Election 2007: Bait and Switch?

"It's just you and your fellow bloggers."





---Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson when listing individuals concerned about two consent calendar items.












It's embarrassing to say this, but Election 2007 still lingers on with two city council elections in Riverside left undecided. Councilman Dom Betro of Ward One currently leads by one vote over Mike Gardner and Ward Seven Councilman Steve Adams still leads by 23 votes over Terry Frizzel. Hopefully, the election results will be finalized by the end of the year. The official word is that it will take until Friday to find out the winners of those two wards because it takes long to verify and count provisional ballots, a process that no doubt is very interesting with this election being no exception.

These ballots undergo greater scrutiny before a decision is made to count them along with the other ballots. This is important to do up to a point, because it helps insure a democratic process. Hopefully, this is a process with accountability and transparency in Riverside like it should have everywhere else because that promotes democracy as well. A person's vote is a voice for that person and should be treated with dignity, integrity and respect by all governing agencies and accountability mechanisms that are in place to ensure a just process.

Often this does mean a longer wait for the final results and more patient even in difficult times like these, with an election stretching into its second week with the outcomes of two races unresolved. So be patient, sit on your hands a while longer and await the results with 300,000 other people.


Have anything to say about Election 2007? Go here. Some Riversiders also wrote on the issue here.




City council members kept busy in the meantime entertaining the city residents with a public hearing on the 2025 General Plan during an early afternoon hour, albeit without snacks and drinks. The Rolodex must have been spinning over the holiday weekend because the "who's who when the whos are busy" crowd appeared to testify before the city council and a court reporter about their feelings towards the "living" document that if passed, will guide the development of Riverside for almost 20 years. But there was some interesting input at those meetings.



The city council included in its plan, the continuation of the Overlook street, which residents of both Alessandrio Heights and Casa Blanca had fought years ago. Concern was addressed at where the 20,000-30,000 vehicles would be going. No one seems to know, but while it's included in the general plan, it's on hold until the city comes up with a plan on what to do past Washington Street. Some individuals have long feared that the city would target at least half a dozen homes and some businesses on Madison in Casa Blanca rather than inconvenience the Auto Center on Adams with more traffic. Aparently, this traffic will be piling onto the already densely packed 91 freeway that operates at a crawl during peak commuting hours these days.

Several said that the fact that Alessandrio Heights, the city's wealthiest neighborhood was directly in the path and also would receive a large proportion of the traffic, that would prevent any realization of a plan which would target owner-occupied properties in the future. As one individual told me, it's the people with the most money who have the most say in this city.

One individual standing in the back of the chambers had an excellent plan which if implemented could address this problem with minimal impact on home owners. But he couldn't suggest it because he was a city employee.

Another poor gentleman asked for 45 seconds and Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison who mercifully left his gavel elsewhere said no. That's right after the city council praised itself for allowing public input to this process, which it has although most of that hasn't involved the city council. The meetings have been well-attended, with concerns raised and ideas proposed.


After Adkison praised the city council including himself, it voted to approve the general plan, according to the Press Enterprise.


Public opinion was mixed.


(excerpt)


Arlington High School senior Matthew Taylor, 17, said he has a strong interest in urban planning and liked the array of housing options envisioned, among other elements.

"I hope to see Riverside become a place to come to" and not just a place in which to start life, he said.

Juliann Allison, associate director of the Center for Sustainable Suburban Development at UC Riverside, said center officials believe the general plan will preserve residents' quality of life in the face of growth.

Mary Humboldt, who lives on Dufferin Avenue in the agricultural greenbelt, said the plan would allow Riverside to grow too big. Planning Director Ken Gutierrez said projections show as many as 85,000 more residents by 2025.

"Growth is not inevitable, it is either encouraged or discouraged," Humboldt said. "I urge you to scale this plan back."



Later at the evening session, two items involving code compliance ordinances were the focus of much concern for community residents in different areas of the city. Individuals who had emailed or phoned city councilmen, Andrew Melendrez and Art Gage said they were told by these two individuals that they would pull the item from the consent calendar for public discussion.



But when the moment came to do so, neither did. Silence and the word, "pass" repeated over and over once again ruled the dais as it usually does at city council meetings.





What happened? Why did both of them decide not to pull the items? You'll have to ask them. Different theories abounded including that the councilmen didn't want to risk alienating others on the dais who strongly supported agenda item #14. Item #15 was pulled before the meeting begun and was referred to Governmental Affairs where one councilman predicted it would languish as many things often do in committee and never be heard of or from again.

Still, given that it's been scheduled during an upcoming session of this committee's meeting with Melendrez substituting in for an outgoing Adkison, it looks like if it's probably not going to get lost.





Still, representatives from at least two neighborhood associations came down to city council to speak on these issues including many I met for the first time last night. City Manager Brad Hudson had said they were my "fellow bloggers" but if they do blog, I'm not aware of it and I thank Hudson for the heads up as it is very sweet of him.


Special concern was addressed at agenda item #14 which included among its provisions, the ability for the city to place liens on people's homes in order to "collect" on code violation fines which the city could charge $1,000 per violation per day and up to $100,000. In addition, there was text that stated that even the same violation could become an additional new violation each day it existed without being corrected, which would add to the cost. These fines, which people called excessive, would break the backs of poor families, those living on limited income and people paying lower property taxes under Proposition 13 classification according to several people who spoke before the city council.

The concern among residents attending the meeting and those who couldn't was that the city could then collect on the liens once they reached to a certain point and then go to court and seize the homes without having to utilize the Eminent Domain process. Why was this important? Because the city council vowed it had not and would never seize a owner-occupied, single family home through Eminent Domain to hand it off to a private developer. It never said anything about using other tools to do so.


Some residents said they felt that the older houses subject to Proposition 13 were the most at risk. Others predicted that the first houses to be subjected to this “restructuring” and “reorganization” of the municipal codes governing code compliance would be older houses on bigger lots in the La Sierra neighborhoods.

Time will of course tell the tale as it often does through the city council's actions. For those who poo-pooh such contentions, time will tell.

Anyway, city residents concerned about the plan were confident that the councilmen would do what they had reassured them they would do which was pull the item for discussion, only they didn't. At least, not with item #14, which was the heavy hitter of the duo and the real prize for the city council, which through its text gives the body another means to possibly obtain residential properties while not technically breaking its earlier vow not to seize homes through Eminent Domain.



What played itself during the meeting was what some people who attended, called a "bait and switch". Item #15 which seemed more of a symbolic response to the massive number of foreclosures in this city was dangled as the agenda item. Consequently, the council members chose to make that the focus not to mention it allowed two city council members to enjoy tit for tat for perhaps the last time, due to the outcome of the races in Election 2007 that were already decided.

Focus on the lessor item which was to declare bank-owned foreclosed properties(which are and will continue to spring up all over the landscape) and slip the really pressing item on through.




Here's a potpourri of other items passed by city councils both in Riverside and in Moreno Valley.



The Riverside Public Utilities Division is reconsidering its rate hikes, according to the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)


Riverside Public Utilities has proposed a three-year increase that would raise residential electric bills in winter months and summer months -- but the summer increase wouldn't be nearly as high as it was in the repealed rate increase.

The proposal comes to the Board of Public Utilities at 6:30 p.m. Thursday for a public hearing. If the board approves it, the council is expected to vote on upholding or rejecting the increase on Dec. 4.

Its effect would be that all residential customers would have a "modified level pay plan," utility General Manager Dave Wright said.

There would be spikes in July, August and September, especially compared to the rest of the year but not as dramatic a difference as before, he said.

Both residential and business customers would also have to pay a flat monthly "reliability charge" that, by the third year, would range from $10 to $60 for residential customers and from $60 to $1,100 for business customers.

Only about 300 business customers -- the largest users -- would pay the highest fee and about 9,000 businesses would pay the lowest fee, Wright said.

Cindy Roth, president of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, said the chamber has not taken a position on the flat fee.

"If it's fair, that's all we ask for," she said. "We need to have reliable power."





In other local news, Riverside city officials vowed to block DHL from adding an international hub to its services as long as its planes are keeping city residents up at night, according to the Press Enterprise.

The cankerous marriage of convenience between the two entities continues as city residents are caught in the middle of a bunch of noise pollution without a pair of earplugs in sight. The prospect of adding international flights to the already congested "red eye" schedule utilized by DHL is beyond the ability or willingness of most of the members of the March Joint Powers Commission to contemplate.


(excerpt)


Riverside Councilman Frank Schiavone, also a member of the March Joint Powers Commission, said there have been regional economic benefits from the DHL hub.

"The question is whether it's worth the negative impacts on the neighborhoods," Schiavone said, adding that he was not interested in adding new DHL flights until the noise problems are solved.

Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster, the only member on the March commission in 2004 to oppose the zoning change that paved the way for the DHL hub, said the negative impacts outweigh any economic benefit.

In neighborhoods underneath the 75-decibel noise level of the nighttime flight path of DHL, Buster said the assessed valuation of properties is $6.7 billion compared with the $28 million assessed valuation of the DHL project by the assessor.

"If you start getting a blighted area because of the constant noise, there is a heavy public cost to that. The size is so huge in dollar terms and in land area, we can't mitigate it by buying out homes or putting in sound installation," Buster said.



Residents who have a misfortune of living beneath the fluctuating flight path have said that the 12:30 a.m. DHL fight is particularly lovely this time of year, blasting a cacophony of noise in the still air of an autumn morning. But also totally confused at this point must be DHL which had the red carpet unfurled to greet it then promptly had it yanked right out from under it.

Does the public get to respond? Maybe. Maybe not. If you are impacted and don't want more noise pollution, call the MJAP at 547-7000 or visit its Web site here.





The Fontana Police Department's next chief will come from inside the organization. So promises the city manager's office which is responsible for hiring a replacement for the retiring Larry Clark.


(excerpt)


"It was a closed recruitment -- only within the city," said Annette Henckel, a senior human resources analyst for the city. "That's a common practice ... in the Police Department. We always promote from within ... from corporal all the way to chief."

Clark and his predecessor, Frank Scialdone, fit that mold. Scialdone, now a Fontana councilman, spent his 31-year career with the Police Department, working his way up the ranks from rookie officer in 1973 to his retirement as chief in 2004.
"We've always had a good applicant pool so we never had the need to go outside," Henckel said.





The body of Kathleen Savio, the third wife of Bolingbrook Police Department Sgt. Drew Peterson, has been exhumed according to the Associated Press.


(excerpt)




Savio, who was found dead in her bathtub in 2004, was the third wife of Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson. State's Attorney James Glasgow has said evidence suggests that someone killed Savio and tried to make it look like an accident.

Investigators reopened the case into her death after Stacy Peterson, Peterson's fourth wife, disappeared last month. Authorities are hoping Savio's exhumed body can offer clues to how she died.

A coroner's jury ruled Savio's death an accident, even though there was no water in the bathtub where the 40-year-old's body was found face-down, her hair soaked in blood from a head wound. Investigators theorized the water had drained.

According to court records, Savio had gotten an order of protection in 2002, alleging a pattern of physical abuse and threats by Peterson.

Peterson's current wife, Stacy, was last seen Oct. 28 and state Police Capt. Carl Dobrich has said her husband is "clearly" a suspect. He said the case is now a potential homicide investigation.

According to FOX-News, a neighbor of Stacey Peterson filed a police report against her husband and said she observed some strange behavior in the week before Stacey Peterson's disappearance.


(excerpt)


’He's all packed up and I want him to go,’" Stacy Peterson reportedly said, according to neighbor Sharon Bychowski. Six boxes allegedly filled with Drew Peterson’s belongings sat in the couple’s open garage, Bychowski said.

A close friend and next-door neighbor of Stacy and Drew Peterson, Bychowski said she filed a police report on Thursday after Drew Peterson showed up on her lawn at 11 p.m. and began shouting her name: "'Come here, Sharon. … I want you.’"

Bychowski, who at times baby-sits the Petersons’ two children and took them trick-or-treating this year, said she is staying in a hotel under a fictitious name to avoid the area and is contemplating seeking an order of protection against the suspended Bolingbrook, Ill., police sergeant. On Friday he was named a suspect in Stacy Peterson’s disappearance.



Drew Peterson, who has been suspended from the force pending an internal investigation, told investigators that Stacey had a habit of disappearing but her family disagreed.


(excerpt, FOX News)


Drew Peterson maintains that Stacy Ann is "where she wants to be." When asked if she removed anything from the house before leaving, he told FOX News she took cash, a passport and a bikini.

Drew Peterson is on paid leave from the force but still carrying his badge and gun. He was fired from the department more than 20 years ago after being found guilty by the village board of police and fire commissioners of disobedience, conducting a self-assigned investigation, failure to report a bribe immediately and official misconduct, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Just two months before, he had been indicted on charges of official misconduct and failure to report a bribe. Officials at the time said he allegedly had solicited drugs in exchange for information.



More information on his employment history is here.



The Chicago Sun-Times has a lot of coverage on both Stacey Peterson's disappearance and Savio's death.


The Editorial Board is telling detectives to get a clue about both incidents, but addresses more closely the mysterious death of Savio, who apparently along with leaving two children behind left an estate worth $1.6 million including a hefty insurance policy. The article also mentioned that Drew Peterson had been at her house when her body was discovered after allegedly having drowned in her own bathtub.


(excerpt)


In the face of all these obvious indicators that Kathleen's death may not have been accidental, the six-person coroner's jury in 2004 ruled it was. Police and prosecutors went about their business and, unhappily for Stacy, Drew Peterson went about his. Until State's Attorney James Glasgow, who wasn't in office when Kathleen died, announced he was reviewing her death.

Maybe Drew Peterson will be cleared of foul play relating to Stacy's disappearance. Maybe she'll re-emerge and they'll live happily ever after.

But more likely, something terrible has happened to Stacy, just as something terrible happened to Kathleen. If there was no doubt in Glasgow's mind that her death wasn't accidental, as he said last week, perhaps other Will County cases need to be re-investigated. Even if those cases didn't make it onto Fox News or CNN.



A forensic pathologist said that reexamining Savio's body probably won't reveal much about how she died.


Still, two families united by fear, uncertainty and questions that perhaps only one person can answer, wait.


Peterson gave this exclusive interview to MSNBC.


(excerpt)


"If you were me, or if you were the average citizen on the street who's read about this case or seen it on TV, would you think you're guilty?" Lauer asked.

"Based on the media coverage, I'm as guilty as they come," Drew Peterson said.

"And yet you still maintain there is no guilt," Lauer added. "You have no connection to any of these situations?"

"I think my silence has painted me guilty in the media," Drew Peterson said.

He asked reporters to, "leave my family alone."

Drew Peterson said Stacy would ask for a divorce on a regular basis "based on her menstrual cycle" after her sister died.



Peterson commented on the circumstances involving the death of Savio.


(excerpt)


Drew Peterson told Lauer he was one of the first people to discover the body of Savio in her bathub. He said at the time he was the watch commander of their town when it happened and that he met with Savio's best friend because he hadn't seen Savio for several days.

Drew Peterson said the two called a locksmith to go into the house, but that he remained outside when the locksmith arrived. Lauer asked Drew Peterson why he didn't enter the house, to which he said that Savio was always accusing him of things and that she didn't want him in the house because she thought he would steal something.

"When I heard screaming, I went inside and she was dead in the bathtub," Drew Peterson said. "I felt a pulse -- I don't know if she was dead or alive. So I felt her pulse, and being a policeman, I didn't want to touch anything."









Sitting down for a face-to-face meeting in San Antonio are local activists and Police Chief William McManus according to the San Antonio Express-News.


There's been much contention between the two factions after McManus sharply criticized his critics in public. He introduced him to representatives of the Police Executive Research Forum, who will be conducting a study of the department's operations and possibly offer recommendations to improve them particularly when it comes to how the deparment's officers use force.


(excerpt)


The coalition argues the city's police union wields too much control over the Citizens Advisory Action Board, the panel charged with hearing grievances against officers. Coalition members say seven of the 11 members of the board are police officers and the other four are civilians chosen with the blessing of the union, the San Antonio Police Officers Association.

"It's like the fox guarding the henhouse," said Tommy "T.C." Calvert, the coalition's acting chairman.

Calvert and other coalition leaders said until city leaders acknowledge such a board isn't capable of effectively policing its own affairs and institute a true public oversight committee to investigate rogue officers, problems for the department will continue.

McManus didn't discuss any details as he left Monday night's meeting, saying it was merely an introductory meeting for the coalition and administrators with the Police Executive Research Forum.

"I think we accomplished what we set out to accomplish: to hear initial concerns," the chief said. "We're trying to hear every base."


Community members including the coalition's chairman, Tommy "T.C." Calvert were more skeptical after they left the meeting than they were going in.



(excerpt)



But Calvert said the coalition doesn't believe the PERF study will lead to any substantial changes.

"What PERF comes up with is basically not going to satisfy anybody," he said. "It's going to be a whitewash."

Mario Salas, a former city councilman, said the coalition will continue to put together a formal complaint to file with the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging residents' civil rights are being violated.

"I think what we said tonight did leave them with an impact that they will have to address," Salas said.


New York City Police Department officers fired 20 bullets at a mentally ill teenager armed with a hairbrush according to the Associated Press.

(excerpt)


Though the mother told a captain at the scene that her 18-year-old son didn't have a gun and one wasn't recovered, police officials said Khiel Coppin gave five officers no choice but to open fire after he suddenly charged them outside his mother's home with a black object in his hand.

The object turned out to be a hairbrush.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the teenager pointed the brush at officers "as if he were aiming a gun," and repeatedly ignored repeated orders to "stop, show his hands and get on the ground."

He said officers reasonably believed the victim was about to use deadly force and that their response appeared to be within NYPD guidelines.

Kelly said that Coppin also was brandishing a pair of knives when officers first arrived, at one point taunting police by saying, ``Come get me. I have a gun. Let's do this."

The family of of the victim denounced the police department for ruling too quickly that the officers were justified in their response. "Nobody but Houdini himself could have decided that in 24 hours," family lawyer Paul Wooten said.

The incident was outlined by the New York Daily News.

The family believes that the police didn’t have to shoot the teenager. The police department’s defending the shooting before it’s even begun investigating then asking the public to have faith in its powers to do so objectively. A dynamic that plays out often involving the NYPD.


(excerpt)


In tapes of the 911 call, Coppin can be heard in the background cursing and yelling, "I've got a gun, and I'm going to shoot you!"

At one point, the 911 operator asks Owens if her son has a gun, and she doesn't answer directly.

"You heard him," she said. "... I didn't say ... you heard it outta his mouth."
The operator later called back and asked for a description of the gunman. The mom said, "He does not, hmmm, who says ... He does not have a firearm."

When cops arrived at apartment 1-D, the door was ajar and they could see Coppin in a hallway with two knives, Kelly said. Owens and her 11-year-old daughter were also in the home.

Cops got Owens and her daughter out of the three-bedroom apartment and Owens told the officers her son was not carrying a gun, police said.

As the cops approached Coppin, he brandished the knives, lunged toward them and yelled, "Shoot me! Kill me!" police said.

The cops retreated into an outside hallway and Coppin went into a back bedroom, Kelly said.

At one point, the teen yelled, "Come get me! I have a gun! Let's do this!" cops said.

The cops in the building then heard Coppin moving a window gate and cops outside yelling, "He's going out the window!"

Coppin dropped about 4 feet from the window to the sidewalk and walked through an exterior gate toward cops in front of the building, police said.

NYPD Capt. Charles McEvoy ran from the apartment as the teen came out the window. He told the cops outside to back up and take cover, Kelly said.

They retreated and positioned themselves behind two parked cars. Coppin continued toward the cops, ignoring repeated orders to show his hands and get down on the ground, Kelly said.

He then reached under his sweatshirt, brandished an object and pointed it at cops "as if he were aiming a gun," Kelly said.