Highlights and lowlights from the week’s news

HIT » True to their campaign promises, newly elected Chico City Council conservatives voted to discourage any future needle distribution programs.

Newly elected Kami Denlay, who brought the question to the council, pointed out that all the studies and reports that supporters cited for needle give-away programs to help drug addicts were national and had nothing to do with local conditions.

The decision, in an expected 5-2 vote, was to ask the city attorney to find a way to make sure needle giveaways won’t happen in Chico.

There seemed to be some interest in exploring other solutions for drug-addicted individuals, but it wasn’t going to be the state and a small grassroots group telling Chico what to do.

The question posed by distribution supporters on the council was how can Chico override a state directive, which is a good one. We’re betting the city attorney will have an answer for that in the future.

MISS » The case of the uncounted ballots locked in a box on the Chico State University campus could be looked at as “no harm, no foul,” but the world’s not like that anymore.

There aren’t enough ballots to change results, according to Clerk-Recorder Candace Grubbs. But in the paranoid partisan environment of the nation today, it’s just one more opportunity for those who want to take some shots at democracy.

It was a human mistake.

The box was locked by one person, and the person who was supposed to unlock it and return the ballots to the clerk’s office didn’t do so.

The mistake wasn’t discovered until more than a month after the election, when workers removed the box to take it into storage until next election.

The box was still locked; the ballots were secure. But it sure doesn’t look good.

HIT » Assistant City Attorney Chris Constantin was recognized during the Tuesday council meeting for his work in Chico. He’ll be leaving here shortly.

Constantin, who came to Chico in 2013, was instrumental in the development of several programs that helped the city crawl out of near-bankruptcy as well as helping small business muck through the pandemic economy.

Regarding the latter, they included the fast-tracking of extra “parklets” in downtown parking spaces for outside seating use, and a loan guarantee fund for small businesses that couldn’t qualify for tradition loans on their own.

But he also worked to understand Chico’s problems, like analyzing police response times and actually filling in street potholes to understand the process. He started as the finance director, then human resource director and later information technology director before becoming assistant city manager.

That’s got to be the best training route for anyone stepping into the top shoes.

He’ll be cleaning out his desk at the city by the end of the year, heading south. He’ll become the city manager for San Dimas in Southern California. Lucky them.

Chico City Manager Mark Orme will find Constantin’s shoes hard to fill, and really won’t be trying. He’s suggested to us that he’ll seek an “assistant to the city manager” rather than assistant city manager.

MISS » How much can one community stand? That’s what we thought when we heard that Berry Creek’s community Christmas tree had been taken right before the lighting celebration.

It had stood at the Old Hart Mill Fire Station, then it was gone.

Maybe the person who took it thought it was a beautiful tree, which a community Christmas tree would be.

Just like after the North Complex fires devastated the town, community members pulled together and a new one was located and brought to the regular spot.

Foothill communities know too well how to soldier through hard times, and we have to hope that 2021 will be much better for them because nothing can be worse than 2020.