River City: Does bigger mean better?

Size matters.

That's the message being sent out in a Press Enterprise article that details the ongoing renovation at City Hall in downtown Riverside. To the tune of $6.25 million.

The renovation will include more office space, a 100-seat restaurant on the first floor and plasma television screens to keep city residents who are waiting to access city services entertained.



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The addition of about 7,000 square feet of space will allow the city to move employees back into City Hall who have been working in leased office space elsewhere. That will save the city about $100,000 a year, said General Services Director Kris Martinez.

The portions of the building most visited by the public -- the third and fourth floors, where the Planning, Building & Safety, and Public Works departments are located -- have been modernized.

Waiting areas are roomier, have more seating and boast plasma-screen televisions to keep visitors entertained.

Plastic laminate countertops were replaced with granite that should last 30 years, Hudson said.

"The Formica stuff just got ripped to shreds," he said.

Pam Caver, a permit technician with the Building Department, said the improvements have made it easier to find blueprints and other documents that used to be piled atop office furniture and partitions.

"I'm glad they did it," she said. "It's more organized."




Indeed, it's true that city employees have been farmed out to other buildings and others have been relegated to tiny spaces.


One of the divisions impacted by the ongoing renovations is the Community Police Review Commission office, which has been truncated to cubicle status on the Sixth floor.

Originally, intentions were to move the CPRC office to the second floor. A vault was being constructed towards the rear of the floor to store the files used by that office. However, it was decided that the treasury department which has taken over the CPRC's space on the Sixth floor will be located there instead.

Eventually, Interim Executive something-or-another Mario Lara said, the CPRC will regain its old office space, maybe by this autumn though it's likely it will take longer than that. It's not clear that when the city finally hires the CPRC's new executive manager whether or not he will even have an office. But that fits in perfectly with what's been happening to this commission since City Manager Brad Hudson and Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis took it over.

For one thing, it's not even clear that either of them know the proper name of the commission. The sign on the Sixth floor calls it the Police Review Commission and originally the arrow pointed not towards the CPRC cubicle but the Financial division. After being notified of that gaffe, the city manager's office provided a brand new arrow for the sign that pointed towards the cordon that encloses the CPRC's cubicle. I guess their ability to figure out what it's really called will have to wait for another day.


I'm sure City Hall will look more like City Hall eventually and maybe the elevators will be updated enough to include the proper safety mechanisms to prevent people's limbs from being crushed by the doors, but for the CPRC, it's just another insult on a growing list, but more than that, it's a symptom of how poorly handled it has been by the city manager's office.


Last week, I also met up with two representatives of the police department's unions in one of the decrepit elevators at City Hall. They were on their way to meet up with Hudson about the conditions at Lincoln Field Operations Station, which needs renovations to make it a better and safer facility for the city's police officers. They said that they were hoping that they would get the renovations done, but Hudson should be very willing to be helpful in that area because it make sense to include the renovations of one of the police department's major facilities in the city's future infrastructure development which will be needed to keep up both with the expected growth in the city's population and the increase in acreage due to anticipated annexations.

Given that part of the problems with Lincoln Station involve leakage issues, there should also be included an assessment of the building to ensure that there are no mold issues involved that might endanger the health of those who work there.

It also makes fiscal sense to spend the money now to get the renovations done rather than when the city's running on fiscal fumes in a few years.





In the Los Angeles Times, an editorial was published criticizing the accidental deportation of a developmentally disabled man last month.

Pedro Guzman, 29, was born in Los Angeles and arrested on a misdemeanor charge of trespassing in Lancaster. What happened was that an assumption was made at some point that because he's Latino, he must be undocumented when Guzman is actually a citizen. So the law enforcement agency that arrested him turned him over to ICE for processing and deportation. He hasn't been seen by his family since.


The editorial condemned the action of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department which turned him over to the ICE, after his arrest comparing its actions with those that would have been taken by the Los Angeles Police Department which operates under Special Order 40. LAPD Chief William Bratton has said that his police force would not turn over undocumented immigrants for deportation for fear that it might discourage them from coming forward and reporting crimes. He also said that his police department wasn't adequately staffed to take on extra responsibilities. Apparently, the county's law enforcement agency thinks differently or at least it did with Guzman.


For Guzman who last called his family on May 10 to tell them he was in Mexico, he's still not been reunited with his family. According to a Los Angeles Times article, a federal judge refused to order the government to look for Guzman. And ICE covered its own actions by denying culpability.


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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials denied that anything improper was done in deporting Guzman.

Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the U.S. government needed to do more to find Guzman and resolve a situation that it helped create. They also urged help from Mexico.

"The Mexican government should be enlisted to assist" in the search for Guzman, said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director for the ACLU's Southern California chapter who is handling the case. He said the family had drained its savings trying to find Guzman.



Let's see, the ICE just deported a citizen and claimed it did nothing improper? A federal government deported a citizen of this country and won't spend any resources trying to find him and reunite him with his family? The judge said it would be the "moral" thing for the government to do but stopped short of compelling its agencies to do so. The deportation of legal residents and even United States citizens who are Latino by "accident" is troubling in that it's underreported and in what it shows about how the immigration issue is impacted largely by fears that California is becoming more and more Latino and its White population is shrinking and reluctant to give up its power base.



The immigration issue as it's called reared its head during the recent round of elections in Riverside, thanks to one of the candidates in Ward Five.


The Riverside Police Department and the leadership of the Riverside Police Officers' Association objected to claims made by Ward Five candidate Chris MacArthur about the department's policies regarding undocumented immigrants, according to the Press Enterprise. MacArthur apparently did it to scare voters away from voting for his rival, Donna Doty Michalka, who works for a local credit union that has a policy allowing Mexican consulate identification cards to be accepted.


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Riverside police do not accept the Mexican consular ID as a valid form of identification. However, police spokesman Steven Frasher said it can be useful for verifying someone's identity in the absence of other forms of identification.

The Riverside Police Officers Association, whose political action committee has endorsed Michalka, is angry about MacArthur's fliers, said Don Miskulin, a police helicopter pilot and the action committee's chairman.

Illegal immigration is a matter for the national government to handle, not city government, Miskulin said.

"It really has nothing to do with the issues" in Ward 5, he said.



Miskulin is right but MacArthur opted not to argue against his rival's stance on issues pertaining to that ward but opted to play on people's fears and prejudices instead.


Still, MacArthur was able to obtain 40% of the vote, the most of any city council candidate in that ward, pretty much by just relying on scare tactics which showcased racism and xenophobia rather than talking about the issues that impact residents of his ward. Before the election, the RPOA had come out with a pamphlet decrying MacArthur's tactics.

Still, how many undocumented residents in the city have grown more fearful of contacting the police if they are crime victims or witnesses to crimes because of MacArthur's tactics? People have expressed concerns that Guatemalan immigrants have been the targets of some of Riverside's White Supremacist groups, I mean gangs. I would think that the police officers would want to be able to be in positions to help all community members including undocumented immigrants who may need their services.





Portland, Oregon's mayor, Tom Potter condemned raids by ICE agents on a food processing plant according to the Portland Tribune.


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In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Portland Mayor Tom Potter denounced the raids, saying he was "angry" at the mass arrests.

"I certainly understand why federal officials executed criminal warrants against three individuals who stole and sold Social Security numbers," Potter wrote in the statement. "But to go after local workers who are here to support their families while filling the demands of local businesses for their labor is bad policy."

Potter went on to criticize national immigration policy and said no Portland Police Bureau officers participated in the Tuesday morning raids.



Potter, who once headed Portland's Police Bureau, defended his comments criticizing the raid on KATU television.


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For me, this is about a roundup of Portland residents, and I am very concerned about their welfare, about pulling families apart," Potter said Wednesday.

A day earlier, he released a statement saying he was angered by the raids.

"“I certainly understand why federal officials executed criminal warrants against three individuals who stole and sold Social Security numbers. But to go after local workers who are here to support their families while filling the demands of local businesses for their labor is bad policy. It also serves as a reminder of the failure of our national leaders to deliver an immigration policy that is both fair and humane to families and acknowledges the economic realities of our country."




In some cities, political leaders like Potter have taken a stand of sorts against federal actions taken within city limits. In others including several Orange County cities, city governments have passed resolutions authorizing their police departments to become involved in immigration and deportation issues alongside federal agencies including the ICE. Orange County has gone further by using intimidating tactics even against Latinos who are legal residents or citizens, which shows that this issue involves more than simply immigration status.

The State Attorney General's office launched an investigation against congressional candidate Tan Nguyen after his campaign office sent out letters in Spanish to Latinos telling them that if they voted, they could be arrested. Nguyen had been running against Loretta Sanchez, who is the incumbent representative. Earlier in her political career, Sanchez faced off against Bob Dornan in an election where the local Republican Party hired security guards to harass Latino voters at the polling sites.



On their face, these resolutions passed by cities appear to be a direct violation of the Tenth Amendment which separates federal and state powers like proposition 187 failed to pass the muster of several legal challenges on these and Fourteenth Amendment grounds.

For Guzman, the federal government should find him and reunite him with his family, compensating them for the expense they paid in trying to track him down.





Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is also taking heat on the Paris Hilton situation stemming from his decision to release her to house arrest after she had spent 72 hours in jail. His excuse was that she was suffering from some unspecified medical condition, which surprised many defense attorneys who said it's almost unheard of for a jail inmate to be released based on medical reasons.

So now, Baca's taking serious heat as the two-tiered justice system in Los Angeles County gets exposed for what it is, one that favors those who are wealthy and famous.

One of the Los Angeles Times editorial writers, Robert Greene, hammers Baca a little bit for his decision to release Hilton early.


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The Hilton saga has focused attention on whether a judge, who hands down a sentence, or the sheriff, who runs the jails, decides how much time should be served in county jails. It also has underscored the fact that Baca's early-release program means offenders are being let loose well before their sentences run out.

And, in fact, that's why people should be angry: not because Baca lets heiresses out early — he apparently doesn't, according to a Times analysis — but because he does it for so many others who never serve their time for drunk driving, tagging or even some violent crimes.

Baca blames his overcrowded jails on a shortage of funding. The money is controlled by the county supervisors, who blame the sheriff's spending choices. With no one truly in charge, the public blames them all, shrugs and forgets that jail sentences in Los Angeles County seldom bear much resemblance to the time actually served. Until a celebrity is sentenced and released early.

Meanwhile, the sheriff is in a position to thumb his nose at his critics, or at least at the supervisors. He told them that he won't be able to answer their questions on the Hilton matter for two weeks because he will be out of the country on official business. Baca, as usual, may have the last laugh — then fade from public view, at least until the next media darling ends up in his custody.



Hilton did go back to jail, after the judge sent sheriff deputies to her home to pick her up having to cancel a huge party she was planning to celebrate her early release under "house arrest".