There they go in the starting gate
Whoo Hoo!
It's an election season for those living in the odd-numbered wards and for those out there who are hoping to remold and reshape this recalcitrant city council in one direction or another. The rest of the city can sit back and watch what transpires in what is expected to be a series of intense competitions which will result in the crowning of four council members by next November at the latest.
If some producer could come up with a reality show involving politicians and elections, it would probably beat out American Idol.
The following are just to start things going in this new election season with potential match ups.
Will it be Dom Betro v Michael Gardner?
A settled incumbent versus the upstart riding off a successful campaign to push Betro to go retro to save a community park.
What about Art Gage v Rusty Bailey?
A seasoned politician with higher ambitions going against a neophyte who already had the backing of most of the other people sitting on the dais before even pulling his papers. Ouch.
Steve Adams v Steve Adams?
Betro v Gage
With not much time left to file papers, the candidates are beginning to show up and the races are beginning to shape up in each ward for the upcoming election on June 5 which will be conducted solely through mail in ballots. If there's no selection that day, then the candidates who receive the most votes will face off again on Nov. 6 at the polls.
At stake are four city council seats including one that is wide open in the fifth ward after incumbent Ed Adkison declined to seek a third term.
What may also be shaping up is the 2008 mayor's race, as two councilmen, Dom Betro and Art Gage were quoted in a recent issue of Inland Empire Magazine as being interested in tossing their hats into that ring. These two elected officials have been engaging in a tit for tat of sorts since the beginning of this year, perhaps in the hope that if one of them doesn't win reelection, then that will dampen his ambitions of going for the big prize next year.
Still, this is iffy given that the current mayor still hasn't officially said or stated that he's retiring from the position that he's held since 1994. After all, when everyone has been so sure he would finally step down, he has decided that there's still so much left for him to accomplish that he just had to throw his hat in the ring again for the good of the city. Not that he's unopposed as the mayor's elections are often the most interesting to follow.
Word is that several other city council members think he's too soft on community members when they come to speak before the city council and they want someone who will run a much tougher floor, in the manner that Adkison ran it during last week's infamous afternoon session. If this is true, it's coming from those who are probably in Betro's corner given his behavior in recent weeks.
Some people including supporters claim that Betro is for free speech at city council meetings, but they have short or selective memories. After all, it was Betro who on July 12, 2005 proposed the motion that favored placing restrictions on speakers at city council meetings. This proposal included banning community members from pulling items from the consent calendar. It was seconded by Councilman Steve Adams and passed 6-1 with Gage casting the sole dissenting votes. The area of free speech is one of the few where Gage has strayed from the city council's usual consensus votes.
Not that other city council members are huge fans of free speech and expression unless it's people coming to the dais to praise them. Frank Schiavone was the latest councilman to complain that he was sick and tired of well being sick and tired of the complaints at the dais before the expulsions began last week. His diatribe followed several others given by other councilmen in recent weeks. They should take their complaints to whomever it was that told them that being an elected official would always be fun and chastise them for false advertising. It's a tough road to travel most of the time and all aspiring politicians should know that going in.
What transpired last week was disappointing behavior out of Schiavone who tries to keep himself to a higher standard of behavior, but it's something that's been going around as of late.
Whining about the downside of being an elected official is the latest thing and it's apparently not going away any time soon. Not even an election can change that, but it can make things interesting especially when all the candidates begin selling to the public, why they are the best people for the job.
Councilwoman Nancy Hart has a simple solution to all this as she told Marjorie Van Poule and other members of the Friday Morning Club months ago. If Hart doesn't agree with the speaker's viewpoint on an issue, she simply stops listening to him or her.
The drama on the dais extends beyond how much speech is too much speech.
Earlier this year, four councilmen joined later by Mayor Ron Loveridge turned on Gage, claiming in a Press Enterprise article that Gage had acted inappropriately when his campaign manager Richard Paul had received city funding to produce television programs including one that starred Gage and aired just before the city council meetings. They also claimed that Gage had leaked confidential information to city residents, most notably about proposed legislation involving animal ownership. Gage denied these allegations and none of his accusers provided any evidence of wrongdoing on Gage's part.
Paul came to a meeting several weeks later and began talking about how he had been visited by FBI agents, but that they had been there to investigate Betro, not him. He also didn't have any proof to back up his allegations. Paul was able to finish his comments unlike community activist Yolanda Garland who has had her speeches interrupted by councilmen including Betro several times in recent weeks. Maybe it's a guy thing.
It's not clear where the next volley will come from as it's been quiet in both camps in recent weeks. One good guess would be that perhaps Loveridge is again rethinking his decision not to run again.
Betro had been one of the heroes who had voted against the firing of former city manager, George Carvalho in 2004, but he hadn't been in office very long at that point. Being brash and bold is what happens in the first year, before you settle down and begin to blend in with the power structure, which is evolving towards a voting bloc more and more in the hands of development firms backing a proposed "Riverside Renaissance" which in actuality, is a house of cards.
Nearly three years after the firing of Carvalho which had probably been done to clear the path for current city manager, Brad Hudson, many people feel like they are looking and listening to someone else. Someone who is still very tied to his core supporters who are mainly the White affluent homeowners and business owners of the downtown area of his ward but is alienated from an increasing number of individuals who initially supported him. His support in the Wood streets as well as the portion of the University neighborhood which falls within his ward is much more shaky than it had been in previous years. If he remembered who he was, that might help.
We hardly ever knew Betro and all I can say is that he's a cautionary note for getting involved in "grass-roots" campaigns. The "old" Betro is probably still in there somewhere underneath the more arrogant and insecure one, but at this point, you will have to dig fairly deep to find it. The "old" Betro used to be feisty and sometimes fearless, and a good listener, but that's changed probably since the developers began knocking his door down as he said at a community meeting last autumn. He commented then that his "allies" had stopped calling him about issues without seeing the obvious connection between the two situations.
His "allies" are finding it harder and harder to even address the city council these days. A proposal to send the code of conduct rules back to the heavily stacked governmental affairs committee will make that even harder, if what Hudson has told several individuals is indeed true.
Last week, Adkison served as mayor pro tem for one meeting and ejected four community members including 90-year-old Marjorie Van Poule from the meeting, in what some witnesses called a team tag effort with Councilman Frank Schiavone during the afternoon session. That's a record it's not likely Mayor Ron Loveridge would ever beat but when taking into consideration the rest of the city council, it's still fairly soft. Apparently members of the city council were calling around town trying to get the four upstarts in the city council chambers at its afternoon session on Feb. 27 arrested and charged but struck out.
During that afternoon incident and its aftermath, it was actually the police officers onduty who showed the professionalism that the city council lacked. Det. William Rodriguez, Sgt. Phil Neglia and Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez were handed a difficult situation to them on a plate by a testy city council over an incident that began when one city councilman asked a question he didn't expect anyone in the audience to be able to answer, and they turned it into lemonade. Whether they will be commended or chastised remains to be seen.
Betro's noted silence on the CPRC has also raised questions in the community, if not among those in his inner circle. Not too long ago, when Gage called it a piece of junk or trash, the "old" Betro defended the body. But lately? Betro's been very quiet on the subject.
Formerly a vocal supporter, Betro appears reluctant these days to even whisper those words, because after all, there's still four days until the filing deadline for his ward and the Riverside Police Officers' Association could still slip in a candidate for this ward to run against him and back him with tens of thousands of dollars like that organization did in 2003 with Riverside County District Attorney's office employee Paul Fick.
Although it's clear that given the current competition in the first ward, if the RPOA doesn't back Betro, it will probably enter its own candidate or sit this ward out. As is usually the case with the developers, they're probably already lining up to submit campaign donations into Betro's coffer, if they are beating down his door the rest of the time. If that is the case, it won't be determined until the early returns of the campaign fundraisers start coming in, which is the funnest part of following the elction process.
Even attempts made by both the city manager's office and the police department to hollow out the beleaguered commission from the inside out hasn't moved him to comment on it, although it has moved one of his colleagues, Councilman Andrew Melendrez, to move the issue to the public safety committee he chairs for discussion. A recent meeting brought out several of the players who had obviously been planning changes behind the scenes and left the community members and commissioners who attended feeling as if they had walked in on the middle of a conversation that had clearly been taking place for a while. That feeling was probably right on the mark.
How extensive that dynamic has become in recent months and its impact on the community will be discussed further in the upcoming installment of "What would Bill Lockyer think" including how Lockyer had pushed for increased communication between the partners of police reform in an environment which at the time, was actively discouraging that form of communication in one very important venue.
The weakest incumbent despite the infighting going on between Betro and Gage is actually Councilman Steve Adams who apparently doesn't know his constituents well enough to be able to appoint one to the CPRC without pulling him off from another commission, in this case the Human Relations Commission. Adams also was ready to jump ship in the middle of his term for greener pastures up in Sacramento, as his recent and brief foray into the state assembly race showed. Chances are, his constituents haven't forgotten that yet.
Adams has been very vocal about his strong and consistent support of the CPRC at recent public meetings. One word of advice, don't eat or drink while he's in the middle of saying his vows involving his continued support towards it, unless you want to risk committing a social gaffe. Maybe it's best just not to serve food and drink to people at campaign events during the entire election season.
The following list of candidates can be obtained at the city clerk's office at City Hall. It is minute to minute and subject to change at a moment's notice.
Ward 1:
Dom Betro(incumbent)
Michael Gardner(former CPRC member)
Letitia Pepper(local attorney)
Derek Thesier
Ward 3:
Art Gage(incumbent)
Rusty Bailey(teacher, Riverside Poly High School)
Peter Olmos
Ward 5:
(open seat)
Harry Kurani(business owner)
Robert Rodriguez
Donna Doty Michalka(Altura Credit Union)
Christopher MacArthur
Jeffrey Pardee
Ward 7:
Steve Adams(incumbent)
Terry Frizzel(former mayor)
Art Garcia
In Schenectady, New York, members of that city's civilian review board made allegations through a letter to the mayor that serious changes needed to be made to the board's operations, according to an article published March 1 in the Times Union.
Police review board seeks changes
Make these changes or else we'll all resign, the letter stated to Mayor Brian U. Stratton.
(excerpt)
"We believe that without a positive ... resolution of the recommendations listed here, we will fail in complying with the ordinance that created this board and defined its mission and, therefore may consider that there is little point for this to continue operating," the board wrote in the Jan. 19 letter.
These changes included speeding up internal affairs investigations, which take about 18 months to be completed by the department as well as allowing its investigator to receive complaints and help find witnesses.
The letter also recommended that the police department interview all the officers involved in an incident separately to avoid any appearance of impropriety.
Its most important recommendation was that the mayor and city council should support the board when its own findings on complaints differ from that of the police department.
(excerpt)
"We are not asking for carte blanche -- we simply need to know that we have the ear and support of the mayor and City Council when a difference of opinion exists or when recommendations are made," the board wrote
Right on, to the Schenectady civilian review board for standing up and saying what needs to be done. Hopefully, the governing body will sit back and listen.
It's an election season for those living in the odd-numbered wards and for those out there who are hoping to remold and reshape this recalcitrant city council in one direction or another. The rest of the city can sit back and watch what transpires in what is expected to be a series of intense competitions which will result in the crowning of four council members by next November at the latest.
If some producer could come up with a reality show involving politicians and elections, it would probably beat out American Idol.
The following are just to start things going in this new election season with potential match ups.
Will it be Dom Betro v Michael Gardner?
A settled incumbent versus the upstart riding off a successful campaign to push Betro to go retro to save a community park.
What about Art Gage v Rusty Bailey?
A seasoned politician with higher ambitions going against a neophyte who already had the backing of most of the other people sitting on the dais before even pulling his papers. Ouch.
Steve Adams v Steve Adams?
Adams, the aspiring city council incumbent will face off against Adams, the aspiring assemblyman. Whoever wins this battle will probably have a doozy of a battle with former mayor, Terry Frizzel. Just imagining the debate forums involving these two, three candidates is exciting. Bring it on!
Betro v Gage
Oh wait, that's next year, but it seems they've already gotten started.
With not much time left to file papers, the candidates are beginning to show up and the races are beginning to shape up in each ward for the upcoming election on June 5 which will be conducted solely through mail in ballots. If there's no selection that day, then the candidates who receive the most votes will face off again on Nov. 6 at the polls.
At stake are four city council seats including one that is wide open in the fifth ward after incumbent Ed Adkison declined to seek a third term.
What may also be shaping up is the 2008 mayor's race, as two councilmen, Dom Betro and Art Gage were quoted in a recent issue of Inland Empire Magazine as being interested in tossing their hats into that ring. These two elected officials have been engaging in a tit for tat of sorts since the beginning of this year, perhaps in the hope that if one of them doesn't win reelection, then that will dampen his ambitions of going for the big prize next year.
Still, this is iffy given that the current mayor still hasn't officially said or stated that he's retiring from the position that he's held since 1994. After all, when everyone has been so sure he would finally step down, he has decided that there's still so much left for him to accomplish that he just had to throw his hat in the ring again for the good of the city. Not that he's unopposed as the mayor's elections are often the most interesting to follow.
Word is that several other city council members think he's too soft on community members when they come to speak before the city council and they want someone who will run a much tougher floor, in the manner that Adkison ran it during last week's infamous afternoon session. If this is true, it's coming from those who are probably in Betro's corner given his behavior in recent weeks.
Some people including supporters claim that Betro is for free speech at city council meetings, but they have short or selective memories. After all, it was Betro who on July 12, 2005 proposed the motion that favored placing restrictions on speakers at city council meetings. This proposal included banning community members from pulling items from the consent calendar. It was seconded by Councilman Steve Adams and passed 6-1 with Gage casting the sole dissenting votes. The area of free speech is one of the few where Gage has strayed from the city council's usual consensus votes.
Not that other city council members are huge fans of free speech and expression unless it's people coming to the dais to praise them. Frank Schiavone was the latest councilman to complain that he was sick and tired of well being sick and tired of the complaints at the dais before the expulsions began last week. His diatribe followed several others given by other councilmen in recent weeks. They should take their complaints to whomever it was that told them that being an elected official would always be fun and chastise them for false advertising. It's a tough road to travel most of the time and all aspiring politicians should know that going in.
What transpired last week was disappointing behavior out of Schiavone who tries to keep himself to a higher standard of behavior, but it's something that's been going around as of late.
Whining about the downside of being an elected official is the latest thing and it's apparently not going away any time soon. Not even an election can change that, but it can make things interesting especially when all the candidates begin selling to the public, why they are the best people for the job.
Councilwoman Nancy Hart has a simple solution to all this as she told Marjorie Van Poule and other members of the Friday Morning Club months ago. If Hart doesn't agree with the speaker's viewpoint on an issue, she simply stops listening to him or her.
The drama on the dais extends beyond how much speech is too much speech.
Earlier this year, four councilmen joined later by Mayor Ron Loveridge turned on Gage, claiming in a Press Enterprise article that Gage had acted inappropriately when his campaign manager Richard Paul had received city funding to produce television programs including one that starred Gage and aired just before the city council meetings. They also claimed that Gage had leaked confidential information to city residents, most notably about proposed legislation involving animal ownership. Gage denied these allegations and none of his accusers provided any evidence of wrongdoing on Gage's part.
Paul came to a meeting several weeks later and began talking about how he had been visited by FBI agents, but that they had been there to investigate Betro, not him. He also didn't have any proof to back up his allegations. Paul was able to finish his comments unlike community activist Yolanda Garland who has had her speeches interrupted by councilmen including Betro several times in recent weeks. Maybe it's a guy thing.
It's not clear where the next volley will come from as it's been quiet in both camps in recent weeks. One good guess would be that perhaps Loveridge is again rethinking his decision not to run again.
Betro had been one of the heroes who had voted against the firing of former city manager, George Carvalho in 2004, but he hadn't been in office very long at that point. Being brash and bold is what happens in the first year, before you settle down and begin to blend in with the power structure, which is evolving towards a voting bloc more and more in the hands of development firms backing a proposed "Riverside Renaissance" which in actuality, is a house of cards.
Nearly three years after the firing of Carvalho which had probably been done to clear the path for current city manager, Brad Hudson, many people feel like they are looking and listening to someone else. Someone who is still very tied to his core supporters who are mainly the White affluent homeowners and business owners of the downtown area of his ward but is alienated from an increasing number of individuals who initially supported him. His support in the Wood streets as well as the portion of the University neighborhood which falls within his ward is much more shaky than it had been in previous years. If he remembered who he was, that might help.
We hardly ever knew Betro and all I can say is that he's a cautionary note for getting involved in "grass-roots" campaigns. The "old" Betro is probably still in there somewhere underneath the more arrogant and insecure one, but at this point, you will have to dig fairly deep to find it. The "old" Betro used to be feisty and sometimes fearless, and a good listener, but that's changed probably since the developers began knocking his door down as he said at a community meeting last autumn. He commented then that his "allies" had stopped calling him about issues without seeing the obvious connection between the two situations.
His "allies" are finding it harder and harder to even address the city council these days. A proposal to send the code of conduct rules back to the heavily stacked governmental affairs committee will make that even harder, if what Hudson has told several individuals is indeed true.
Last week, Adkison served as mayor pro tem for one meeting and ejected four community members including 90-year-old Marjorie Van Poule from the meeting, in what some witnesses called a team tag effort with Councilman Frank Schiavone during the afternoon session. That's a record it's not likely Mayor Ron Loveridge would ever beat but when taking into consideration the rest of the city council, it's still fairly soft. Apparently members of the city council were calling around town trying to get the four upstarts in the city council chambers at its afternoon session on Feb. 27 arrested and charged but struck out.
During that afternoon incident and its aftermath, it was actually the police officers onduty who showed the professionalism that the city council lacked. Det. William Rodriguez, Sgt. Phil Neglia and Deputy Chief Dave Dominguez were handed a difficult situation to them on a plate by a testy city council over an incident that began when one city councilman asked a question he didn't expect anyone in the audience to be able to answer, and they turned it into lemonade. Whether they will be commended or chastised remains to be seen.
Betro's noted silence on the CPRC has also raised questions in the community, if not among those in his inner circle. Not too long ago, when Gage called it a piece of junk or trash, the "old" Betro defended the body. But lately? Betro's been very quiet on the subject.
Formerly a vocal supporter, Betro appears reluctant these days to even whisper those words, because after all, there's still four days until the filing deadline for his ward and the Riverside Police Officers' Association could still slip in a candidate for this ward to run against him and back him with tens of thousands of dollars like that organization did in 2003 with Riverside County District Attorney's office employee Paul Fick.
Although it's clear that given the current competition in the first ward, if the RPOA doesn't back Betro, it will probably enter its own candidate or sit this ward out. As is usually the case with the developers, they're probably already lining up to submit campaign donations into Betro's coffer, if they are beating down his door the rest of the time. If that is the case, it won't be determined until the early returns of the campaign fundraisers start coming in, which is the funnest part of following the elction process.
Even attempts made by both the city manager's office and the police department to hollow out the beleaguered commission from the inside out hasn't moved him to comment on it, although it has moved one of his colleagues, Councilman Andrew Melendrez, to move the issue to the public safety committee he chairs for discussion. A recent meeting brought out several of the players who had obviously been planning changes behind the scenes and left the community members and commissioners who attended feeling as if they had walked in on the middle of a conversation that had clearly been taking place for a while. That feeling was probably right on the mark.
How extensive that dynamic has become in recent months and its impact on the community will be discussed further in the upcoming installment of "What would Bill Lockyer think" including how Lockyer had pushed for increased communication between the partners of police reform in an environment which at the time, was actively discouraging that form of communication in one very important venue.
The weakest incumbent despite the infighting going on between Betro and Gage is actually Councilman Steve Adams who apparently doesn't know his constituents well enough to be able to appoint one to the CPRC without pulling him off from another commission, in this case the Human Relations Commission. Adams also was ready to jump ship in the middle of his term for greener pastures up in Sacramento, as his recent and brief foray into the state assembly race showed. Chances are, his constituents haven't forgotten that yet.
Adams has been very vocal about his strong and consistent support of the CPRC at recent public meetings. One word of advice, don't eat or drink while he's in the middle of saying his vows involving his continued support towards it, unless you want to risk committing a social gaffe. Maybe it's best just not to serve food and drink to people at campaign events during the entire election season.
The following list of candidates can be obtained at the city clerk's office at City Hall. It is minute to minute and subject to change at a moment's notice.
Ward 1:
Dom Betro(incumbent)
Michael Gardner(former CPRC member)
Letitia Pepper(local attorney)
Derek Thesier
Ward 3:
Art Gage(incumbent)
Rusty Bailey(teacher, Riverside Poly High School)
Peter Olmos
Ward 5:
(open seat)
Harry Kurani(business owner)
Robert Rodriguez
Donna Doty Michalka(Altura Credit Union)
Christopher MacArthur
Jeffrey Pardee
Ward 7:
Steve Adams(incumbent)
Terry Frizzel(former mayor)
Art Garcia
In Schenectady, New York, members of that city's civilian review board made allegations through a letter to the mayor that serious changes needed to be made to the board's operations, according to an article published March 1 in the Times Union.
Police review board seeks changes
Make these changes or else we'll all resign, the letter stated to Mayor Brian U. Stratton.
(excerpt)
"We believe that without a positive ... resolution of the recommendations listed here, we will fail in complying with the ordinance that created this board and defined its mission and, therefore may consider that there is little point for this to continue operating," the board wrote in the Jan. 19 letter.
These changes included speeding up internal affairs investigations, which take about 18 months to be completed by the department as well as allowing its investigator to receive complaints and help find witnesses.
The letter also recommended that the police department interview all the officers involved in an incident separately to avoid any appearance of impropriety.
Its most important recommendation was that the mayor and city council should support the board when its own findings on complaints differ from that of the police department.
(excerpt)
"We are not asking for carte blanche -- we simply need to know that we have the ear and support of the mayor and City Council when a difference of opinion exists or when recommendations are made," the board wrote
Right on, to the Schenectady civilian review board for standing up and saying what needs to be done. Hopefully, the governing body will sit back and listen.
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, City elections, What is past is prologue
posted by Five Before Midnight | 7:19 AM
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