City Hall: Business conducted by committee?

Elementary school students, employees and parents at the beleaguered Grant Elementary School were greeted by a river of a fetid smelling, brown liquid which had erupted out of a three-inch gash in the street just off the north-west corner of 13th and Almond. As cars drove down 13th, they splashed through the brown lake and people commented on its rancid odor more than two blocks away.

Currently, there is at least one phone call in to the city's 311 service and to City Councilmember Mike Gardner's office, with both referring the matter to the city's sewer division. More details as this situation develops. Hopefully, the city can afford to fix this leak.

Update: The city's sewer division and code compliance division have closed off the street to traffic, are cleaning up the sewage and are trying to find the source of the leak. Thanks go to Gardner and his office as well as these divisions.



Norco's response to the state's budget deficit is to reorganize several of its departments.

Meanwhile, as other cities cut back on their development projects, Riverside continues to add them, as seen in including as shown on this week's city council agenda. What's interesting to notice is how much shorter most of the city council agendas have been lately including the number of items posted on the consent calendar, which was intended to include items that could pass through votes without further discussion. However, as people watching the agendas and meetings closely have noted, these consent calendars have included some high-ticket items.



The Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee is meeting on April 8, at 2:30 p.m. to appoint an individual to the Riverside Neighborhood Partnership Board.


Here's the report with this item. The RNP board includes 15 members who are community representatives elected at caucuses held annually usually at the Neighborhood Conference. However, the city has decided instead to hold them in May. Hopefully, the city will publicize this change in the process so that as many people as possible can participate in these important elections. Only city residents in the particular caucus areas who are members of neighborhood organizations registered at City Hall can be eligible to run for these seats. That rule change was made not long after certain individuals were elected in their caucuses by their members and these individuals were soon notified by mail that they were disqualified. Though these new rules are still being dodged by certain caucuses.

But then at least the RNP still exists, not like the Neighborhood Advisory Committees of old which were dissolved by the city council several years ago.


More on the Riverside Neighborhood Partnership here. It's not to be confused with the Riverside Downtown Partnership.


Speaking of committees, many people have said that it's important to attend not just the city council meetings but the body's subcommittee meetings. Of course, it's hard to do so given that all of them are held either in the morning or afternoons during the week. But it's still important to do so as some people said, because that's when the decision making gets done. At least in terms of meetings that are bound by the state's Brown Act.

But is that really the case? Look at this year's list of scheduled meetings for the subcommittees and it seems that some of them haven't really been meeting. At least not all that much. Others have remained busy but haven't sent much in the way of reports or proposals to the city council for discussion and/or vote.


The Governmental Affairs Committee once the status committee hasn't met lately and this month it will continue on its hiatus until it holds only its second meeting of 2008 in May.

The Land Use and Public Utilities Committee continues its hold as the hip committee to serve on. Community Services and Youth met once this year in March and the Public Safety Committee's probably one of the more consistent committees in terms of meetings discussing every thing from the status of the Community Police Review Commission to hearing appeals from massage parlors that were shut down by the police department. Neither of these committees are viewed as status committees by some political observers but they do important work. And at least they've been meeting which is more than you can say for some of the so-called status committees.


The Development Committee is also on pace to meet three times so far this year.


On the other hand, the Finance Committee which schedules itself to meet twice monthly has met only twice this year so far. Even with the closely watched budget process currently in the works and soon to be debated in the public arena, this committee has remained fairly quiet. Hopefully, that will change in the next several months as the budget slicing begins in earnest. There's been a lot revealed about what's going to happen in other neighboring cities and what they will be facing, but Riverside?

And what of the Transportation Committee which will meet for only the second time this month even though there's a lot of transit issues hitting Riverside?


What's ironic is that outpacing many of these committees is actually the Mayor's Nomination and Screening Committee which meets only when there's a need to do so which has met three times this year so far. This committee doesn't meet that often but so far, it's on pace to outmeet some of the committees that are scheduled to meet twice a month if the trends seen so far involving committee meetings continues onward.


**For each committee that comes up, click the committee's name, then "2008" then "Agendas" to find out exactly how many times they have met. **


With city council meetings getting shorter and committees rarely meeting, when is business being done in this city?




It hasn't been a good week for police chiefs of departments in this country. No, Maywood's police department is holding onto its current interim chief but in other places, the news hasn't been so good.



A sexual harassment probe has led to the resignation of the Key West Police Department's Chief Bill Mauldin.


(excerpt, The Miami Herald)


The city's news release said there were four or five instances of alleged sexual harassment that occurred in late 2006 and stopped in November of 2006, when Phillips told the chief his actions crossed the line.

Phillips, 28, who began as the police department's spokeswoman in March 2006, declined to specify what she says Mauldin did.

"I prefer not to get into that," Phillips said. "It was bad enough to have to dredge it up years later."





Another police chief in Gustine, California is stepping down after being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence.


(excerpt, Fresno Bee)


Stavrowsky said many of the officers at the 10-member department were "sad to see [Anderson] go," although he "clearly had bad judgment."

[Kris]Anderson, 59, was arrested by the California Highway Patrol on Feb. 24 near Tracy when drivers reported his Jeep was weaving on Interstate 580. He was about 10 miles away from his Livermore home. CHP investigators said he failed a field sobriety test.

On Tuesday, he didn't return calls placed to his home. A woman who answered the phone at the office of James McGrail, Anderson's Livermore-based attorney, said McGrail had no comment and hung up the phone.

Gustine Mayor Rich Ford said Anderson made the right decision by stepping down, because it would have been difficult for him to remain the city's top cop with a "DUI hanging over his head."






In Albany, there's a crisis with its civilian review board and the Albany Times-Union wrote this editorial about how the civilian review boards in Albany and Troy need more power. Troy's hasn't even met in six years.


(excerpt)


The council, though, has more pressing business, namely to make Albany's police board more effective than Troy's. Then again, Troy's board might not be much more powerful in operation than out of operation. Just like in Albany, the Troy board has no subpoena power. It can't require civilian witnesses or police officers to testify.

The Troy police review committee was established, in 1997, for much the same reason the Albany board was created three years later. Citizens demanded it, especially those in the minority community. To deny those boards access to the information they need is as much a disservice to the public as not having any procedure for civilian complaints and civilian review.




In New York City, police officer Michael Carey, who fired his gun at Sean Bell and his friends three times, testified that the officers on trial did identify themselves as police officers before the shooting.


(excerpt, Newsday)



Police officer Michael Carey, who fired his service weapon three times the night Sean Bell was killed outside the Kalua Caberet hours before his wedding in 2006, testified Thursday in state Supreme Court he heard another officer shouting "Police! Show your hands. Police! Show your hands" -- and saw the officer's badge fastened to his sweatshirt -- before police unleashed a deadly 50-shot barrage.

Testifying in defense of fellow officers Michael Oliver, 36, Gescard Isnora, 29, and Marc Cooper, 40, who all were indicted on a charge of their roles in the controversial Bell shooting, Carey said he fired three shots because he believed the passenger in the car being driven by Bell had a gun -- and because he observed an assault on a police officer. Carey also testified Thursday that he heard Isnora shout: "He's got a gun!"

Unlike Oliver, Isnora and Cooper, Carey was not charged for his role in the shooting.



Carey had provided his account of the shooting while on the witness stand.


(excerpt, New York Daily News)



"The engines were still revving as if the foot was on the gas pedal," Carey said. "As the car came forward off the curb, Detective Isnora started to walk toward the front passenger door of the car and started yelling, 'He's got a gun! He's got a gun!' and started shooting toward the front passenger side."


Bell's buddy, Joseph Guzman, was sitting in that seat and Carey insisted he had to have seen that Isnora was a cop.

"Detective Isnora did have his shield on, clasped to the collar of his sweatshirt," he said.

Carey, who was not indicted for his role in the shooting, said he did not pull his police badge out from under his T-shirt or identify himself as a cop before he fired.
"At that point, the shooting had already started," said Carey, who was part of an undercover unit doing a prostitution sting at the Queens strip joint where Bell had just had his bachelor party.

"I had already observed the people in the vehicle disregard the shield, disregard the commands, assault the police officer," he said. "I didn't feel that any verbal commands would do any good at that point."