Election 2007: Ethics and Eminent Domain

The latest news in Riverside this week that people have been talking about is that Ward One candidate Mike Gardner who is facing off against incumbent, Dom Betro this November has reexamined his position on the use of eminent domain to benefit private developers and he has decided the following.


(excerpt)



This is a revised statement of my position. Discussions with many people during the campaign have convinced me that it is simply wrong for government to take private property from one person and sell it to another private owner. My revised position is as follows:

I do not believe government should take private property from one owner and make it available to another private owner. As your Council member I will oppose the use of eminent domain for development projects.

Revised July 16, 2007




That's a bit of a shift for Gardner who previously has said that he supported this use of eminent domain in certain circumstances when the owner isn't making full use of the property. However, that's a very tricky criterion to use because the city's been throwing those terms and the use of one of its favorite terms of all, "blight", to justify taking properties on Market Street through threat of eminent domain.

And for those who don't know because some do, eminent domain is a racial issue. It's certainly a racial issue in Riverside, given that a disproportionate number of businesses impacted have been owned by Asian-Americans and Latinos but there were barbershops and beauty shops owned by African-Americans particularly on University Avenue that have disappeared as well. Quite a few businesses have been owned by immigrants.

Not that White business owners haven't been impacted but when you see disproportionate representation among people of color being adversely impacted in a situation, then you have to examine its racial aspects. And in the downtown area, that's fairly apparent.

If you go back to the days of Gram's Barbecue which used to sit where Mario's Place sits today and the Tamale Factory which was once closer to City Hall, even then the city would put pressure on businesses owned by African-Americans and Latinos to move out of buildings the city wanted to "purchase" for private developers. If it weren't for outcry from patrons at both of these restaurants, both of them would have been left to fend for themselves. These businesses are owned by very nice people and they know that their customers fully support their efforts and their businesses.

But if you listen to the discussion involving the downtown these days, it's all about catering to a crowd that's White and more affluent. It's not about families with little kids or God forbid, teenagers. It's about wine tastings, live theater(which charges more per ticket than their movie counterparts do) and festivals which cater to the more affluent crowd, which is pretty sad considering that if the downtown part of Riverside truly is the center of its universe, then it should be accessible and enjoyed by everyone.

Even the mixed used housing is geared towards a Whiter, more affluent crowd considering the prices mentioned for this "affordable" housing. Only it's not specifically geared for this city's residents but the Whites who are currently fleeing an Orange County that's becoming more racially diverse. There's a name for what the city's doing and it's called gentrification. But you bring up the G-word at a community forum and inadvertently, someone in a suit, usually one of the city's high-priced development consultants will essentially wave their hands, saying don't look behind the curtain.

One of the biggest areas where you'll see gentrification in the next five years will be the Eastside and University(which is in the process of gentrification) neighborhoods. Eminent domain will be a tool in this process that the city will likely use, although the threat of it seems to be doing the trick.

Downtown is a great place for museums, but what is really needed is a kids' museum. Riverside once had a good one at the corner of Main and University in the same historic building which once housed the Tamale Factory, but that museum is now located in Hemet. A larger library is needed as well with more parking wherever they put it.

And they should leave the old trees that were mentioned as being on the chopping block at posters displayed by several downtown businesses, in place.

Some people fear that the only African-Americans who will be allowed downtown in Riverside will be the statues like Martin Luther King, jr. that have been erected downtown so that the city can both honor civil rights heroes like him and his colleague Mahatma Gandhi and feel better about themselves. Community members had hoped that they would serve as moral consciences over City Hall but has that been working?

But then it's the image of King, Jr. and Gandhi in the town square not their messages which appears to matter much more.

Ask that question while you ask how many Black and Latino employees in management positions in this city including the police department have been placed with termination, demotions, "resignations" or threatened with any of these things.

After all, when King, jr.'s daughter, Yolanda, died, Mayor Ron Loveridge's statement on the matter was that she had said at the statue's unveiling that this rendition of her father was the best one she had seen.




The ethics process was discussed by two members of Riverside's Governmental Affairs Committee and it provided an interesting dynamic in how the city's political situation actually works. Members of the Group including its chair, Jennifer Vaughn-Blakely came in to offer a list of suggestions to Councilmen Frank Schiavone who chairs the committee and Dom Betro.


I'm not sure where the third member, Councilman Ed Adkison was, but the behavior by the two city councilmen was a study in contrasts yet also clearly an example of two men who probably could finish each others' sentences. But what made the meeting the most interesting was that it was one of those occasions where other people can be more effective at making your point on an issue than you can and that actions truly speak more loudly than words.

There's no current acronym for this duo, who many said have replaced "Fred" in the local political lexicon.

Schiavone chaired the meeting as he has the past couple, almost as if he's figured out at last how he wants to get business done. At the Governmental Affairs meetings these days, there are two Schiavones. If you say something that agrees with his position, then he will give you all the time that you need to get your point across and never interrupt you.

If you disagree with him or he assumes that you will, he'll either skip over you in public comment or he will continuously interrupt you and/or throw an army of strawmen arguments at you before you've gotten one sentence out. The intent is to drown you out or to discourage people from attending meetings. This is simply behavior taken from how the city council meetings run these days into the subcommittees, but if you ever want to see how a city council member will serve as mayor, just watch how he or she chairs his or her subcommittee meetings.

Here's a project. Attend all the city council subcommittee meetings, watch how they are chaired and you'll see who will make a good mayor and who would not.

Schiavone's a pretty smart guy and he has positive qualities which wouldn't make him bad mayor material, but unfortunately they were not on display yesterday. And his diatribe about knowing that the voters supported the Community Police Review Commission as a criticism against me making that statement when I hadn't even done so, was a bit bizarre.

But the lesson that meeting taught is that the concerns that people have raised(and Schiavone demanded I list them at the meeting during one of his interruptions) may be valid. Just like people doubt police departments can investigate and police themselves, people also extend that skepticism to elected officials and the behavior at yesterday's meeting may validate that concern.

Schiavone insisted that none of his ward's residents have complained about the current ethics process. The problem which even he admitted to later on in the meeting is that most people in all the wards probably don't know much about it, let alone how it's been implemented since voters passed the initiative which created it in 2004.

It does look like city residents have taken their concerns on a lot of civic issues including city council decorum on the dais to the polls. Schiavone and other council members have blamed the four runoffs in November on the fact that there were multiple candidates in every race, but I seem to recall the case of a certain county supervisor who several years ago won his election outright despite facing three or more rivals.

If you're very popular, you get in the first time around. If you're less than that, you don't.

And it was interesting to see Betro's response during the discussion to a list of pretty good suggestions by Vaughn-Blakely and other members of the Group in how similar it was to excuses given by law enforcement officers who are against civilian oversight. Betro, like police officers, said that there were already oversight mechanisms in place and along with Schiavone, he disagreed that an outside committee consisting of chairs of the city's boards and commissions was needed to hear ethics complaints.

Of course, Betro has received two out of three of the complaints filed so far, including one that went to an actual hearing, if it could be called one.

The ethics process looks good on paper, but then that's all it is supposed to do, look good. If you believe that a serious violation of the ethics code has been committed by an elected official, then you're probably better off to skip this process altogether and just file a complaint with the county grand jury.

If it's related to a political campaign, then file it with the state's fair political practices division or the secretary of state's office.

The process or report may or may not be going back to the city council in August. The two councilmen were in such a hurry to get out of there, I'm not sure. That's also a mirror image of city council meetings these days.








Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise is tackling the ongoing situation of the downtown public library again.

He also challenges the city in terms of why it's taking away parking slots when there's a limited number of them already and why it wants to charge city residents to pay for parking while they enjoy the library and the public museum downtown.


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But moving the library out of downtown or, better yet, cratering it seems to be a body without legs. Mission Inn owner Duane Roberts, who could probably spin the nearby library land into gold, began his letter, "Let the library stay." (And, lo, the library stayed.)

Which brings us back to the elephant. The City Council just approved a downtown 10-story office building that ordinarily would have needed 1,048 parking spaces. The council said the builder only had to provide 729 -- and he'll buy most of those from a recently opened city garage, taking 400 public spaces out of circulation.

Having been so understanding to a builder, the city strikes me as touchy-feely sensitive enough to understand why library and museum customers might resent being ordered to PAY HERE before walking into a place they PAID HERE to build in the first place.

I hope the whoozwhooz will realize that free parking to a city library is like fries to a burger. Those who insist Riverside would be better off with a (reheated) Downtown Burger had best be thinking of ways to cook up lots of those fries.






The professional future of Riverside County Superior Court judge, Robert G. Spitzer will be decided during the final hearing of his case which will be heard on Aug. 29, according to this article in the Press Enterprise.


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A hearing by three out-of-county judges was held in Riverside in January. A follow-up hearing was held in March in Sacramento, and the judges issued their report on Spitzer in April.

In the most serious conclusion, the judges said Spitzer acted with "willful misconduct" when he contacted the mother of a murder victim outside of the presence of defense and prosecution attorneys in the murder case.

In papers filed after the judges' report, Spitzer's attorneys said the jurist was remorseful and had reformed the obsessive habits that had slowed down his court. None of Spitzer's actions was done for personal gain, they said.





I received an "apology" of sorts from the faux me from the faux Yahoo email account taken out in my name. Seriously, this email didn't read as being any less disturbing than his or her first one.




I am writing to apologize for my previous letter. I'm most sorry that you were concerned that it was some sort of threat or harassment. It was not intended that way at all.
By choosing an address like yours and writing that note, I was simply trying to suggest that you look within yourself to learn why you might be so negative about so many things. I meant you no harm, and my letter was not well written therefore the intended message was not perceived.
No further messages will be sent from this address, as I will close it and will not re-open.
Again, I am very sorry. I wish you happyness and peace.




Yeah, and I have some beachfront property I'd like to show you in Nebraska.




The origin for this email is not an IP address registered to the city of Riverside. The ISP is owned by Charter Communications and the server is based either in Bloomington, California or San Bernardino.