Words or actions: Riverside begins budget talks

City Manager Brad Hudson has put together the annual budget for the next fiscal year and has promised among other things, that the city will create 10 new law enforcement positions, according to a Press Enterprise article published this morning.


Proposed budget stresses public safety, streets


Though the positions listed are 15 less than what had previously been promised, at least one city council member was pleased.


(excerpt)


Councilman Andy Melendrez, who heads the council's Public Safety Committee, said he's happy the proposed budget calls for adding police officers.

"I think the 10 would be a good start," he said.



Mayor Ron Loveridge also was satisfied. During city council meetings last year and in 2005, he had recommended that the city create 50 new law enforcement positions to meet the demands of a city that is growing both in area and population through annexations and migration.

In November 2005, the first 25 positions were placed on the city council agenda and approved by the city council. However, the remainder of the positions were soon placed in limbo after being taken off the table at some point during labor negotiations with the city's six employment bargaining units last summer. So what you had, was the mystery of the missing positions with different accounts of their whereabouts being provided depending on who you talked to.

Is that mystery now solved? You'll probably have to wait and see. The early rounds of budget hearings begin with promises, but some of those made don't go very far into the process.

Police officers remained skeptical that these positions would ever be created, with several saying that talking about it is one thing, but the positions won't exist until they appear on the final budget expected to be approved by the city council before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. And considering how many times they've been promised and then yanked, you can't blame people for not taking anything at face value.


But one thing on many people's minds particularly those who work at City Hall is that if you want anything for your department in terms of providing what Loveridge called, basic services, you better get it now. Although city officials and city management paint the upcoming Riverside Renaissance as rosy, others entrusted with the responsibility of providing city residents with the five basics are much more pessimistic with some saying that bankruptcy in the city is only a couple years away.

Others are concerned that the city manager's office is using money allocated for other departments to finance the renaissance.

Although the Riverside Police Department is getting 10 new police positions, it is in the midst of a hiring freeze on its civilian side. What's happened is that employees have resigned and then those positions have had caps placed on them by Hudson's office so they can't be filled. The money that would have been spent on hiring and employing people in these frozen positions has apparently been allotted for expenditure elsewhere, mostly on development projects.

If Loveridge and the city council are so concerned and focused on providing the city's basic five, then maybe this is something they want to take a closer look at because if this is going on, it's a serious situation that will actually be exacerbated by the creation of new police positions.

The police positions are badly needed, but any time you create new sworn positions, there needs to be civilian positions created as well to act as support to those sworn officers. In this case, it's not clear that this is happening and not only that, it's not clear whether this upcoming budget will alleviate the hiring freeze currently going on in the police department.

Dispatchers for example, are akin to air traffic controllers in terms of working in windowless rooms and stressful conditions. Most of them are required to work overtime and when recruiting dispatchers, they require all applicants to read a sheet of paper that tells them all the negative aspects of working this job, something that you don't normally see during the earliest stages of the recruitment processes for many jobs. Without dispatchers, there would be no law enforcement service that would be very effective and smart officers would be the first to admit that this is true. They would also be the first to support their dispatchers when those employees are addressing problems in their own ranks, as happened several years ago when that unit was investigated after allegations were raised of unfair working conditions.

It's not clear whether at this point it's the dispatchers that are being affected, but then they already have enough difficulties hiring and retaining people in those positions. But clerical positions and those addressing customer service have already been impacted by the freeze.

So with the creation of the needed police positions, there should be a removal of the hiring freeze on the civilian employees and creation of those positions that are needed to support the newly created police positions.


Currently, the city also has 10 vacant police positions to fill, according to a presentation given by Chief Russ Leach on the department's implementation of the Strategic Plan. The plan is to expand recruitment and streamline the application and hiring process, Leach said at that meeting.

The police department needs to remain fully staffed on both of its sides and grow in staffing to meet the needs of a growing city. If it isn't, then it remains in danger of falling into the same pattern of problems that led to the imposition of the stipulated judgment by the State Attorney General's office in 2001. According to the writ mandamus written by that office, inadequate staffing was one of the major problems in the department in the time period before and leading up to the state's investigation into the patterns and practices of the police department.

The emphasis in the budget will still be on the Riverside Renaissance projects.


(excerpts)


The proposed 2007-2008 budget includes $377 million toward the $1.2 billion Riverside Renaissance Initiative, a five-year program of citywide improvements, including railroad underpasses and overpasses, libraries, sidewalks and more.

And the amount in the 2007-2008 budget for the Renaissance Initiative is likely to increase as the city moves to spend bond revenues raised for the effort, Assistant City Manager Michael Beck said.

"The reality is we will be bringing upwards of $100 million more for additional Renaissance projects throughout the year," he said.


Any ideas where that money will be coming from?


Any concerns about the city's budget should be communicated to the city council by calling (951) 826-5991 or by using the following email addresses:


dbetro@riversideca.gov

asmelendrez@riversideca.gov

agage@riversideca.gov

fschiavone@riverisdeca.gov

eadkison@riversideca.gov

nhart@riversideca.gov

sadams@riversideca.gov

rloveridge@riversideca.gov



The BASS wars are heating up during what is turning out to be a contentious election season in Riverside.

BASS members Dom Betro, Frank Schiavone and Ed Adkison have again, castigated Councilman and former GASS quartet member, Art Gage for "misleading the voters" about a financial situation that arose with the city several years ago.


Pity, that BASS doesn't raise similar criticisms against its member, Adams for circulating a newsletter at tax payer expense that is a thinly disguised campaign brochure. Or when its own members use a serious issue like the Riverside Police Department's problems with a recent audit as an opportunity to make campaign speeches.

The fact is that what often happens is that one city council member(often, but not always during an election year) will take credit for doing something. Then the other city council members will check that person by saying it's a group effort. Then someone in that group will soon after in public or on a campaign leaflet assume full credit for something they all were involved in doing.

That's how incumbents run their campaigns when facing off against challengers with no government background. But after a while, all this turmoil gets so confusing that if anyone could ever figure it all out, they should write a manual and then sell it to city residents. By doing so, they could be this city's next up and coming millionaire.

And then there's the question about how honest the city government is being to the public about the city's financial status as of now. Most of them paint a rosy picture of the city's finances being robust. If that's true, then why are city employees concerned that the city's actually dropping off a financial precipice?

Which will it be?

Anyway, I ran into the beleagured Gage at City Hall and his given reason for being there was that he was concerned that because of the rain, the homeless people were going to be forced to spend the night on the streets. He was on his way to the city manager's office to ensure that the armory at Fairmount Park would be opened on nights of inclement winter, even after its official closure last week. I hope that he wasn't the only elected official to do so.




It looks like the case involving a former Riverside Community College administrator who was sentenced to one year in county jail is not closed yet, according to an article in the Press Enterprise.

Not if Riverside County District Attorney's office supervising prosecutor William Mitchell has anything to say about it.

William O'Rafferty, who was also once a Riverside County Sheriff's Department deputy, said that he intends to challenge the decision of presiding judge, Erik Michael Kaiser to sentence O'Rafferty to one year in jail and a $200,000 fine. Originally, Mitchell had asked for a sentence of nine years in state prison for the 10 felony convictions including conflict of interest, misuse of public funds and grand theft.

Kaiser said he has to research the matter and then he'll get back to them.