Blue ribbon panel or the same old panel?

Election 2008, Riverside County style, has kicked off with the announcement that two incumbents, Bob Buster and Jeff Stone face opposition in their respective contests. Buster faces Ward Four city councilman, Frank Schiavone and Stone faces farmer and winery owner, Deane Foote.

A vigorous contest is expected in District One.


(excerpt)


Buster said he has helped put the county on a "sound course" and the public has seen increases in public-safety improvements, including new deputies, during his tenure.

"I have a proven track record here to expand on in the next four years," Buster said.

Buster said the environment and ways to reduce traffic and housing density are among the top issues.

Buster has a sizeable campaign war chest at his disposal. He raised almost $312,000 last year, including $117,000 in the last six months of 2007, according to campaign finance reports. Buster has more than $627,000 cash on hand.

Schiavone said he is not daunted by going up against the well-funded incumbent. Schiavone out-raised Buster in the second half of 2007, pulling in more than $133,000. He has more than $99,000 cash on hand.

"Money has proven, very recently, not to be the deciding factor anymore, as long as you have enough to get your message out," he said. "It is much tougher to buy elections nowadays. Voters are much smarter."

Schiavone said the county needs a program similar to what is under way in the city with the Riverside Renaissance initiative. The $1.76 billion effort aims to start three decades worth of public improvements in five years.





It's not clear what Schiavone is referring to but it looks as if he's commenting on the last round of Election 2007, Riverside style. While it's definitely true that at least one councilman was ousted by a challenger that he outspent about six to one, what the voters became "smarter" about was exactly what they expect in their elected officials or perhaps just more vocal about it. Riverside Renaissance which was mentioned in the article was no more greater a guarantee than a hefty campaign coffer that an incumbent would be reelected to serve again. After all the fanfare of the display on Riverside Renaissance complete with Rolodexed speakers lined up to support it, two city council members who voted for it and tried to ride that fanfare still were handed pink slips and a third councilman was a scant 16 votes away from being pink slipped himself.


It might be prudent to not campaign on any form of "renaissance" during these fiscally difficult times especially considering the massive amount of borrowing being done to finance the city's version. Especially given the fiscally conservative nature of many of the county's voters.

So yes, the voters are very smart in terms of knowing what they want rather than being told what that is and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with money. What more money does is that it often helps candidates to get their voice out to prospective voters more effectively through advertising, which is one reason why candidates raise money including through cheesy fundraisers that few people can afford to attend in the first place.

Money matters because advertisers, campaign consultants and other involved individuals want to be paid. Advertising through the mail, those horrible phone banks, newspapers and even television costs a lot of money especially if you are covering a wide area of voters. What's been interesting is having people come up and ask me if they should donate to Schiavone's campaign (and he is looking in quite a few places for contributions these days) and the answer is, an individual one for each person based on their own assessment of a political candidate in an election and how they feel that candidate has treated them. It's a decision that they must make themselves based on their own process for doing so.

But still, the votes are what ultimately matter when all is said and done.

Are the voters in Riverside all of a sudden, smarter? Not really. I think it would be erroneous to undersell the intelligence of the voters of this city and not really fair to them or us. Schiavone has also undersold himself and his own campaign accomplishments perhaps without intending to do so. After all, he raised quite a bit of money in his two successful elections (and even the one that wasn't) so far and I'm sure that his own election victories weren't "bought" or that voters put him into office for two terms because they were less intelligent than they are now. Schiavone is a vigorous, hard-working campaigner back in the day.

But he also was a better leader and elected official earlier in his career when he was hungry than he is now that he's settled and clearly unhappy (for one thing, he's the only person in the group photograph of the city government at the city's Web site who's not smiling) and his best chance is to go back to his roots if at this point he can even find his way back. And he's got his work cut out for him within his own ward, although some people did say they'd vote for him just to get a new city council member while others said they have mixed feelings about who should represent them at the county level and many feel miffed and even offended that he's not planning to complete his allotted term. Ward Four is a large and fairly active ward in terms of voter participation but it's not immune from the sentiment that's city-wide which doesn't exactly favor incumbent city council members including those perceived as jumping ship for "greener pastures".

Unlike Buster, he's left to explain why he is not willing to focus or perhaps even finish out his second term on the city council. After all, the election chances of his colleague on the dais, Steve Adams, may have been impacted by his decision to jump ship midstream and run for state assembly (which is the darling pipe dream of many a municipal elected official though few are successful). Adams struggled during two rounds of Election 2007 barely nosing out former mayor, Terry Frizzel in the final.

What might matter more than money in what is still expected to be a costly election for both candidates is political party recognition, meaning who has it and who doesn't among their own members. Although local elections are supposed to be nonpartisian, everyone knows that they are really not. Committees from both the Democratic and Republican parties have been heavily involved and invested in elections much removed from even the state's contests. Buster's got strong support from his party and he's very popular because people in his district feel that he cares about them more than special interest groups.


Buster also doesn't carry as much baggage from the DHL drama that's been playing out in the region for several years now. Both Buster and Schiavone are members of the March Joint Powers Authority which helped broker the arrival of the air freight company that's kept thousands of residents awake all night nearly every night with its early morning flight schedule. This remains a contentious issue in areas of Riverside that make up the first district. The turnaround attitude toward community residents impacted by DHL as being more than just deranged gadflies (which is how they were treated much of the time) but people who are not only important but also likely in the voting pool, is refreshing, but is it enough? It'd be erroneous to underestimate the impact of the DHL mess on voters in District One by either candidate.



Residents of the Eastside are trying to get the city to purchase a liquor store which is the center of criminal activity in that neighborhood.


One thing is clear and that is if the city does purchase the land, the owner will make a fortune as did the slumlords from Orange County who owned the University Lodge and the owners of other similar businesses. Since the city has no desire to relocate these businesses within the city, they don't make low offers to buy the land and then threaten or use Eminent Domain. So the fact that this property owner has been offered a $1 million, even as property owners in the downtown whose properties did not attract crimes had to fight to receive less, is unfortunately not surprising.



Coming to Riverside is another task force created by who else, the city council. And so Mayor Ron Loveridge and Ward One Councilman Mike Gardner have proposed a task force which includes the chairs of both the Metropolitan Museum Board and the Board of Library Trustees along with about a dozen other people including many people who are often picked over and over again by the city especially Loveridge to serve on assorted task forces.




They're good people but they are often the same people. You'd think that in a growing city of 300,000 people, you'd see some different names once in a while instead of Loveridge packing it with his friends. Maybe Loveridge needs to go out into the communities of Riverside more often especially those where most of the residents are people of color.

Are there any task force members from Renew the Library? Probably not but erasing them from consideration isn't going to erase the hundreds of people who support the efforts of this grass-roots organization. The city's practice of excluding grass-roots groups from its ad hoc committees has done little to really stop the activism of groups like Renew the Library, which is pushing for at least one public workshop where the public can submit input on the projects. It just makes the city appear more removed from the communities and their organizations.


Are there any members from other organizations like the Riverside Neighborhood Partnership (and not just the Downtown Neighborhood Partnership which was set up mainly to benefit the economic health of the Mission Inn Hotel)? Probably not. Why not a representative from the city's own library instead of just one from the library at the University of Callifornia, Riverside?

Oh yeah, the city employees really aren't allowed to have opinions on what goes on in their own departments that differ from the status quo. There's two words for what happens and one begins with "A" and the other begins with "L".

And what about more youth than just the president of Loveridge's own handpicked Youth Counsel? Why not members of other youth groups who enjoy the library? Why not people that are homeless who frequent the library and along with others use its services to go back to school or be trained for employment positions? What about museum docents? What about someone like Dan Hantman who is very informed and interested in the city's museums and libraries?

A library is many different things to different people and so is a museum but many viewpoints are not represented in the decision making processes involving both.

And here's a news flash, how about some folks to serve on the task force that aren't simply in or from Ward One? Yes, it's indeed true that the main library is located downtown as is the museum and yes, downtown is a part of Ward One but guess what? If you do a survey of those who are visiting the library on any given day, what will you find? You will find that the "main" library means just that, a library which will likely see visitors from most if not all the city's wards not to mention people who might not live in Riverside at all. The same is true with the local museum. Sometimes there is this attitude that there's Ward One and then there's everybody else. It would be nice to see a process that didn't appear to buy into that.

This proposal goes to the city council on March 18 for a vote. This process needs some close watching by those who are advocates of both the museum and the library.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



Loveridge said no "constructive consensus" has been reached on how to expand and improve both the library and museum, and that the panel meetings can trigger a serious community discussion.

"We're looking for conceptual agreement, not architectural renderings," he said.

As part of Riverside Renaissance, city staff in 2007 proposed a $25 million addition to the downtown library that would create extra room for the library and a space large enough to attract traveling museum exhibitions. The museum is a separate building.

However, at a January joint meeting of the library and museum boards, more than half of the audience of 300 residents signaled support for separate projects that would meet the needs of each institution.


Dawn Hassett, who helps run the Committee to Renew the Library, said Tuesday that the residents group favors at least one community workshop at which the public could together come up with a vision for the future of both the downtown library and the museum.

Gardner said the city went about things backward by starting with a dollar figure and coming up with a project to match the amount.


It's not clear whether or not there will be a "community workshop". Community members have been relegated in past task forces including those involving parks to three minutes crammed into a 30 minute time bloc set aside for them. In other words, community members are often a side show and community input on this issue by hundreds of concerned residents has pretty much been written off as shown by the mayor's comments because the majority of the comments so far haven't been in line with what City Manager Brad Hudson has proposed.

That wouldn't be as much of a problem if again, the city picked task forces or ad hoc committees where most of the membership hadn't already served on numerous other committees. Riverside's civic leaders always pride themselves on saying how Riverside's quickly growing into a vast metropolis, the "cultural jewel" of the Inland Empire for example, yet it's still very "small town" in its politics.


One of the funniest overheard comments yesterday was made by Riverside County's human resources director, Ron Komers who while talking with a UCR Engineering student, told him that he should think about looking for a job with the county because they were always hiring engineers.

Say what? Didn't they lay quite a few of one class of engineers off? Engineers who were later set to be hired by Riverside? And aren't most of the other positions frozen? Never a dull moment in the venues of power.



Is John McCain eligible to serve as the next president? That question is being asked in a law suit filed in court.




A citizen oversight body in San Bernardino has some questions about how the city spends its money.



Banning is still trying to get a police station.



In Temecula, the names of everyone involved in a shooting in Old Town were given except that of the offduty Costa Mesa Police Department officer who did the shooting. The decision of whether or not to release his name has been left to his employer which is conducting an administrative review. However, apparently the Costa Mesa Police Department has declined to release any information deferring to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department which is also investigating.


At any rate, different versions of the shooting are emerging from witnesses, according to the Press Enterprise.


(excerpt)


The restaurant owner says the officer was not drinking and was merely defending himself from a group of drunken men. Vilan's family and friends say the officer was drunk and confrontational.

Investigators on Monday were still interviewing witnesses and sheriff's officials would not say whether any of those involved might have been intoxicated.

Riverside County sheriff's spokesman Deputy Craig Roberts said during the weekend that an off-duty Costa Mesa police officer opened fire on a group of men who were beating him outside the Bank of Mexican Food restaurant at the corner of Old Town Front and Main streets about 7:20 p.m. The officer, who was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, identified himself as a police officer at some point before he opened fire, Roberts said. Roberts said he did not know what provoked the fight.

Craig Puma, owner of the Bank of Mexican Food, said Sunday that the officer had not been drinking alcohol at his establishment. He said Vilan and his friends went after the officer, presumably because they were angry about an encounter with him earlier in the evening. Puma said the officer had slapped the behind of a woman with Vilan's group, thinking she was his girlfriend. It was an innocent mistake, Puma said, and the officer apologized.

Vilan's friends agreed that they first encountered the officer in the open-air bar about an hour before the shooting. Nicole Kitley, 28, a friend of Vilan's, said the officer hit her on the behind.

"He slapped me really hard," she said, and when she turned around, "He said, 'Oh, I thought you were my sister.' "

"I could tell he was drunk," she said, and he did not apologize. "He was being very confrontational," she said, and Vilan spoke up in her defense.



In San Francisco, that city's paying out $235,000 on a law suit filed by a preschool teacher whose arm was broken by one of the city's police officers during an altercation.






On the witness stand in the trial of three New York City Police Department officers charged in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell, was a Port Authority police officer who narrowly missed being hit by an errant bullet which was one of the 50 fired during the incident.




(excerpt, New York Times)



John Cea, the police officer, was standing patrol with a partner on the platform when the calm of the early morning was shattered shortly after 4 a.m., he testified.

“I remember hearing a pop and then a short time after, more shots in very rapid succession, and then the window of the AirTrain platform blew out,” he said. “I was sprayed by some of the glass that had been shattered by the bullet.”

He and his partner ran for cover and ordered the few passengers waiting for the train and the red-coat attendant to do the same. “I remember hitting the ground,” Officer Cea testified in State Supreme Court in Queens. “I got down as low as I could.”

The round is believed to have come from the gun of Detective Marc Cooper, who fired four shots that morning. Detective Cooper is charged with two misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment. His co-defendants, Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard F. Isnora, face charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter.



An early news article related that Cooper had been asked why he had pointed his gun and started firing and Cooper had testified to the criminal grand jury that he didn't know.