Planes, trains and elections, part two
As the second half of the election season seriously gets into gear, there's a lot of reflection on what's transpired so far.
Some are too depressed or too worn out by this year's election antics and are already discussing Election 2008, which will be coming to a voting poll near you, even though the Riverside County Voters' Registrar isn't quite sure what voting system will be put in place since the electronic voting booths have been decertified by the secretary of state's office.
Some Ward Four residents were talking about their councilman's decision to run for the county supervisor position currently held by Bob Buster while many residents in the ward from different neighborhoods including Mission Grove, Orangecrest and Canyon Crest are having difficulty sleeping at night.
I guess there's only so much time that can be spent discussing soundproofing windows and researching which brand of ear plugs or white noise machines are truly the best investments to get through the night. So soon enough, talk then turns to other things like the DHL mess.
To say that the communities affected by the noise that cascades into their lives and their homes on a nightly basis were lied to during the process to bring the world's largest air freight delivery system here, would not be an exaggeration. It would be a tales of deception and lies and in the midst of all the hubris, fingers pointing every which way.
It appears that only the neighbors living in the regions that would be most impacted by the noise and pollution generated by DHL, knew what was coming. And while speaking out against it, most of them were branded as being crazy by those in the city of Riverside including the elected government who supported bringing DHL to Riverside.
But it's perplexing why more elected officials didn't speak about how concerned they were about the potential for noisy nights back then. I mean, you bring airplanes to town, they're going to make noise, right? And if you fly them from sunset to sunrise, then the noise which results is going to impact residents living around the airport.
But Riverside lobbied hard for DHL, and it had to do so to land the planes in Riverside County.
After all, it was a buyer's market and DHL had a choice between Ontario, Riverside and San Bernardino so some hard selling was done by all three cities to lure the company to their airports. At first, it appeared that Riverside had won the price war.
Now, it appears that Riverside in a sense has lost. The flight route maps that had been sold to people in Riverside turned out to be a huge misrepresentation of the truth.
For a while, the powers that be tried to push to have their cake and eat it too by supporting the air freight company as long as it brought its noise and pollution to other areas of Riverside County like Murrieta and other counties altogether like San Bernardino County.
That county said loudly that it had no intention of first losing the DHL contract to Riverside, and then adding insult to injury by serving as a dumping ground for the unpleasant side of DHL which was noisy airplanes that flew by night.
And what do the elected officials of our city going to do about it? Well, one of them is going to run for higher office.
And those on the city council are planning on suing March Joint Powers Authority, March GlobalPort and even DHL a decision that the Press Enterprise's editorial board called a lot of political noise.
Some letter writers to the newspaper's forum page supported the move to sue.
(excerpt)
I strongly support action by the Riverside City Council to enter into a civil lawsuit against the March Joint Powers Authority and/or March GlobalPort on behalf of the injured residents on the basis that we were deceived and defrauded.
The lawsuit should seek either prohibition of nighttime takeoffs and landings and/or monetary compensation in the form of yearly tax credits.
But the obvious problem here is that you have elected officials sitting on the city council and also on the March Joint Powers Authority, so are these elected officials plaintiffs or defendants? It's a little bit of a stretch of the judicial process to believe they could serve as both.
I guess during an election year that's for the voters to decide.
Here's a forum on DHL issues including articles detailing its history in the Inland Empire. Here's another. It's apparently a hot topic in these parts and certain to get hotter next year.
Oh, and here's the March Joint Powers Authority site. Here is the list of members serving on the MJPA commission.
Meanwhile, the choo-choo trains have been utilizing Riverside's streets as their own personal parking lots which is why current councilman and aspiring county supervisor, Frank Schiavone has been pushing an initiative to fine the choo-choo trains belonging to BNSF and Union Pacific if they stop on the tracks and block traffic including emergency vehicles at the tune of $100,000 to stop and an additional $10,000 per minute that they remain parked on the crossing to do, whatever.
The railroads are sure to sue if the measure passes with the voters which is fine with the city. It's too bad that Riversiders for Property Rights was sued by the city and charged for the city's own attorney fees through a nefarious SLAPP suit when it tried to take the issue of eminent domain to the voters "to let them decide" which was the same rationale used by Schiavone and others in defence to criticism by city residents regarding the choo choo train bill.
Not that the stance shown by Schiavone on the choo choo trains isn't righteous, but is it also tactical?
Stay tuned for Election 2008, but alas, first the city must survive Election 2007.
Not to mention that we kind of have to come up with a way to cast votes now that electronic voting has apparently been decertified by the state.
Time's running out, according to the Press Enterprise's Doug Haberman for the public to contribute its ideas on the city's general plan. Now, this plan is over a 20 year period and thus not to be confused with the city's truncated Riverside Renaissance plan.
Back in the day, the newspaper used to be chock full of investigatory stories about City Hall and its operations, but those days are in the past and now the newspaper appears to be content with providing updates on the city's plans for its residents including public service announcements.
For one thing, was there ever a conclusion to the news about corporations being provided free space at City Hall? Supposedly, there was a grand jury investigation about this puzzling turn of events but it looks like it got squashed. One person said it was impossible to even find a copy of that article at the Press Enterprise morgue.
At any rate, civic intrigue aside, here's how it's going to go down if you want to contribute your concerns, ideas, suggestions and thoughts about this ongoing planning process. Hurry up, you have about a month.
(excerpt)
People who want to make comments about the environmental impact report for the city of Riverside's proposed new general plan must do so in writing by Sept. 7.
Copies of the environmental impact report, general plan and related documents are available at all the city's libraries. They are available online at www.riversideca.gov/planning/genplan2025-2.htm.
Comments should be sent to Diane Jenkins, AICP, principal planner, City of Riverside, Planning Division, 3900 Main St., 3rd Floor, Riverside, CA 92522 or e-mailed to djenkins@riversideca.gov.
Some folks have had questions about the officer-involved shooting of Dominique Thompson that happened at the University Village last week.
The department is currently conducting an investigation of that shooting through its Officer-Involved Shooting Team. Its internal affairs division will also be conducting a parallel administrative review.
After the department has completed its own investigation by the investigative team, it will forward its information to the Riverside County District Attorney's office which will then conduct its own review of the shooting.
Despite the recent comments by police department representatives in the Press Enterprise defending the shooting, the actual investigation can take as long as a year before it reaches completion. Hopefully, those who are actually investigating it will be more objective than the department has been about it so far in public.
Some people's reaction to that defence is such that there's been talk of pushing for the city's own form of civilian oversight to investigate all officer-involved shootings. That probably will never happen as the "stake holders" of the city as they have been called, has already attempted to shut down the Community Police Review Commission's investigations that it is empowered to do through the city's charter but it's a reminder of how the department's ability to self-investigate is often called into question when incidents happen and the department's first response is to defend them.
Some individuals asked if the Community Police Review Commission or what's left of it will be doing its own investigation. The answer in terms of its charter powers involving incustody deaths is no, because Thompson and the bystander not to mention the individual(s) in the passing vehicle that were struck by bullets all survived.
However, there was mention in the news coverage that Thompson or his family may file a complaint with the police department regarding the shooting. If so, it would be the first time in the CPRC's history that it's ever been in the situation of receiving a complaint involving a nonfatal officer-involved shooting. Just the thought, no doubt, has the city in a rash. After all, it still hasn't finished "improving" the CPRC despite an 18 month campaign to do so, when the city realized that eliminating the panel was no longer an option after the city's voters went amok at the polls and put it in the city's charter. It will be interesting to see how this situation would unfold if a complaint actually is filed through the CPRC.
After the obligatory five minutes spent blaming Councilman Art Gage for that chain of events because of actions he had attempted against the CPRC, the city really went to work on weakening it and once again, showing what it doesn't do best, which is carrying out the will of the people in this city.
But as tag team, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos have spent much more time dealing with the CPRC in recent months. This is especially interesting in the case of Priamos who in earlier years had this attitude when it came to the CPRC that he just wanted to be left alone. What a difference a year makes.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary Tranbarger survived Current District Attorney Rod Pacheco's pity party and had one of his decisions upheld by a judge in neighboring Orange County, according to the Press Enterprise.
The county is overflowing with over 1,000 felony trials and Pacheco is still peeved at Tranbarger for dismissing two misdemeanor cases some months ago because he was unable to find courtrooms for them in an overcrowded system. Any so-called "historic bias" most likely traces back to that date.
With the special "strike team" set to arrive this month to try cases for the next several months, those cases are still piling up, in part because of changes Pacheco made to how his office handles certain felony cases several years ago. What he apparently forgot is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and that weak link quickly reared its head.
Sitting in the overcrowded courtrooms at the Hall of Justice, felony case after misdemeanor case came up for a motion to dismiss due to running out of time to find a courtroom. Many of these cases had been papered by Pacheco's office in relation to Tranbarger. If the judges don't follow the D.A.'s wishes to the letter, it appears that the D.A.'s office is picking up its toys and taking them home.
In the meantime, cases pile up on top of other cases and then the D.A.'s office turns around and berates the judges for causing all the problems.
Perhaps some day this county's judges will remember exactly who it is who run their courtrooms or someone will give judges and prosecutors boxing gloves so they can decide who runs them through more productive behavior and then go back to doing their jobs which is to run the two-tier justice system in this county. Until then, expect any judge who questions actions taken by Pacheco's office to be hearing civil cases, which isn't entirely bad news given that this side of the judicial process has been virtually shut down for the past several years.
In the current crisis with the courts, this just isn't how you expect grown men(and it's mostly men) behave. After all, none of these individuals ran on the platform to bring the justice system to a grinding halt. But that's pretty much what they all did.
The pollution and working conditions in China mean that its police officers only live an average of 43 years. Heart and lung disease is very high in these police officers. At any given time, over 90% of all the traffic officers are suffering from infections in relation to exposure to the elements which include a lot of pollutants spewed out by vehicle traffic.
Coming up, the latest installment in the CPRC's probe into the Lee Deante Brown shooting and whether or not it will ever issue a public report before this decade winds down to a close.
"If we, the CPRC, accept the officers' account of what transpired on April 3, 2006 and accept the RPD investigation as complete, truthful and objective, then in my view we are a dismal failure and our task to provide the community with transparency, as it relates to RPD policy and practices, has become nothing more than another layer of bureaucratic darkness. Instead of becoming part of the solution, we have become part of the problem."
---To be continued
Some are too depressed or too worn out by this year's election antics and are already discussing Election 2008, which will be coming to a voting poll near you, even though the Riverside County Voters' Registrar isn't quite sure what voting system will be put in place since the electronic voting booths have been decertified by the secretary of state's office.
Some Ward Four residents were talking about their councilman's decision to run for the county supervisor position currently held by Bob Buster while many residents in the ward from different neighborhoods including Mission Grove, Orangecrest and Canyon Crest are having difficulty sleeping at night.
I guess there's only so much time that can be spent discussing soundproofing windows and researching which brand of ear plugs or white noise machines are truly the best investments to get through the night. So soon enough, talk then turns to other things like the DHL mess.
To say that the communities affected by the noise that cascades into their lives and their homes on a nightly basis were lied to during the process to bring the world's largest air freight delivery system here, would not be an exaggeration. It would be a tales of deception and lies and in the midst of all the hubris, fingers pointing every which way.
It appears that only the neighbors living in the regions that would be most impacted by the noise and pollution generated by DHL, knew what was coming. And while speaking out against it, most of them were branded as being crazy by those in the city of Riverside including the elected government who supported bringing DHL to Riverside.
But it's perplexing why more elected officials didn't speak about how concerned they were about the potential for noisy nights back then. I mean, you bring airplanes to town, they're going to make noise, right? And if you fly them from sunset to sunrise, then the noise which results is going to impact residents living around the airport.
But Riverside lobbied hard for DHL, and it had to do so to land the planes in Riverside County.
After all, it was a buyer's market and DHL had a choice between Ontario, Riverside and San Bernardino so some hard selling was done by all three cities to lure the company to their airports. At first, it appeared that Riverside had won the price war.
Now, it appears that Riverside in a sense has lost. The flight route maps that had been sold to people in Riverside turned out to be a huge misrepresentation of the truth.
For a while, the powers that be tried to push to have their cake and eat it too by supporting the air freight company as long as it brought its noise and pollution to other areas of Riverside County like Murrieta and other counties altogether like San Bernardino County.
That county said loudly that it had no intention of first losing the DHL contract to Riverside, and then adding insult to injury by serving as a dumping ground for the unpleasant side of DHL which was noisy airplanes that flew by night.
And what do the elected officials of our city going to do about it? Well, one of them is going to run for higher office.
And those on the city council are planning on suing March Joint Powers Authority, March GlobalPort and even DHL a decision that the Press Enterprise's editorial board called a lot of political noise.
Some letter writers to the newspaper's forum page supported the move to sue.
(excerpt)
I strongly support action by the Riverside City Council to enter into a civil lawsuit against the March Joint Powers Authority and/or March GlobalPort on behalf of the injured residents on the basis that we were deceived and defrauded.
The lawsuit should seek either prohibition of nighttime takeoffs and landings and/or monetary compensation in the form of yearly tax credits.
But the obvious problem here is that you have elected officials sitting on the city council and also on the March Joint Powers Authority, so are these elected officials plaintiffs or defendants? It's a little bit of a stretch of the judicial process to believe they could serve as both.
I guess during an election year that's for the voters to decide.
Here's a forum on DHL issues including articles detailing its history in the Inland Empire. Here's another. It's apparently a hot topic in these parts and certain to get hotter next year.
Oh, and here's the March Joint Powers Authority site. Here is the list of members serving on the MJPA commission.
Meanwhile, the choo-choo trains have been utilizing Riverside's streets as their own personal parking lots which is why current councilman and aspiring county supervisor, Frank Schiavone has been pushing an initiative to fine the choo-choo trains belonging to BNSF and Union Pacific if they stop on the tracks and block traffic including emergency vehicles at the tune of $100,000 to stop and an additional $10,000 per minute that they remain parked on the crossing to do, whatever.
The railroads are sure to sue if the measure passes with the voters which is fine with the city. It's too bad that Riversiders for Property Rights was sued by the city and charged for the city's own attorney fees through a nefarious SLAPP suit when it tried to take the issue of eminent domain to the voters "to let them decide" which was the same rationale used by Schiavone and others in defence to criticism by city residents regarding the choo choo train bill.
Not that the stance shown by Schiavone on the choo choo trains isn't righteous, but is it also tactical?
Stay tuned for Election 2008, but alas, first the city must survive Election 2007.
Not to mention that we kind of have to come up with a way to cast votes now that electronic voting has apparently been decertified by the state.
Time's running out, according to the Press Enterprise's Doug Haberman for the public to contribute its ideas on the city's general plan. Now, this plan is over a 20 year period and thus not to be confused with the city's truncated Riverside Renaissance plan.
Back in the day, the newspaper used to be chock full of investigatory stories about City Hall and its operations, but those days are in the past and now the newspaper appears to be content with providing updates on the city's plans for its residents including public service announcements.
For one thing, was there ever a conclusion to the news about corporations being provided free space at City Hall? Supposedly, there was a grand jury investigation about this puzzling turn of events but it looks like it got squashed. One person said it was impossible to even find a copy of that article at the Press Enterprise morgue.
At any rate, civic intrigue aside, here's how it's going to go down if you want to contribute your concerns, ideas, suggestions and thoughts about this ongoing planning process. Hurry up, you have about a month.
(excerpt)
People who want to make comments about the environmental impact report for the city of Riverside's proposed new general plan must do so in writing by Sept. 7.
Copies of the environmental impact report, general plan and related documents are available at all the city's libraries. They are available online at www.riversideca.gov/planning/genplan2025-2.htm.
Comments should be sent to Diane Jenkins, AICP, principal planner, City of Riverside, Planning Division, 3900 Main St., 3rd Floor, Riverside, CA 92522 or e-mailed to djenkins@riversideca.gov.
Some folks have had questions about the officer-involved shooting of Dominique Thompson that happened at the University Village last week.
The department is currently conducting an investigation of that shooting through its Officer-Involved Shooting Team. Its internal affairs division will also be conducting a parallel administrative review.
After the department has completed its own investigation by the investigative team, it will forward its information to the Riverside County District Attorney's office which will then conduct its own review of the shooting.
Despite the recent comments by police department representatives in the Press Enterprise defending the shooting, the actual investigation can take as long as a year before it reaches completion. Hopefully, those who are actually investigating it will be more objective than the department has been about it so far in public.
Some people's reaction to that defence is such that there's been talk of pushing for the city's own form of civilian oversight to investigate all officer-involved shootings. That probably will never happen as the "stake holders" of the city as they have been called, has already attempted to shut down the Community Police Review Commission's investigations that it is empowered to do through the city's charter but it's a reminder of how the department's ability to self-investigate is often called into question when incidents happen and the department's first response is to defend them.
Some individuals asked if the Community Police Review Commission or what's left of it will be doing its own investigation. The answer in terms of its charter powers involving incustody deaths is no, because Thompson and the bystander not to mention the individual(s) in the passing vehicle that were struck by bullets all survived.
However, there was mention in the news coverage that Thompson or his family may file a complaint with the police department regarding the shooting. If so, it would be the first time in the CPRC's history that it's ever been in the situation of receiving a complaint involving a nonfatal officer-involved shooting. Just the thought, no doubt, has the city in a rash. After all, it still hasn't finished "improving" the CPRC despite an 18 month campaign to do so, when the city realized that eliminating the panel was no longer an option after the city's voters went amok at the polls and put it in the city's charter. It will be interesting to see how this situation would unfold if a complaint actually is filed through the CPRC.
After the obligatory five minutes spent blaming Councilman Art Gage for that chain of events because of actions he had attempted against the CPRC, the city really went to work on weakening it and once again, showing what it doesn't do best, which is carrying out the will of the people in this city.
But as tag team, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and City Attorney Gregory Priamos have spent much more time dealing with the CPRC in recent months. This is especially interesting in the case of Priamos who in earlier years had this attitude when it came to the CPRC that he just wanted to be left alone. What a difference a year makes.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary Tranbarger survived Current District Attorney Rod Pacheco's pity party and had one of his decisions upheld by a judge in neighboring Orange County, according to the Press Enterprise.
The county is overflowing with over 1,000 felony trials and Pacheco is still peeved at Tranbarger for dismissing two misdemeanor cases some months ago because he was unable to find courtrooms for them in an overcrowded system. Any so-called "historic bias" most likely traces back to that date.
With the special "strike team" set to arrive this month to try cases for the next several months, those cases are still piling up, in part because of changes Pacheco made to how his office handles certain felony cases several years ago. What he apparently forgot is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and that weak link quickly reared its head.
Sitting in the overcrowded courtrooms at the Hall of Justice, felony case after misdemeanor case came up for a motion to dismiss due to running out of time to find a courtroom. Many of these cases had been papered by Pacheco's office in relation to Tranbarger. If the judges don't follow the D.A.'s wishes to the letter, it appears that the D.A.'s office is picking up its toys and taking them home.
In the meantime, cases pile up on top of other cases and then the D.A.'s office turns around and berates the judges for causing all the problems.
Perhaps some day this county's judges will remember exactly who it is who run their courtrooms or someone will give judges and prosecutors boxing gloves so they can decide who runs them through more productive behavior and then go back to doing their jobs which is to run the two-tier justice system in this county. Until then, expect any judge who questions actions taken by Pacheco's office to be hearing civil cases, which isn't entirely bad news given that this side of the judicial process has been virtually shut down for the past several years.
In the current crisis with the courts, this just isn't how you expect grown men(and it's mostly men) behave. After all, none of these individuals ran on the platform to bring the justice system to a grinding halt. But that's pretty much what they all did.
The pollution and working conditions in China mean that its police officers only live an average of 43 years. Heart and lung disease is very high in these police officers. At any given time, over 90% of all the traffic officers are suffering from infections in relation to exposure to the elements which include a lot of pollutants spewed out by vehicle traffic.
Coming up, the latest installment in the CPRC's probe into the Lee Deante Brown shooting and whether or not it will ever issue a public report before this decade winds down to a close.
"If we, the CPRC, accept the officers' account of what transpired on April 3, 2006 and accept the RPD investigation as complete, truthful and objective, then in my view we are a dismal failure and our task to provide the community with transparency, as it relates to RPD policy and practices, has become nothing more than another layer of bureaucratic darkness. Instead of becoming part of the solution, we have become part of the problem."
---To be continued
Labels: business as usual, City elections, CPRC vs the city, officer-involved shootings
posted by Five Before Midnight | 4:13 PM
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