Election 2008: Let the games begin?

Mrs. Santa: Would you mind doing us a favor?

Heat Miser: I don't see why I should. No one ever does anything for me. What is it?

Mrs. Santa: Could you let it snow in the south for one day?

Heat Miser: WHAT? SNOW IN THE SOUTH?

Mrs. Santa: Just for one day?

Heat Miser: NEVER.

[thinks for a few seconds]

Heat Miser: Hmmm... unless of course... there was... you know... something in it for me?



---The Year Without Santa Claus





1.6 Establish and provide adequate management and supervisor staffing levels to ensure appropriate resources are available for oversight of personnel and operations.



1.7 Employ community policing and problem solving strategies that support the department's ability to effectively respond to the community's police service demands and priorities, and secure and allocate sufficient resources to accomplish this.


---Riverside Police Department's Five-Year Strategic Plan, under objectives




Apparently a comment that linked to this site from Craigslist was deleted again, this time one having to do with the Riverside Police Department's community forum it's hosting at Cal Baptist University. Since someone was bragging about removing posts on the politics thread, perhaps this was one of them. Perhaps not. At any rate, it's kind of a silly pastime to remove posts.



Here comes the thaw




"In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.”


---Mark Twain


It appears that when it comes to some frozen positions in the city's employment ranks, those involving civil engineers will be thawed if this agenda item on the discussion calendar authored by Councilman Frank Schiavone goes through. The agenda item if passed, would open up an aggressive recruitment program for civil engineers laid off by the county, fast-track the interview process for them and city employees would be directed to work closely with the city's largest employee union, the SEIU.

They would then go to fill positions in public works and public utilities that are open. The expense? Not a dime out of the general fund, it states. It's not clear how the expenses for recruiting and hiring will be paid since that information wasn't provided in the two-page report. On one hand, it seems nice that Schiavone is so concerned about the plight of these former county employees who are civil engineers. On the other, it begs a lot of questions considering the city's current state of affairs involving its own budget and the impact of a projected $14 million shortfall on its departments.

It's not completely clear why these unfrozen engineer positions won't be open to all who might be interested in applying to fill them besides the former county employees. That's called having a competitive hiring process but then it's hardly the first time this city's restricted positions including management ones to certain employees and not had an open recruitment and hiring process.

Maybe that's one of the details that still has to be worked out. Hopefully, the city council will have this straightened out as well as a whole bunch of other things before it votes on it. But you never know how these ones will go especially if the city council plays to an empty chamber. It will be a shame if at least some questions aren't asked about this particular agenda item but who will ask them? Who's not afraid?



The proposal to bring in the civil engineers of course has nothing to do with Schiavone's sudden and fervant interest in soliciting an endorsement and funding from just about anyone for his campaign in the Riverside County District One race as you would be expected from a challenger at this stage in an election cycle. Collecting money is what politicians do when running for office. If they didn't do this, they would have a very difficult time launching their campaign bids. And the unions must ultimately choose who will best represent them before handing out an endorsement and/or campaign contribution.

The SEIU's considerable campaign coffer would indeed be attractive at this juncture in time for a candidate about to go up against an incumbent in a race which is anticipated to cost each contestant $1 million to compete. And he has expressed intense interest in receiving support from the city's labor unions, even appearing at a recent Town Hall meeting sponsored by the SEIU Local. It's a good thing to be interested in the welfare of employees from the county but why now when there's plenty of employees' welfare in this city to be concerned about?


But election aspirations aside, this gesture by Schiavone as kindly intended as it might be raises the question about freezing city positions in general and which ones should be unfrozen and why. Will the other frozen positions impacting nearly every department in the city including public safety and park and recreation for example receive the same consideration for being unfrozen? Are the civil engineers more deserving than other employees or more needed by the city? Are there other "highly qualified" individuals who could fill other positions but those positions are frozen?


Has the city's workforce been polled on how it feels about these positions being thawed while others in their respective departments remain in deep freeze? It's just odd that the other departments have to freeze positions and promotions yet the city council will be voting to bring some of the county's employees on board. Even if the funding sources for the positions might not be the same, it still seems like a bit of a slap to the face to those employment divisions which will still be facing freezes on hirings and promotions not to mention fewer employees doing a higher workload to do without an explanation or better yet, a discussion. There's going to be plenty of statements made about how this isn't coming from the general fund but it's more than money. There's also attitude.

There should be an account given of the status of every position frozen in this city and why that position has been frozen, but that's doubtful because most people won't bother to ask for it.

Still, it makes you wonder where that idea came from and why.

When you have city workers saying, including fire fighters and police officers say they need more bodies, more bodies and more bodies on a work shift to meet the needs of providing city services, do you want to respond to that by rewarding those who will leave your positions frozen without any explanation and unfreeze others who have promised them nothing? The status of the police positions depends on who you talk to but there at least appears to be the perception that some that had been open weren't being filled and the prospect of new positions depended largely on the state's final budget and the economic picture for the next few months after that. It will be hard to find a police office who doesn't think staffing is not what it should be and I suppose you could tell them in response, at least we have some civil engineers.

What about Park and Recreation employees who provide services and will have to take on the workloads that would have been done by those who could have filled the frozen positions? What of other positions that might be frozen in both the Public Works and Public Utilities Departments? These departments provide important services and it will be less employees to do a higher workload without raises.

That probably applies to other city departments as well, but look on the bright side, at least there will be civil engineers to work on those Riverside Renaissance projects.

These are infrastructure positions already falling behind in a city that's set to expand by surface area and population due to people moving in, families growing and well over a dozen annexations planned in the next decade or so. In Riverside, it's like the Red Queen telling Alice through the Looking Glass that she has to run twice as fast just to stand still. That's called keeping up in Riverside. If it doesn't involve Riverside Renaissance, it will fall behind.

There should be a full accounting of the employment situation in this city in a public arena so that everyone can access information on what is going on. Who gets frozen, how many positions and why these freezes are being done, for all the city departments including the city manager and city council offices. This should have been done before bringing on the civil engineers or any other employees was considered. These employees are being laid off because of the impact on the housing on their jobs and because the county like almost every public governmental system in the state is trying to offset a huge $16 billion state deficit. But Riverside's not immune from these problems as well, even if it is true that its reserve is better than that of 99% of the cities in the state.

Before the engineers are hired, the city should provide an accounting of exactly where the money to recruit them, screen them (even if it's expedited) and pay them, because the term, "non- general funding" by itself isn't specific enough and what the impact of these hirings will be on other services provided by other departments. Then as stated earlier, explain the reasoning for each and every frozen position that is planned in this city.

But will it come down to the county be balancing its budget on the backs of the City of Riverside? That remains to be seen. The budget process is still very early in Riverside. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out indeed.



There's a lesson to be learned here and it is that there's really something to the adage of playing hard to get in terms of politics and the one who does that will most likely have the most labor positions thawed. There's another lesson to be learned here if last year didn't get the job done and that is if you're going to ask for the impossible, do it during an election year.


On a related note involving city employees, the Press Enterprise did a feature on the current Riverside Police Officers' Association president, Det. Chris Lanzillo who said that he'd focus on increasing the number of officers and squad cars as part of his platform. Lanzillo who won by 87 votes in an election against Det. Ken Tutwiler last autumn will have his work cut out for him there with the upcoming budget cuts which will impact the public safety divisions as will any other union leader of a city employment union in this city with their respective departments.






Measure A, the so-called rooster bill, may have been serious business in Riverside but apparently was a joke nearly everywhere else. Oh, how embarrassing.


As much as Riverside's former or current leaders might be crowing about roosters, they along with other leaders in the Inland Empire are fairly silent on what's become the largest recall of beef in United States history which after all, took place in their region. Tons of that meat from ill cows was sent to serve to students at school districts across the country, filled with bacteria including E. Coli which has killed young children.



Moreno Valley's trying to find out how to address its $7 million shortfall and both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties are trying to figure out how to handle the upkeep of foreclosed properties.




An interesting update on the development of the four Fox Theaters in the Inland Empire.





Will Berkeley lift its ban on tasers?