Election 2007: The city awaits

The counting of ballots for Election 2007 continues onward, as 300,000 people in the city of Riverside wait to see who their elected representatives will be for the next four years. In Ward One, challenger Mike Gardner has stretched his lead over Councilman Dom Betro out to 27 votes with an unknown number of absentee and provisional ballots left to count before the election results are certified. At any rate, the vote margin between the two candidates in one of the most competitive contests in recent memory will be very close. These results will reflect the deep division which lies within the ward which were emphasized during a contentious election process which thanks to an initiative passed by voters last year was also longer than usual. At times, it seemed to go on forever.


The election statistics below can also be found here. Thanks to those who ran and worked the voters' polls in all the precincts and for those who engaged in the arduous task of checking and counting hundreds of absentee ballots.




Riverside Ward One 23/23



NP - DOM BETRO 2,139 49.69%

NP - MIKE GARDNER 2,166 50.31%

Total 4,305 100%



Riveride City Council Ward Three 23/23

NP-WILLIAM "RUSTY" BAILEY 2,645 56.83

NP-ART GAGE 2,009 43.17%

Total 4,654 100%



Riverside City Council Ward Five 22/22

NP-DONNA DOTY MICHALKA 1,479 42.29%

NP-CHRIS MACARTHUR 2.108 57.71%

Total 3,497



Riverside City Council Ward Seven 19/19


NP-TERESA R. "TERRY" FRIZZEL 1,238 49.48%

NP-STEVE ADAMS 1,264 50.52%

Total 2,502 100%




As has been stated earlier, it's one thing to want to vote in a "team player" onto the dais like Ward Three did with William "Rusty" Bailey, but it's another if members of the "team" are faced with possibly being given their walking papers. Donna Doty Michalka, who had been endorsed by several on the dais either formally or informally didn't manage to overturn the win of her rival, Chris MacArthur during the preliminary round. Another "team player", Councilman Dom Betro is fighting for his council seat during a runoff election that is so close it might come down to the last couple of votes. Not to mention that a third "team player", Steve Adams of Ward Seven is also fighting to remain in that seat against rival, Terry Frizzel who he outspent about 18 to 1.

One true measure of a political candidate is both how he or she handles victory in an election and just as importantly, how they handle losing.

Given the especially competitive nature of the contest in Ward One and the close margin of the votes counted so far between the two candidates, it will be interesting to see how Betro and Gardner handle the final decision on which one will sit on the dais for the next four years.

If Betro wins, will he be gracious and realize he doesn’t have a mandate? Will Gardner lose gracefully or will he punish those who campaigned and voted against him?

If Gardner wins, will he be gracious and realize he doesn’t have a mandate? Will Betro lose gracefully, or will he punish those who campaigned and voted against him?

Will either win graciously and not punish those who campaigned or voted for his competitor? Will they instead try to embrace all the different ideas and opinions involving how business should be conducted both within the ward and the city?

Time will tell, which outcome is the final result. Hopefully, even the candidate who loses will work hard to address the issues which leave Ward One very much divided in ways that can’t be denied. Hopefully, the candidate who loses will remain active in the ward and the candidate who wins will work graciously with that person.

This applies to all the participants in all the ward races this year, including those who didn’t make it past the preliminary rounds.

It’s also important for the newly elected or reelected city officials to remember that one of the messages sent to them by the voters was that they don’t like decisions being left entirely to elected officials and their select crews without allowing ample opportunities for the public to participate and have their voice heard. City Hall belongs to everyone, not just a few.



Arresting or ordering police to remove elderly women isn’t cool.


Ordering police officers to arrest or remove individuals including elderly women didn’t really go over with many of the city’s residents which is why especially after the preliminary rounds of the election, you saw the city council members even Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison take a softer approach. Still, apparently, being part of the “team” means that when one of your players orders the arrest or removal of an elderly woman, you must remain silent and not object to it at a public meeting. The public wasn't actually sure who on the dais supported the actions of a few of its members and who did not. Because the city council members are silent on this matter, it thinks that everyone on the dais endorses this type of action.


Agenda calendar, whose consent?


One of those women, Marjorie Von Pohle, 89, as well as others may have reason to celebrate. As you know, on July 12, 2005, the city council voted 6-1 to ban the pulling of consent calendar by city residents. Not long after that, the consent calendar began to get longer and longer, including many items where millions of dollars of the city's money was being spent. The vast majority of Riverside Renaissance projects are listed on the consent calendar.

Von Pohle has gone up to the podium and spoke continuously on this issue, urging a bored looking city council to restore the consent calendar.

Three candidates who proclaimed that they would consider or actually vote for the restoration of the right for city residents to pull items from the consent calendar for discussion have either won their elections or are still in the running.

The two candidates who proposed and seconded that motion, Betro and Adams respectively, are fighting for their political careers at the moment against two opponents open to removing the ban on consent calendar items. One candidate, Chris MacArthur had pledged to restore the consent calendar as well.

But voting against the ban on the consent calendar wasn't enough to help Ward Three Councilman Art Gage remain in office.

If any of those who support restoring the consent calendar or all of them make it on the dais, then that provides an opportunity for sitting council members to reconsider their own votes on this issue and revisit it.



What if you gave a renaissance and nobody came?

A woman who voted for Betro was quoted in today’s Press Enterprise as saying that she believed that it was the densely packed housing projects proposed for downtown that dismayed many Ward One residents enough to vote for Gardner. And if you talk to many Ward One residents, that’s what they have said, even if they weren’t always heard. If you can't sell your renaissance in what city officials have called the "jewel" of the city or even the Inland Empire depending on what mood they are in, then you've lost.

The anticipated increase in traffic and shortage of parking in the downtown area to accommodate the many projects planned including both businesses and residences had voters nervous too. It's not that people don't support any development at all, but they don't want to lose their "small town" feel along with it and don't want to be stuck in the middle of gridlocked neighborhoods and streets.

Reporter Doug Haberman keeps saying that the renaissance is about public improvement projects and he’s partly right. However, what’s getting short shift is the fact that many of them are not. In the majority of the cases, the business properties threatened by eminent domain downtown aren’t being replaced by senior centers, community centers and other beneficial uses. They are being replaced by mixed commercial and residential projects that are built by development firms who received the land at a bargain prices from the city’s redevelopment agency which is of course, comprised of city council members. The redevelopment agency ironically can only thrive as long as it keeps collecting debt, often by borrowing more and more money to feed itself so that it can spend increases in property tasks in target areas which otherwise would go to public services, including police departments, fire departments and libraries.

In addition, some of these elected officials are accepting campaign contributions from some of these same developers like Betro did with Mark Rubin downtown and Gage did with Doug Jacobs adjacent to the Riverside Plaza.

David Silva, of Inland Empire Weekly explored this issue in one of the articles that he wrote on Eminent Domain as used by Riverside’s Redevelopment Agency. These type of relationships between elected officials and development firms also disturb many voters, including those who can easily put themselves in the shoes of businesses in the downtown and Wood Street areas who have been threatened with eminent domain if they don’t sell their properties to the agency or the city.

What happened to the Kawa Market stirred a lot of voters to examine these issues and the consequences of Riverside Renaissance. After all, the Kawa Market didn’t even lie within a designated redevelopment agency zone. What it proved to be, was a business that had a large number of regular customers who were Black, Latino and lived in several apartment complexes on Olivewood Street. As is often the case in poor neighborhoods, there was no supermarket or even small market for them to purchase groceries and other necessities, nor did the Riverside Renaissance plan for any to be built.

Enough residents, though not all, in the Wood Street neighborhood didn't want the traffic down Bandini Street so they appealed to their city officials for help. Now, the Kawa Market isn't even rubble. A market which existed back to World War II, gone for good. That struck a lot of voters including those with fond memories of the place and the kindness of the Guans. There's been a lot of discussion in various venues about whether the Guans and Kawa Market became a political tool to be used by both sides of the election, but when I spoke with them, they weren't eager to sell but felt they didn't have a choice. I'm sure any lawyer they spoke with or retained told them the same thing. If property owners have parcels the city wants, at the end of the day the city will own them.





It looks as if the Press Enterprise is in deep shock or at least shaking its head as to why its own choices weren't shooed into office, but it has recovered sufficiently enough to write on several pressing issues relating to the election.

If candidates tie in a city council race, how is the winner decided? The Press Enterprise wanted to know so it asked City Clerk Colleen Nichol what would happen. One of her suggestions was tossing a coin or picking a card out of a deck. It does happen. I had a cousin who ran for mayor in a small town and tied with her competition. Fortunately, there were several provisional ballots and she prevailed by two votes.

In the too-close-to-call, are the contests for both Ward One where Mike Gardner leads by 27 votes and Ward Seven where Steve Adams leads by 26. Even though the publication earlier had said that Adams, who it endorsed, had won the election, now it appears to be backing off of those earlier statements given that absentee and provisional ballots still remain to be counted. It had to because it was claiming that the election was "too close" between Betro and Gardner and refused to call it even as the margin stood at 27 votes, yet in the Ward Seven race, it had called Adams as the victor even as Frizzel steadily narrowed his lead down to where it stands at 28 votes. So why call one election and not the other, with absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted? Well, if you notice, the newspaper didn't call the race where endorsed candidate, Betro was behind and called a race where endorsed candidate, Adams was ahead.

Now, the Riverside County Voters’ Registrar and Riverside City Clerk’s offices are aiming to have final results released hopefully by Friday.

Until then, a city waits.


(excerpt)


Even if Adams holds onto his lead and Betro emerges victorious, the closeness of their races and Gage's defeat suggest no strong endorsement for the current council's policies, said Martin Johnson, a UC Riverside associate professor of political science.

But neither does the vote signal a clear public desire for a change in course, he said.

"It's certainly not a mandate," one way or the other, Johnson said.

One issue that cut across all four races is the $1.8 billion Riverside Renaissance, a program meant to accomplish 30 years of public improvements -- libraries, parks, senior centers, water and electric lines, and more -- in just five years.

La Sierra resident Tom Martin, who backed Frizzel, said many residents don't really understand how the city is paying for the projects and worry that the taxpayers will be stuck holding the bill.

Downtown resident Joanne Pease-Simpson, a retired urban planner who backed Betro, said she thought many voters in Ward 1 were not happy with the changes taking place downtown, such as new condominiums being built along Market Street.

"They want to keep it very sleepy," she said.

Gardner said he was not opposed to the Renaissance as a whole but he would like to stop the proposed $10 million renovation of the downtown pedestrian mall, saying it's expensive and unnecessary.



Fit to be tied.

So remains the dilemma of Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein who is contemplating the implications of Election 2007.

(excerpt)


Dateline Riverside -- Ward 1 and 7 City Council races are so close that . . . Sorry. Can't finish. My writers are on strike. But what if there's a tie? Here's how it could be broken:

Dancing With the Candidates. Each finalist in our lovely quartet would pair off with star hoofers from UCR's Dance Department. The graceful summit of the new interchange would host the dance-off, with ticket proceeds to arts groups or candidate voted "Hottest in a Tutu."

"Renaissance," "Tequesquite," "Andulka," "Trautwein Signal Interconnection," "Tyler Doggy Barkway" and more will be hurled at candidates in a lightning-round Spelling Bee that is certain to leave two winners (and a few gravely wounded consonants) standing.

Been a while since the U.S. Supreme Court picked a winner. Wait till they hear Terry Frizzel's oral argument!




I’m not beholden to the teachers’ union, is what one candidate who received $10,000 from the union and won a spot on the Riverside Unified School District Board is telling his constituents. This is what newcomer Tom Hunt who joined two incumbents on the board had to say.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)


I see myself as representing Riverside -- parents, teachers, administrators and the future of students," said the 52-year-old Riverside public relations consultant.

"I am not their lobbyist," he said of the teachers union. "I will listen (to them), and I will listen with respect."



What do you think about this year's elections in Riverside? Go here to provide your input and tell it like it is or was. It's one of those surveys and there are a few reponses already.



An anxious city awaiting the final results of Election 2007 wasn't the only thing that happened yesterday,

Pleading guilty to placing an advertisement in the Press Enterprise that threatened Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco is Chandler Cardwell.


(excerpt)

"Did you do it?" asked Superior Court Judge Tom Cahraman.
"Yes, your honor," responded Chandler Cardwell, 33, of Perris.



Pacheco wrapped up his gang summit with its very select invite list. Perhaps now, that office can move on to scheduling a meeting with Eastsiders to discuss and answer questions regarding the injunction that it filed against the Eastside Riva gang in that neighborhood. It is a public servant of poor communities as well as wealthy ones, of communities of color as well as those which are predominantly White so it owes that community the same decency and respect that it would afford another one.



Several members of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors violated the Brown Act by holding a serial meeting according to the Press Enterprise. Who said so? The District Attorney's office.


(excerpt)


Kelly Hansen, chief deputy district attorney and head of the special prosecutions division, said Wednesday that by sending e-mails in which the "reply to all" button was used by the board violated the Brown Act.

The violation occurred when Supervisor Jeff Stone sent an e-mail to the other four board members about Secretary of State Debra Bowen's impending decertification of the county's voting system.

Supervisors Marion Ashley and Roy Wilson responded with "reply to all," making it a full and private conversation of the board.



The D.A.’s office being fully aware of where its budget comes from insists it was not an intentional office and implied that the board may be confused about the Brown Act.

One supervisor left out of the apparent serial meeting had words about that.


(excerpt)


Supervisor John Tavaglione, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said many supervisors rely on e-mail to conduct business.

"We have to always be cautious and on guard to make sure we are protecting that aspect of the Brown Act," Tavaglione said.




An interesting article on how law enforcement agencies relate to Spanish-speaking communities is here.





Here's a Question and answer session on the Screen Writers' Guild strike for those who want to know what it's all about and the fate of the industry.