Out of sight, out of mind?
Several weeks ago, City Manager Brad Hudson said that the next quarterly progress report on the Riverside Police Department's implementation of its Strategic Plan is tentatively scheduled for April 17, at 6:30pm during the regular city council meeting. He added that the date is not set in stone but is an approximation.
It was the first words out of his camp on this topic in several months and they only came after someone asked him for an update on the process that had been a bumpy one last year.
He and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis have also said that they hoped to purchase and install the digital video recording devices on the remaining squad cars in the department's fleet. In early 2006, the city council had voted to approve $500,000 from the city's general fund to purchase this equipment and install it by the end of the summer, but that didn't happen. DeSantis said that the city had tested several models in the autumn and was committed to purchasing the most advanced technology that it could find. The single company mentioned by DeSantis when asked which three vendors the city had looked into, was Panasonic.
Will Hudson and DeSantis' promises bear fruit?
I guess the city will have to wait and see. The city had purchased 10 recording devices earlier in the period of the stipulated judgement to comply with a requirement to purchase that quantity by 2003 and all 10 purchases had in fact been made that year, according to records from the police department. After that, the judgement stated that the city was supposed to make its best efforts to allocate funding to purchase 25 more devices by 2006. However between 2003-2006, the city had purchased and installed only three more recorders. After community members pointed out that fact, the city pledged to not only outfit the remaining 22 vehicles but the entire fleet.
It's one of those cases where seeing is believing and waiting and seeing what happens next is the prudent step to take for a period of time before asking them again, when the allocated money is going to be spent on the items it was intended to purchase even if to do so makes you appear like a broken record.
Councilman Ed Adkison has taken the lead from the dais in terms of addressing this chronic issue. He has said that if the money was allocated to buy video recording devices, then it should have been spent already. However, the purchases would also be symbolic in the sense that the city had promised to purchase this equipment for the department on the eve of the dissolution of the stipulated judgement and it has yet to follow through with this promise anymore than it has with its promises to take an active role in the implementation of the Strategic Plan.
When initially asked when the next(and only second) progress report on the Strategic Plan would take place, Hudson appeared a bit caught off guard. So did the city council, although Councilman Andrew Melendrez said he would make inquiries to find out when the report was scheduled. During this meeting, Hudson hadn't provided an answer to Melendrez's question. Later, he would when asked the same question in a hallway at City Hall.
It's been nearly a year since the city council met in a public workshop to discuss the future of the police department's ongoing reform process that was set to continue even after the dissolution of the stipulated judgement with the state attorney general's office in March 2006.
On March 28, 2006, the city council had voted unanimously to approve a plan for the implementation of the police department's Strategic Plan. The proposal included the hiring of consultant Joe Brann to help with the implementation of the plan and to provide quarterly reports to the City Council on the plan's progress. Brann's skill and experience addressing these issues has been and would continue to be an asset to the implementation of the Strategic Plan.
As anyone who lives in Riverside knows, the city forgot its promises about five minutes after it had made them. Actually, that's being too harsh. The city government began forgetting about four months after it had enthusiastically made these promises and congratulated itself for making it through the arduous process of outside oversight. About the same time the Strategic Plan appeared to be out of mind, the city council was apparently wishing it could forget about forging labor contracts with the city's six bargaining units as well including two in the police department.
Neither of these subjects is or were as exciting to think about as the Riverside Renaissance project, which admittedly is about the most exciting development idea that has hit the city in recent years. Why wouldn't it be? It's a wish list for every neighborhood and ward in this city going back about 20 or so years including the development of new city parks and the expansion of older ones, according to this Press Enterprise article. It's good to see the improvements moving along in the parks including Orange Terrace and Fairmount Parks.
But it's a 20-year plan truncated in five years, as most people can see. The reason why it's been promised over the much shorter period is probably to elevate the careers of certain city employees and to elevate the election prospects of several city council members interested in seeking higher office before the coach and horses turn back into a pumpkin pulled by a family of mice.
Those who work in the development department don't really care if it falls short of its mark, because its employees have said that even if Riverside has to settle for a much smaller percentage of what was promised, it will still be a red letter day at the five year mark. That may be the case, if the city is still solvent and in possession of a good credit rating by that same date. If housing costs including those involving newly constructed homes haven't exceeded people's ability to buy them and the streets are thoroughfares and not parking lots either for vehicle traffic or Union Pacific railroad trains.
But what of the Strategic Plan during this same period?
It appeared to city residents that the city manager's office had forgotten all about that. After a lot of enthusiasm, silence soon came out of the corners where both City Manager Brad Hudson and the city council resided. Even Mayor Ron Loveridge, who had once convened a special task force to address similar issues in 1999, was quiet.
But rather than entering into a contract with Brann within a couple of months like most professional city managers would do, Hudson instead dragged it out through the summer into the autumn. The majority of the city council seemed perfectly willing to allow Hudson to do so. It took quite a push from the community to get the city council to push Hudson to do what should have been done months earlier and the assistance of a high-ranking city employee who was not even willing to have his name revealed, which stood as another sign that Hudson had stalled in the task that the city council had entrusted him to do.
The contract was finally approved by the city council in November and the process began to move forward as it should have and Brann showing more patience than most people probably would in similar circumstances set out to do his job that if it weren't for Hudson and the city council would have begun months ago.
Even so, it's still the responsibility of the city to inform the public on the process that it has set out to do, and it's the responsibility of the mayor and the city council to publicly ask its direct city employees questions on behalf of their constituents about this same process. The city council and Hudson have shown that they're not able to fill these roles unless prompted by the community. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless it becomes a pattern that is etched in stone, because if that's the case then things aren't much different in this century than they were in the last one.
As had been mentioned previously, if Hudson had stumbled this badly in the area of development, would the city council have sat by and done or said nothing? It's doubtful that the city council would have collectively sat on its hands if development had been as quickly cast aside. This begs the question, has the city government learned anything since the last century? The faces may have changed but are they still using the same play book?
It wasn't as if the city council had completely forgotten the promises it had made. When I addressed Councilman Frank Schiavone on the issue for example, he had remembered the workshop quite well, but emphasized how well the police department was doing as if it no longer needed this process. His words appeared sincere, but what wasn't said was that it was still important to have a blue print plan in place to keep it going in a better direction and that had been the intention behind the creation of the Strategic Plan. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer had included the development and implementation of this plan to ensure that the reform process would continue onward even after his office agreed to the dissolution of the stipulated judgement. He did this for the same reason that he had imposed the stipulated judgement and that was because every single attempt at reforming the police department initiated by the city in the past had failed to take root. Without being deeply rooted, no reforms achieved by the police department could be maintained beyond a short period of time so Lockyer and eventually the city decided that this time would be different.
Schiavone did put out a lot of effort to get the process back on track along with Councilman Dom Betro but when the city manager needed urging earlier on in the year to get with the program, the city council appeared reluctant to get him to do his job.
The city council did hear a progress report of sorts from the police department in early October, with community members and police officers present, which was exactly as it should be. After all, the progress reports should be in a venue where all the partners in the ongoing process can listen to them.
The anniversary of the dissolution of the stipulated judgement passed quietly last week, with not a single elected official on the dais asking at the city council meeting about the status of the Strategic Plan or the reporting process. Probably because they were too busy expelling city residents from the council chambers and trying to think of new ways to restrict public comments that they did not wish to hear.
It's probably wise for city residents wishing to express concerns or ask questions about the implementation of the Strategic Plan that they do so now before they are barred from speaking on this issue without a council member yelling "point of order" at them. When Lockyer wrote about the importance of the three partners, the city government, community and police department, maintaining communication with each other and building bridges rather than tearing them down, he was probably unaware of the efforts made by the city council to limit that communication in a public venue.
That process needs to continue, and the police department needs to receive its share of attention just like the development projects have received. The Strategic Plan, which is in place until 2009, is an opportunity to invest in the police department and its relationships with the city and the communities. But if the city intends to do its part then 2006 which was the first year of the rest of its history should not be looked at as a benchmark year of accomplishments but rather as a lesson that should not be repeated. A lesson every bit as important as the hard-won lessons which preceded it.
Election update:
The GROUP will be meeting at the Coffee Depot in downtown Riverside on Thursday, March 15 between 7 and 8:30am. On the agenda, is Donna Michalka who is running for city council in the fifth ward.
The California Ballet Company is looking for scary ghost stories. You can find more information about that here.
It was the first words out of his camp on this topic in several months and they only came after someone asked him for an update on the process that had been a bumpy one last year.
He and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis have also said that they hoped to purchase and install the digital video recording devices on the remaining squad cars in the department's fleet. In early 2006, the city council had voted to approve $500,000 from the city's general fund to purchase this equipment and install it by the end of the summer, but that didn't happen. DeSantis said that the city had tested several models in the autumn and was committed to purchasing the most advanced technology that it could find. The single company mentioned by DeSantis when asked which three vendors the city had looked into, was Panasonic.
Will Hudson and DeSantis' promises bear fruit?
I guess the city will have to wait and see. The city had purchased 10 recording devices earlier in the period of the stipulated judgement to comply with a requirement to purchase that quantity by 2003 and all 10 purchases had in fact been made that year, according to records from the police department. After that, the judgement stated that the city was supposed to make its best efforts to allocate funding to purchase 25 more devices by 2006. However between 2003-2006, the city had purchased and installed only three more recorders. After community members pointed out that fact, the city pledged to not only outfit the remaining 22 vehicles but the entire fleet.
It's one of those cases where seeing is believing and waiting and seeing what happens next is the prudent step to take for a period of time before asking them again, when the allocated money is going to be spent on the items it was intended to purchase even if to do so makes you appear like a broken record.
Councilman Ed Adkison has taken the lead from the dais in terms of addressing this chronic issue. He has said that if the money was allocated to buy video recording devices, then it should have been spent already. However, the purchases would also be symbolic in the sense that the city had promised to purchase this equipment for the department on the eve of the dissolution of the stipulated judgement and it has yet to follow through with this promise anymore than it has with its promises to take an active role in the implementation of the Strategic Plan.
When initially asked when the next(and only second) progress report on the Strategic Plan would take place, Hudson appeared a bit caught off guard. So did the city council, although Councilman Andrew Melendrez said he would make inquiries to find out when the report was scheduled. During this meeting, Hudson hadn't provided an answer to Melendrez's question. Later, he would when asked the same question in a hallway at City Hall.
It's been nearly a year since the city council met in a public workshop to discuss the future of the police department's ongoing reform process that was set to continue even after the dissolution of the stipulated judgement with the state attorney general's office in March 2006.
On March 28, 2006, the city council had voted unanimously to approve a plan for the implementation of the police department's Strategic Plan. The proposal included the hiring of consultant Joe Brann to help with the implementation of the plan and to provide quarterly reports to the City Council on the plan's progress. Brann's skill and experience addressing these issues has been and would continue to be an asset to the implementation of the Strategic Plan.
As anyone who lives in Riverside knows, the city forgot its promises about five minutes after it had made them. Actually, that's being too harsh. The city government began forgetting about four months after it had enthusiastically made these promises and congratulated itself for making it through the arduous process of outside oversight. About the same time the Strategic Plan appeared to be out of mind, the city council was apparently wishing it could forget about forging labor contracts with the city's six bargaining units as well including two in the police department.
Neither of these subjects is or were as exciting to think about as the Riverside Renaissance project, which admittedly is about the most exciting development idea that has hit the city in recent years. Why wouldn't it be? It's a wish list for every neighborhood and ward in this city going back about 20 or so years including the development of new city parks and the expansion of older ones, according to this Press Enterprise article. It's good to see the improvements moving along in the parks including Orange Terrace and Fairmount Parks.
But it's a 20-year plan truncated in five years, as most people can see. The reason why it's been promised over the much shorter period is probably to elevate the careers of certain city employees and to elevate the election prospects of several city council members interested in seeking higher office before the coach and horses turn back into a pumpkin pulled by a family of mice.
Those who work in the development department don't really care if it falls short of its mark, because its employees have said that even if Riverside has to settle for a much smaller percentage of what was promised, it will still be a red letter day at the five year mark. That may be the case, if the city is still solvent and in possession of a good credit rating by that same date. If housing costs including those involving newly constructed homes haven't exceeded people's ability to buy them and the streets are thoroughfares and not parking lots either for vehicle traffic or Union Pacific railroad trains.
But what of the Strategic Plan during this same period?
It appeared to city residents that the city manager's office had forgotten all about that. After a lot of enthusiasm, silence soon came out of the corners where both City Manager Brad Hudson and the city council resided. Even Mayor Ron Loveridge, who had once convened a special task force to address similar issues in 1999, was quiet.
But rather than entering into a contract with Brann within a couple of months like most professional city managers would do, Hudson instead dragged it out through the summer into the autumn. The majority of the city council seemed perfectly willing to allow Hudson to do so. It took quite a push from the community to get the city council to push Hudson to do what should have been done months earlier and the assistance of a high-ranking city employee who was not even willing to have his name revealed, which stood as another sign that Hudson had stalled in the task that the city council had entrusted him to do.
The contract was finally approved by the city council in November and the process began to move forward as it should have and Brann showing more patience than most people probably would in similar circumstances set out to do his job that if it weren't for Hudson and the city council would have begun months ago.
Even so, it's still the responsibility of the city to inform the public on the process that it has set out to do, and it's the responsibility of the mayor and the city council to publicly ask its direct city employees questions on behalf of their constituents about this same process. The city council and Hudson have shown that they're not able to fill these roles unless prompted by the community. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless it becomes a pattern that is etched in stone, because if that's the case then things aren't much different in this century than they were in the last one.
As had been mentioned previously, if Hudson had stumbled this badly in the area of development, would the city council have sat by and done or said nothing? It's doubtful that the city council would have collectively sat on its hands if development had been as quickly cast aside. This begs the question, has the city government learned anything since the last century? The faces may have changed but are they still using the same play book?
It wasn't as if the city council had completely forgotten the promises it had made. When I addressed Councilman Frank Schiavone on the issue for example, he had remembered the workshop quite well, but emphasized how well the police department was doing as if it no longer needed this process. His words appeared sincere, but what wasn't said was that it was still important to have a blue print plan in place to keep it going in a better direction and that had been the intention behind the creation of the Strategic Plan. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer had included the development and implementation of this plan to ensure that the reform process would continue onward even after his office agreed to the dissolution of the stipulated judgement. He did this for the same reason that he had imposed the stipulated judgement and that was because every single attempt at reforming the police department initiated by the city in the past had failed to take root. Without being deeply rooted, no reforms achieved by the police department could be maintained beyond a short period of time so Lockyer and eventually the city decided that this time would be different.
Schiavone did put out a lot of effort to get the process back on track along with Councilman Dom Betro but when the city manager needed urging earlier on in the year to get with the program, the city council appeared reluctant to get him to do his job.
The city council did hear a progress report of sorts from the police department in early October, with community members and police officers present, which was exactly as it should be. After all, the progress reports should be in a venue where all the partners in the ongoing process can listen to them.
The anniversary of the dissolution of the stipulated judgement passed quietly last week, with not a single elected official on the dais asking at the city council meeting about the status of the Strategic Plan or the reporting process. Probably because they were too busy expelling city residents from the council chambers and trying to think of new ways to restrict public comments that they did not wish to hear.
It's probably wise for city residents wishing to express concerns or ask questions about the implementation of the Strategic Plan that they do so now before they are barred from speaking on this issue without a council member yelling "point of order" at them. When Lockyer wrote about the importance of the three partners, the city government, community and police department, maintaining communication with each other and building bridges rather than tearing them down, he was probably unaware of the efforts made by the city council to limit that communication in a public venue.
That process needs to continue, and the police department needs to receive its share of attention just like the development projects have received. The Strategic Plan, which is in place until 2009, is an opportunity to invest in the police department and its relationships with the city and the communities. But if the city intends to do its part then 2006 which was the first year of the rest of its history should not be looked at as a benchmark year of accomplishments but rather as a lesson that should not be repeated. A lesson every bit as important as the hard-won lessons which preceded it.
Election update:
The GROUP will be meeting at the Coffee Depot in downtown Riverside on Thursday, March 15 between 7 and 8:30am. On the agenda, is Donna Michalka who is running for city council in the fifth ward.
The California Ballet Company is looking for scary ghost stories. You can find more information about that here.
Labels: business as usual, City elections, consent decrees and other adventures
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