Highlights, lowlights from the week’s news

HIT >> There were a lot of things we liked from this week’s State of the City address. One message in particular, we feel, needs to be emphasized.

When Mayor Andrew Coolidge said “Chico is leading the region, the state and perhaps the entire country” while “blazing the trail on this legal journey for many other cities facing the same crisis,” he wasn’t joking.

Again, there are plenty of reasons why Chico ended up in this situation, and depending which side of the fence you’re on, you can either blame “an overaggressive city council trampling on the constitutional rights of homeless people” or “an over-zealous judge dictating how we can and can’t govern our city.”

But, bottom line, here is where we are. Dozens, if not hundreds, of cities across the state and nation are keeping a very close eye on Chico’s Pallet shelter and ongoing back-andforth legal battles with plaintiffs in the Warren v. Chico case. It’s not a spot any city would likely want to be in — but the end result is the progress being made is indeed positive. From the Pallet site to the upcoming Renewal Center and beyond, few cities can match what is being done in Chico, ongoing criticisms or legal reasons notwithstanding.

We also liked the words from Chico Chamber of Commerce board chair Brandon Slater, who noted positive signs for the local economy, and infrastructure repairs being paid for (as promised) by Measure H.

Chico has been through a lot, and we can argue all day about how much of the pain was selfinflicted. Everyone, though, should pause and appreciate the many signs of steps in the right direction. We’ve come a long way in the past two years.

MISS >> There is so much “bad” about the recent discovery of a dead man in a shopping cart at Food Maxx, we barely know where to start.

First, the obvious: The body of 61-year-old Daniel Niles was found wrapped inside a sheet of plastic in a shopping cart near the front entrance of FoodMaxx on March 12. Police later arrested Timothy Wayne Wiechert, 48, of Chico on suspicion of murder; he was also arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of a 28-year-old woman.

That’s awful enough. Some other details range from “shocking” to “what were they thinking?”

First, according to Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, detectives attempted to obtain security footage from FoodMaxx to see what had happened. Seems reasonable; after all, if a dead man is found in one of your shopping carts at your store, wouldn’t you want to help the police figure out what had happened?

Not in this case. The corporate office overseeing the store wouldn’t allow the footage to be released until a search warrant was served, according to Ramsey. Just wait until you read what the footage showed.

Upon serving the warrant and reviewing the footage, police discovered a man matching Wiechert’s description pushing the shopping cart with the body inside the store and leaving it there. And, get this — it was later pushed back outside by a store employee. The cart, with Niles still in it, sat for two days before being moved to allow for a customer in a wheelchair to enter.

So not only did a store employee not notice they were pushing a shopping cart with a dead body in it, apparently nobody else at the store bothered to check what was beneath the sheet of plastic in the cart right outside their front door for two days.

Reporter Jake Hutchison made seven attempts to get FoodMaxx’s side of this story — two emails and five phone calls, one to the local store and the rest to corporate offices.

The only response he got was an automated email with a survey asking how well they had done in responding to his query.

HIT >> We’re taking the easy road here and simply saying “Doesn’t this sunshine feel nice?”

A year ago, when we got basically zero rain in January, February or March, how crazy of a thought would that have been?

Feels like spring. This could be habit-forming.

MISS >> Finally, what in the world is up with the number of cars being driven into (or at least up against) buildings in the city of Chico lately?

This used to be a once-everycouple-of-years story. Lately, from downtown to Mangrove and beyond, it seems to be happening almost every day.

Let’s pause and remember that, under normal driving conditions, with competent drivers paying attention to what they’re doing, it is very, very difficult to drive a car so badly that you end up jumping a curb and hitting a building.

It’s almost as if drivers must be paying more attention to their iPhones than their driving, or something.

Nah. Couldn’t possibly be that.