Election 2009: Into the home stretch

Swarms of bees take over Magnolia in Riverside for several hours! No one was badly hurt and the roving bees were left to find new headquarters for their honey making operation.




In Riverside, there's less than a week left before voters in three of the city's wards have to either mail in or turn in their ballots. The deadline for the ballots to be received for processing is Tuesday, June 2. So if you live in one of the even-numbered wards, you need to fill out your ballot, sign it and get it in the mail or to a collection center. Remember, your vote is your voice and it's there to be exercised so go out and as Nike once said, Just Do It.


In the Ward Four race, about 7,333 votes have been tabulated so far as having been received for that election. This contest is the most anticipated of the election, having gotten most of the attention and unfortunately, if you blog about it, quite a bit of it has been negative at least anonymously online but I've had many conversations with people who read some of the blog postings which were much more positive. But blogging about politics is never boring at least, what when you have had anonymous people post that you've a 65-year-old been convicted of burglary in 2000 and ad nauseum about your body parts, personal hygiene and your choice in lingerie. Not exactly comments that any right-minded person would put their names on but dozens of comments like these were written about myself and other women including Terry Frizzel, Mary Humboldt, Karen and Yolanda Garland.

Even the fact that I have Vertigo has been used to make fun of me, just as other attributes of these other women have been used to make fun of them.

I was slammed by personal information from my high school just a week after my guest book was signed by a man who's named matched that of a retired city employee who apparently happened to be tight with another retired employee who wrote unflattering comments about Ward Four candidate, Paul Davis on one of the mailers coming out of the Schiavone campaign.

It's been a difficult several months blogging on this election since I read the first anonymous comment associated with the Schiavone supporters making fun of my breasts. The quality and style of postings by these anonymous commenters who apparently believed that this was the best kind of campaigning that they would do never reached a high point after that.

The ugliness of the anonymous comments that I faced during this election beat out those that I had received last year during the county supervisor race between incumbent Bob Buster and Schiavone. Although I didn't get anything nasty from anyone who endorsed Buster, except for one commenter who endorsed Buster last year but has apparently switched camps.

But there's still time to vote though you might want to think about using the drop off places for your ballots if you don't mail them off by May 29.

In the meantime, this email's being circulated through the voting population in the fourth ward from the supposedly "platform less" candidate.

Paul Davis 14-Point Plan

1. Open the books at City Hall.

2. Reduce out of control spending and live within our means.

3. No new taxes.

4. Reduce our electric and water utility rates.

5. Campaign finance reform to limit amount of special interest money in elections.

6. Sever all ties with March Global Port and keep March for military use only.

7. Create more good high paying local jobs to get residents off the freeways.

8. Hold six Town Hall meetings every year throughout Ward 4.

9. Make our neighborhoods safer.

10. Welcome your participation at City Hall.

11. Protect open space & uphold Proposition R and Measure C.

12. Provide more recreational opportunities to give teens an alternative to gangs and crime.

13. Empower the Police Review Commission to accomplish their oversight mission.

14. Oppose use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another.

It will be examined in detail in future postings but there's nothing on this list that's new if you have spent some time talking to the candidate.


My posting on the Riverside City Council's legislative aides and the salaries they make struck a chord with one Craigslist commenter, not surprisingly. Here is one response posted there.


(excerpt)


FYI, FBM you are incorrect in your assumptions, or "sources" - it's $50,000 and absolutely NO BENEFITS WHATSOEVER. No retirement, no medical, no gas, no re-imbursement for any expenses, no sick leave, no vacation. It's an outside contract position.



Sounds like someone is a bit piqued about the lack of benefits with this position but I do appreciate this detailed narrative on the pay scale for city council legislative aides from someone who clearly seems to know what it involves. This individual, unsigned of course, provided a great service to the vast majority of people in Riverside who know very little about the nitty-gritty about these positions including their annual salary by providing this information. If many readers at Craigslist had been able to read it, they could have learned some interesting information.

But alas, it was not to be as the Fates would call it.

Mysteriously enough, this rather informative posting was removed from Craigslist not long after I had responded to it this morning. One minute it was there, the next, gone as if the author had a change of heart about what he or she had just written. Fortunately, I had saved the link because it provided some interesting information useful for people to know and tried to access the missing posting through that channel. The posting did come up but when I refreshed the link, this is what came up instead.


This posting has been deleted by its author



It struck me as very interesting that a post which simply included information about one of the city employment positions would be struck down like that, so that no one could read it.

I scratched my head at that one, trying to figure out why someone would post such an informative comment on the nuts and bolts of the salary packages attached to legislative aide positions only to delete it. What's the point of doing so? Is there a reason?

All I can do is shake my head, thinking they must have had their reasons for doing so. And maybe, just maybe, it's 50,000 of them.








And the vertigo's been a bit of a challenge this week leaving me feel like I have a bad case of motion sickness most of the time, but I guess I should be thankful that it makes one Schiavone supporter happy that I've gotten sick.


(excerpt)



Thank goodness for vacations and vertigo. Not as many bold, large font postings and not as many sarcastic, barely coherent posts. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :-)




Really classy person here. But then at least he or she's stopped talking about breasts and bras for a few minutes. But believe it or not, this posting's author also removed his or her own posting.



Fastest disappearing link of the day


Still, the fastest disappearing link will likely be this one which will probably be flagged and removed by the time anyone reads this posting. And sure enough, within hours, it was flagged and removed likely by a supporter or two of the Schiavone camp.





Hemet's police department gets a new police dog.




A councilman in Rancho Cucamonga has been arrested.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Investigators arrested him on suspicion of grand theft and misappropriation of public funds after 9:30 a.m. while he drove near his home, district attorney's spokeswoman Susan Mickey said.

Gutierrez, who bailed out of jail this afternoon, was among six former assessor's employees sued May 12 by the county after an internal investigation concluded they had done political work on county time under then-Assessor Bill Postmus.

Bail for Gutierrez at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, was $45,000. But Gutierrez, 49, walked out of West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga at 1:20 p.m., San Bernardino County sheriff's officials confirmed. He posted a $45,000 bail bond, records show.

And the home and office of Moreno Valley's city manager was the focus of a search warrant by Upland Police Department officers.


(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Sgt. Cliff Mathews said the victim is an Upland resident, but he declined to elaborate on the allegation or how the victim was harmed.

"Because it is still ongoing, we're not releasing any additional information on the allegation," Mathews said by phone.

Gutierrez was at work Wednesday, city spokeswoman Michelle Dawson said by phone. He could not be reached for comment.

Investigators took computers and documents and downloaded information from the Moreno Valley city servers, Mathews said.

Police have made no arrests, he said. Detectives plan to complete the investigation, which will include a forensic review of the computers, and submit the information to the San Bernardino County district attorney's office to see if charges are warranted, Mathews said.

"We are not going to make an arrest prior to the review by the DA's office," he said.

The Press Enterprise Editorial Board spanks the Riverside County District Attorney's office on the wake of the grand jury report which spanked that office.


(excerpt)



The district attorney blames the congestion on a shortage of judges and on judges' willingness to grant too many continuances. Those factors do play a role, but have existed for years. Yet the case backlog and the overflow of criminal trials worsened noticeably since Pacheco took office in January 2007. And still the district attorney rejects any need to change his case management policies.

And a report last year on Riverside County's courts by state Associate Justice Richard Huffman said Pacheco "does not acknowledge his responsibility to limit the criminal cases filed or the criminal cases taken to trial to the judicial resources available within Riverside County." The DA's approach has distorted the criminal justice process while crippling the county's civil court system, Huffman noted.

Make no mistake: The district attorney's policies are a political stance, not a matter of public safety. Other counties manage to balance civil and criminal caseloads, even with a shortage of judges, without overwhelming the court system or letting crime run rampant. There is no reason Riverside County cannot do the same.

Politically driven policies that clog the courts with criminal cases will only harm the county's justice system. And spending money on frivolous staffing in the middle of a budget shortfall insults taxpayers. Such actions require change, not adamant insistence that any criticisms simply stem from ignorance.




Hemet City Council passes a resolution to try to address cuts in its fire services while half of Norco's firefighters face layoffs due to budget cuts.




More proposed changes going on involving Riverside County's buildings.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

Riverside County could change its general plan to allow for public buildings in all zones of the county except conservation areas.

Planning officials say the proposed change merely clarifies vague and redundant wording. It's only significant impact, they say, is to enunciate that public facilities cannot be built in conservation areas. But some residents worry that the amendment would make it easier for public projects such as jails or communications towers to be built too close to homes and schools.

"We see major concerns," said Menifee resident Ann Weston. "It means they can put whatever they want anywhere."

Planning officials say the change would not do that. All public projects would still go through the state-mandated environmental review process, which weighs all impacts to surrounding communities, said planning Commissioner John Snell.

A public hearing on the proposed general plan amendment is scheduled for Tuesday's supervisors meeting. If supervisors vote to approve it, it would come up for another vote at a later meeting. If approved again, it would go into effect 30 days later, said principal planner Adam Rush.

The general plan serves as a blueprint for future growth and land use decisions in the county over the long term.

Two separate grand jury investigations, two separate counties but are there parallel findings?






A Los Angeles Police Department officer was the subject of a raid by the SWAT team in his own department.


(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)

In the early morning darkness of May 25, 2006, Franklin's two worlds -- his life on Woodlawn and his life in the LAPD -- collided.

The phone in his upstairs bedroom woke him from a dead sleep at 4 a.m. His wife was away visiting her family, and their two small children slept down the hall. The voice on the line identified himself as a lieutenant with the LAPD's elite SWAT unit. The house, he told Franklin, was surrounded. Peering out of the bedroom window, Franklin saw it was no joke: a knot of heavily armed officers were pressed up against the house. Snipers were perched on the neighbor's porch. A helicopter hovered overhead.

Franklin had no idea what his own Police Department would want with him. He asked for time to roust his 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. He had 20 minutes, the SWAT officer said, or police would come in and get him.

Before Franklin pulled open the front door and walked into the blinding glare of spotlights, he put himself between his little boy and girl and took their hands in his own. "I wanted the police to be able to see our hands," he recalls. "I didn't want to give them any reason to shoot us."



Officer-involved shootings are on the upswing in Long Beach's police department.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



Five people were injured in officer-involved shootings during a seven-hour period from Wednesday afternoon to early Thursday, authorities said. One of the victims was a police officer apparently struck by "friendly fire."

So far this year, Long Beach police officers have shot nine people. By comparison, the Los Angeles Police Department -- with 10 times more officers -- reported nine officer-involved shootings, and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department -- also about 10 times as large -- reported 10 such shootings.

Long Beach police officials acknowledged it was an unusual number for a short period but noted the circumstances were different in each case and involved violent suspects who failed to comply with commands or threatened officers with weapons.

"It's hard to predict when we have these clusters," said department spokeswoman Jackie Bezart. "We are doing the best we can to maintain order like we always do and maintain safety for the citizens like we always do."