not just moral; they are tangible.

• Environmental ruin.
  Chico’s abdication in the face of homelessness has left once-pristine parks and waterways desecrated. Encampments scar the ground, human waste seeps into the soil, and the creeks themselves — Big Chico Creek, One Mile, Five Mile — once symbols of natural beauty and communal recreation, are now closed due to E. coli contamination. Officials may blame “non-human sources,” but many doubt this is the truth, given our experience with the CDC during Covid. We know what happens when a city refuses to act. Nature itself is degraded, and the public is locked out of its inheritance.

• Economic paralysis.
  Businesses cannot thrive in an environment where leadership is absent. When the City abdicates its duty to manage housing, it chokes off growth. When it refuses to defend its own planning decisions — as in Valley’s Edge — it signals to investors and developers alike: you are on your own. Add to this the suffocating bureaucracy of permitting and inspections, where fees are piled high for “cost recovery” without accountability or efficiency, and the result is predictable: entrepreneurs give up, projects stall, and the flame of economic vitality becomes mere smoking embers.

• The decline of commerce and community.
  Downtown Chico, once a gathering place for families, students, and visitors, is increasingly avoided. Parks and public spaces, especially for women and children, are no longer safe havens but places to be feared. Filth and debauchery repel the very citizens for whom these spaces exist. No rational person willingly subjects themselves or their children to such conditions. The inevitable outcome is shuttered storefronts, diminished foot traffic, businesses closing their doors, and young families, the lifeblood of any community’s future, fleeing for a better life elsewhere.

The Four Pillars in Collapse.

• Safety is undermined by crime and disorder.

• Cleanliness is erased by encampments that disrespect and neglect.

• Beauty is marred by trash, graffiti, decay, and apathy born of the loss of hope.

• Economic Vitality is strangled by bureaucracy, fear, and retreat.

These are not abstractions. They are lived realities, flowing directly from the City’s refusal to lead.

Leadership is not optional. A city that abdicates its duties does not maintain neutrality — it creates a vacuum, and into that vacuum rush disorder, decay, and despair. When leadership retreats, degradation advances.

And so, the pattern is complete:

From abdication of duty in council chambers, abdication of stewardship by staff, litigation losses in courtrooms, parks closed by contamination, businesses choked by red tape, to citizens who no longer believe in their government — all of it flows from the same source: the cowardice of leaders who chose self-preservation over stewardship.

The Duty of Citizenship

The tragedy of Chico is not simply that its government failed to act. It is that in failing, it abandoned its people to the consequences.

The absence of leadership in Chico is not an invitation for socialists, or any faction, to take control of the levers of power and impose their own values from above. But it does invite endless cycles of action and reaction, impulse and response, exchanging one body of rhetoric for another.

True leadership is not the mere exercise of power. Leadership, in a republic, reflects the common values and visions of its people. It is stewardship, not domination. It is responsibility, not opportunism.

And here lies the deepest truth: the crisis of abdication in Chico does not begin and end in its council chambers. It begins and ends with its citizens.

Government, after all, is nothing more than the instrument of the people. Citizens create it. Citizens control it. And when citizens themselves abdicate—when they withdraw from unity, action, and vigilance—then they invite the vacuum of leadership that now defines Chico.

Apathy begets abdication. Abdication begets decay. And decay begets opportunism—where those who lust for advantage or control step into the void left by those who once carried the mandate of common values.

The people of Chico have the power to restore their city, not by trading one faction’s dominance for another, but by reclaiming the duties of citizenship itself:

• By uniting around shared values, not splintering into tribes.

• By acting with courage, not waiting passively for others.

• By remaining vigilant, not lulled into cynicism or despair, and thus failing to defend that worth defending.

Only then can the four pillars—Safety, Cleanliness, Beauty, and Economic Vitality—be restored. Only then can Chico once again become what it was meant to be:

Abdication in government leadership is grave, but abdication of citizenship is fatal, for without the people’s vigilance, there can be no leaders worthy of the name.

Have we reached the point of crisis?

This is a crisis for our community, not because of yet another natural disaster, or because of an enemy abroad, but because of a failure of leadership here at home. Chico is suffering from a disease of abdication: a systematic retreat from responsibility by those entrusted with public duty, and those to whom that duty is owed.

The consequences surround us. They are in our parks, in our neighborhoods, in our economy, and in our trust in government itself. To understand how we arrived here, and how we must climb out, we must first face the truth.

The Pattern of Abdication

Again and again, the City of Chico has been confronted with defining moments that demanded courage, wisdom, and decisive leadership. Again and again, it has failed. Many times, the City was called to lead. Many times, it stepped back instead of leaning forward.

With the Warren Settlement, we saw abdication disguised as compromise. Obviously defective to anyone who read it, while some citizens complained, most waited to see if it might work anyway.

With Simplicity Village, despite its blatant violation of its own laws, the city championed a development it favored by ignoring them and bending them to the breaking point. No one seemed to care, except the private citizens who once again had to step up and sue to stop it. Today, hardly anyone remembers it happened.

AB430 was passed to provide Chico and the surrounding cities a path to rapid recovery of the housing lost to fires. When the City opted out, deferring to others to carry the burden of action, citizens, while generous with their charity, failed to hold the government accountable. The displaced population moved elsewhere.

Syringe give-away under the guise of Harm Reduction. While the harm to the city was obvious to all, despite its authority to protect its citizens, it refused. A small number of private citizens and organizations acted and sued the state. When it was safe to do so, the city passed the ordinance demanded earlier, only to stand down when challenged by the disobedience of the perpetrators.

Valley’s Edge and Housing Development in general tell another story of lost opportunity.
Over a multi-year public process, the City formulated the plan for growth through a democratic process open to all. When our land-use constitution was challenged by politically motivated factions, the city ignored state law and pandered to its political opponents. Despite the factional dishonesty of the campaign against the city, it stood silent, acting as if nothing affecting them was at stake. Who is protecting the democratic process if its results are ignored when convenient?

The Betrayal of Vision.
The City’s official vision, now ratified directly by voters, was hijacked by political cowardice. Citizens spoke loudly at the ballot box, but then our leaders soon forgot about it, leaving it to languish and remain immaterial to daily life.

Leadership moments. Leadership failures. An unmistakable pattern.

The Damages of Abdication

Abdication of duty is not abstract. It has consequences — visible, tangible, painful.

Broken Trust: The people no longer trust their government. They see the excuses, the delays, the moral cowardice. Cynicism takes root, and from cynicism grows apathy — the slow withdrawal of people from civic life, eroding the very foundation of democracy.

Environmental Ruin: Uncontrolled encampments scarred our city. When the city refused to act, the land and water paid the price. When our precious inheritances are left unguarded, they are easily lost. Bidwell Mansion is not just a story of a lone arsonist; it is a story of absent vigilance by those we trust to protect us.

Economic Paralysis.
Our economy is chilled. Chico cannot be an “ideal location for business” when the government and its citizens allow businesses to become victims of abdication. Without business, we perish. Where is John Galt?

The Decline of Commerce and Community.
When our city is safe, clean, beautiful, and vital, the people come out to enjoy life. When it is dangerous, dirty, ugly, and depressing, they don’t. We cannot be surprised that so many businesses downtown are vacant, or that industry is leaving Chico for more fertile ground.

Collapse of the Four Pillars.

· Safety is undermined by crime and disorder.

· Cleanliness is erased by neglect and decay, the signs of blatant disrespect.

· Beauty is marred by trash and graffiti, suffocating the creative urge to beautify.

· Economic Vitality is strangled by bureaucratic paralysis and fear of controversy, creating barriers rather than removing them.

These damages are the price we pay for abdication.

The Deeper Abdication: The Duties of Citizenship

This is not a call for the next round of ideological watchmen to seize power. The failure of Chico’s leaders is not an invitation for socialists or any other faction to impose their visions from above. True leadership in a republic is not domination, but a reflection of commonly held values and a vision for a life that is better tomorrow than yesterday.

One could say that the function of our government leadership is to set a course for our future. That is the wrong idea, and one reason we have failed to create the future we desire. We created government as the means to act on our will, not to lord over us with their personal visions and agendas. If we don’t know where we’re going, all roads lead us there. If we don’t know where we’re headed, how can we know we’re lost?

At the root of this crisis is not merely the abdication of government officials. It is the abdication of citizenship by those who consent to be governed.

Government is nothing more than the instrument of the people. It is created and controlled by citizens.

When citizens withdraw, when they surrender unity, abandon action, and forsake vigilance, they create the very vacuum the morally weak and opportunistic rush in to fill.

Apathy begets abdication. Abdication begets decay. Decay begets opportunism.

The people of Chico cannot afford to abdicate their responsibilities any longer. The restoration of leadership will not come from the council chambers alone. It must come from citizens reclaiming their duty to unite around shared values, to act with courage, to remain vigilant against the slow creep of decline or attacks on our quality of life.

The Path Forward

Chico was meant to be a safe place to raise a family, an ideal location for business, a premier place to live. That is not just a slogan. It is a vision — one rooted in Safety, Cleanliness, Beauty, and Economic Vitality.

We can restore it. But it requires courage. It requires accountability. And above all, it requires the citizens of Chico to rise — to refuse apathy, to reject abdication, to demand leadership, and to embody it in themselves. We cannot continue to settle elections because the merest majority believes the others are worse. We need to elect people who courageously invest their powers in the general welfare and vitality of their community.

We cannot be led by factionalism. We must lead by unity.

In the final analysis, no fortress of bureaucratic inertia can withstand the irresistible force of united citizenry.

There is no shield for abdication.

There is only a duty to lead.

That duty begins with us.