CHICO — Just before attendees began to arrive in the Doubletree Hotel ballroom for the annual State of the City address, two members of the Chico Police Department decided a dry run was in order for a surprise planned for later.
Officer Jordan Saldano donned a visual headset and took the controls of a small unmanned aerial vehicle — better known as a drone — and piloted the device around the perimeter. All went well until it came in for a landing; the drone glided over to the lectern and got entangled in a microphone cable. Sgt. Todd Lefkowitz freed the drone, which proceeded to rocket up, ricochet off the ceiling and plummet to the carpet.
No harm done, though — an hour later, the flight in front of a full crowd went flawlessly. The speakers had an easy time, too, as they reported on aspects of Chico life to receptive listeners.
Sponsored by the city and the Chico Chamber of Commerce, the event featured a titular address from Mayor Andrew Coolidge; a public safety update from Police Chief Billy Aldridge; a presentation on Chico State from President Steve Perez; and an economic snapshot from Quinn Velasquez of Golden Valley Bank.
All expressed optimistic outlooks — even the banker, who noted bullishness among local businesses despite concerns over inflation and employment.
“Generally speaking, there’s a positive outlook on our community right now,” Velasquez said. “I do think Butte County is going to continue to be a driver of economic growth.”
With about half of the county’s population, Chico is a driver of the county economy. Coolidge emphasized that point — he titled one PowerPoint slide, “So goes Chico, so goes the region.”
Mayor’s address
Using his slides as a guide, Coolidge eschewed a script and instead spoke extemporaneously as he wandered from the front of the room through the sea of tables. He used his final State of the City as mayor to highlight progress and set an agenda for further changes.
First, if not foremost, Coolidge spoke to the city’s response to homelessness via the Warren v. Chico settlement agreement, which resulted in the Pallet shelter facility Genesis. His remarks came the day after U.S. Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments on the Grants Pass case — for which the city filed an amicus brief — that will adjudicate municipal responsibilities for unhoused residents.
“Things aren’t perfect,” he said. “I think we’re 80- to 90% of the way there, and we’re hoping for a favorable Supreme Court decision to help us keep moving forward.”
Coolidge spotlighted the city’s fiscal position with “a balanced budget and a clean audit”; new garbage cans downtown; the sewer connection from Paradise (which he called “the biggest thing we’ve done” on the current City Council); $1 million in business recovery grants; energy-saving upgrades; and improvements to bike paths and streets, the latter funded by Measure H sales-tax revenues.
“I’ve said this would be the summer of construction,” the mayor noted. “I was wrong; it’s going to be years of construction.”
For the future, he advocated for closing the road through lower Bidwell Park to motorized vehicles; removing fire pits in forested areas of the park; getting a four-lane connector between Chico and Interstate 5; and forming an organization called the North State Council of Governments to further regional aims beyond the current Butte County Association of Governments.
Coolidge also said he’ll ask his colleagues to dedicate an addition $500,000 to a revenue guarantee for a passenger airline offering flights from Chico Regional Airport to Los Angeles. Including $75,000 recently committed by the town of Paradise, that would bring the fund to its goal of $1.5 million.
Finally, he pledged more transparency from the city.
“We need to do a better job communicating,” Coolidge said. “If the city is a desert, in the absence of water, sometimes people drink the sand.”
Other remarks
Aldridge put his emphasis on staffing. Buoyed by incentives the council approved, the Chico Police Department has hired 42 employees since January 2022, including 22 sworn officers. Dispatchers remain a pressing need, given the number of calls these personnel field — 101,520 last year, with 84,149 for police.
He talked tech, too. Besides the drones, which the department deployed 145 times in 2023, a new system for reading license plates identified 2,500 vehicles (out of 60 million hits) sought by law enforcement.
“We’ve solved many of our cases, including a murder, with that system,” Aldridge said, adding that he hopes to “build it out through the city.”
Speaking of expansion, Perez noted a bump in Chico State’s enrollment, which dropped significantly post-pandemic, and his encouragement from the record turnout for the university’s Choose Chico recruitment event.
“Thing are looking good,” said Perez, in his first year as president. “Things are looking up.”
Velasquez summarized data from the Butte County Economic Dashboard his bank hosts on its website and results from last month’s business confidence survey. A majority of business owners expressed a positive outlook on the local economy (52.4%, up 4.8% from last March).
He noted unemployment has risen to 6.8% from 5.7% since the end of 2023 but characterized both figures “actually healthy levels” for businesses seeking to expand their workforce. Home construction and sales dipped last year — the latter 18% — to remain an area of concern. Velasquez labeled residential building “a litmus test to understand how the economy is moving.”
