Five before Midnight

Orange Street Rumbles and the City Council Balks

2012-01-24T13:31:00.000-08:00

Update: The appellate decision in People of the State of California v Anthony Fletcher

UPDATE: Striking Riverside County workers gather by the hundreds to march and rally at the County Administrative headquarters in downtown Riverside one day after a Superior Court judge ruled whether or not certain classes of employees could go on strike.

Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz (l.) and two key members of his cabinet, Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino during one of their more peaceful moments]

[Diaz (r.) and the first member of his cabinet, Deputy Chief Mike Blakely photographed here in one of the more ironic of situations at a school board meeting]

Mayor Ron Loveridge gave his final address to the city to a sold out crowd of over 900 city employees and civic leaders even as explosions resounded around him. Those were courtesy of several bomb threats received by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department by an anonymous individual against unspecified county courthouses in Riverside. No bombs were found but a couple of suspicious items were blown up and the noises they generated echoed through the downtown. Rubber bullets and protests and words were flying during a demonstration at UCR stemming from a contentious meeting involving U.C. Regents who even while the public university system they represent is facing more severe cuts and tuition cuts, arrived to their meeting decked out in private limousines from likely, a five star hotel.

That irony was not lost on many people in attendance at a huge demonstration at UCR even those who stood there quietly observing. It's a serious situation since the health of the California economy has always been in part defined by the percentage of college graduates within the state's boundaries including those who graduate from public universities. So clearly much remains to be played out if this state's economy is to recover on different fronts. With the hard hits to post-high school education, that recovery is less likely and most likely delayed.

But in the meantime, one professor at that university who also happened to be the mayor made his speech at the Riverside Convention Center which will close for several years to be renovated if City Hall can ever agree on a design or cough up the money to pay for it. But then even as the city management is telling city employees that the financial situation's more dire than it's been telling the press, the city's still pledging to spend more money on projects like there has never been a budget crisis.

People gave Loveridge a standing ovation and the Greater Chamber of Commerce and its leader elect for life Cindy Roth presented Loveridge with one of its awards. Some city departments' employees stayed for the luncheon. Others had to leave early because their department's budgets didn't include sending employees to the annual luncheon.

Amid the situation involving the bomb threats that shut down a portion of downtown and what was happening at UCR stood Deputy Chief of Investigations and Field Operations Jeffrey Greer. Formerly out of the Los Angeles Police Department, he'd faced more than what was going on the day of the mayor's last annual address but Riverside's surely presented its own challenges in other ways. After all, not too long ago, Greer allegedly found himself in the middle of a standoff between himself and two members of the upper management team including Chief Sergio Diaz over the assignment of a sergeant into the supervisory position inside one of the department's general investigation units. But in that case, he apparently prevailed and his decision stood and the assignment never took place.

What had allegedly happened was that the sergeant assigned to the domestic violence division was cycling out under the policies and procedures set aside for special assignments/transfers. He had done his time there and the policy stated that when an officer completes a 2-3 year stint in a special assignment, he or she has to then spend a year working in field operations before he or she can apply and have a chance of receiving another special assignment. So this sergeant had reached the end of his time and he was to be replaced by another sergeant. However, that particular sergeant designated to replace him would be supervising a team of detectives that included his own sister-in-law. So one of the sergeants who had also tested for the position expressed concern about it.

Diaz and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino apparently wanted him to be assigned to the division anyway but allegedly Greer who oversees investigations said no, that doing so would violate the nepotism rule due to the close familial relationship between the sergeant and one of his detectives. He didn't back down even as two higher ranking management team members apparently disagreed with him. Finally they backed down deciding that would be the wiser course of action and another sergeant was assigned to head the domestic violence division instead. It did appear like the wise course of action to take because it's always best to try to avoid having close familial relatives working together particularly where one is supervising the other as well as other employees.

However, in a medium sized department like the Riverside Police Department where there are quite a few officers related to others (and at one point there were two sets of three brothers working there) and in marriages with other officers, that can be very challenging task to accomplish. The city and city departments do have nepotism policies in place but it makes practical sense to avoid having family members work directly together especially in situations where one supervises the other. Doing so reduces any perceptions of favoritism or actual practices of preferential treatment that might take place and the sergeant can be assigned to another division where any conflict of interest issues wouldn't be a factor.

It was ironic that it was the assignment of a new sergeant in domestic violence that led to the standoff amongst members of the department's upper management because the special assignment/transfer policy itself had already been the subject of growing controversy. Allegations involving its use by Diaz had already led to an earlier standoff between him, the management and the leadership of the Riverside Police Officers' Association. Only the reasons were far different from allegations of nepotism.

Yet directly or not they still addressed allegations of favoritism and special treatment towards some officers at the expense of others. A not uncommon theme in the Riverside Police Department as it's turned out.

"Worse than Leach..."

The focus of that controversy that brought the management and the police union at a crossroads involved the reassignment of six sergeants into special assignments after they had already just served time in other special assignments. Meaning that in these cases, the sergeant was assigned to one special assignment for a two to three year stint and then upon completion of that assignment, instead of being transferred back to the field operations division for a year, he or she instead received another special assignment. The rank and file officers had long been noticing that while some of them had to do the minimum of a year in patrol in between field assignments, others didn't have to face those same requirements. Several were even bumped out of their special assignments without completing their time to be replaced by other officers, even though they had been doing quite well in their assignments.

This in large part was courtesy of some language attached at some point to the special assignment/transfer policy that stated that special assignments/transfers could be doled out regardless of a previous assignment at the discretion of the police chief. That language in some cases rendered all the language which preceded it null and void because if it's the chief's discretion then the previous requirements don't have much relevance in the final decision making if the chief chooses to ignore them. In some cases, it can be seen where exceptions to mandating time in patrol might be made but it seems that there are quite a few cases among officers and sergeants were it's the rule rather the exception. In the past year, it seems to have reinvented the "team" system which had been so destructive to the police department under the leadership and management of Chief Russ Leach and his successor, Interim Chief John DeLaRosa. The teams again seem to focus around the issue of special assignments and the application of the policies which govern this practice.

That's not that surprising to see because differential treatment of officers from entry level to the top of management based on the individual's personal relationship with the police chief defined the management culture inside the department before Diaz even arrived. And in time, this dynamic had created a two-team system, meaning that some individuals were on Team Leach and others including later on were on Team DeLaRosa. Most individuals weren't included on either team either by choice or because they lacked certain requirements to even be eligible for team membership in what became clubs with closed memberships.

Teams were then allegedly decided based on who vacationed with who, who partied or drank with which individual and whether or not someone played on the right informally organized sports team. Leach and DeLaRosa each apparently had their own teams, which didn't really come into conflict until Leach's retirement after the DUI incident and attempted cover up during the period of time it was unclear which team's leader would prevail.

As it turned out, neither of them did although DeLaRosa played a much larger role in the future of the Riverside Police Department under its new leadership than did Leach.

When Diaz arrived, many officers hoped that the team system would go the way of the teams' captains and who could really blame them? But by the time Diaz had arrived, team membership had become all about survival, inside a profession where the stakes were already very high. Officers are already highly dependent on other officers to do their jobs and sometimes for their survival. Also organizations that are quite large break down into smaller groups quite naturally which often leads to clique formation, the beginning of team formation.

The irony with the team system is that a lot of those people didn't really need them already having the skills and talents to do just fine if they have the opportunities to develop those attributes. Not that the opportunities for leadership and other skills to grow were abundant because the higher up in rank that individuals rose, the more competitive and cutthroat it all became.

Promoting captains apparently became about who owed who what favor and who cut favor with elected officials and who had angered them. The city denied that there were ties between the whims of elected officials and police officers at the highest levels by awarding large settlements and top tier promotions to two police lieutenants who raised the allegations among others in their lawsuits. Anything to avoid the reality of what these promotional processes would have had spilled out inside a U.S. District courtroom during a jury trial. While telling everyone there were no truth truth to these allegations, by actions the city showed that it believed what it paid out both financially and through public exposure would be much less at settlement than it would be at trial.

But the biggest evidence of the destructive nature of the "team" system on the development of future leaders and managers was shown when after Leach retired, the rest of his cabinet soon followed. Not to mention the fact that when a new outside chief was hired, two out of three members of his cabinet also came from outside agencies which shows a dearth of leadership at the management level that is able to step up into the deputy chief and assistant chief positions. In an environment of cut throat competition and backroom deals where individuals could literally win and lose a promotion during the time period it takes to reach the office to accept it, where is their room for fostering an environment to build and foster leadership and management for the next generation of leaders?

The answer was there was no room to do this at all and there were no leaders or managers who could be chief or even chief in waiting. The talent was definitely there and in great numbers but it was like someone had taken what should have bridged these future leaders and managers to the upper echelons and leveled it to rubble leaving only a big canyon between supervision and mid-line management and the top tier of the chain of command.

But then the agency and city had reaped what they had sown and left the police department with the job of rebuilding and reinventing itself.

The period of time where this all took place left the city in a position where it had to go look outside for its new chief and his or her cabinet. And so that's what the city did during the spring and summer of 2010.

But was anything learned by these prior mistakes that had been made? That would remain to be seen and many people watched and waited during what's called a police chief's "honeymoon
period".

Some People Are More Special than Others

The issue involving special assignments and how they were allocated out by Diaz arose almost immediately.

If some people get turned down for special assignments or face delays because they are told they have to fulfill the patrol requirement while others get to bypass a year in patrol and rack up back to back to back special assignments, then yes, this is going to generate serious problems. The perception could arise that some individuals get to serve one special assignment after another because they are "favorites" of the chief and/or his management team and it'd be difficult to explain to that individual why he or she shouldn't think that way. It's a shame that this pattern is apparently reemerging because favoritism of any sort and a culture that fosters it as a necessary tool of advancement or survival has never benefited the police department and in fact, has proven to be a huge detriment. Not much controversy to that statement if you study its history.

The patrol division is the backbone of any police department including this one or so they say. That's what the management including Diaz has been saying since they'd arrived to lead and manage the police department in the summer of 2010. They said a lot about how down they were with patrol, how they wanted to be stationed where the "troops" were at Lincoln Field Operations Station. But it became clear soon enough as summer turned to autumn that year that instead the management team would render itself invisible to most of those it would lead and manage. Similar to how police management is conducted in the Los Angeles Police Department where those at the bottom are separated by those higher in rank than them by more than just L.A.'s massive geography. It didn't take long for Diaz and his management team members to isolate themselves from the majority of those who work under them. Diaz, Vicino and Deputy Chief of Administration Mike Blakely are all assigned to Orange Street Station in downtown Riverside.

Greer is assigned to Magnolia Police Center across town in La Sierra. Some say that might be a blessing in disguise considering the climate at Orange Street Station. Still, most of the people really don't see much of the management team. They rarely attend roll call sessions and even the field operations captain stationed at Lincoln Field Operations made himself scarce while there. What's interesting about the policy and procedure involving special assignments/transfers is how it's written in part to uphold the inherent necessity and value of the department's patrol division but then its application shows just the opposite. The language requiring the year to be spent in patrol ensures that the patrol division always has the same footing as special assignments, that one can't exist without the other and it's intended to ensure that those who serve special assignments have that time in patrol to keep their required skills relatively fresh and strong so they don't weaken with time spent away from patrol.

But the application has always been manipulated in various ways by different police chiefs and not everyone who is a part of it has been treated equally. It's understandable if questions are raised about sergeant A who applies for an assignment after working in patrol as a supervisor and then loses out to sergeant B who gets that assignment even though he's spent two years or more in another special assignment? Also in cases where officers spend up to six years solely in one special assignment after another? What if after that six years they are put back in a patrol uniform for the first time in six years serving as a higher ranking supervisor of officers including many who have continuously worked in patrol?

Still, when a chief allows an officer or a sergeant to skip the year spent in patrol in order to receive another special assignment, is that a way to express how much a chief values the contributions of the department's patrol division or does it instead devalue it? And if you afford certain employees the abilities to skip that year in patrol but don't offer those same abilities to others, does that foster an environment where everyone is equal but some are more equal than others?

Quite a few interesting issues and questions arise in situations involving special assignments/transfers. But as more and more questions are asked and yes, more controversy arises in how the policies and procedures governing these practices are carried about by the police chief, there likely will be more opportunities for this to happen. The RPOA is under new leadership after its most recent elections produced a new president and vice-president and the leadership has already allegedly issued informal complaints to the management involving the special assignments/transfers involving at least six sergeants.

What's interesting about the burgeoning issue involving special assignments/transfers is the fact that their stock has grown considerably in the past year that Diaz and company have been managing the department. Most visibly this has been in the area of promotions especially those at the mid-line supervisory level meaning lieutenants. That can be gleaned by examining the promotional lists for that rank and comparing and contrasting the composition of three different lieutenants lists in play since January 2010.

Initially, the lists were dominated by sergeants who worked patrol assignments though there were those who worked special assignments sprinkled about near the top of the list as well. But all of the people in the top five of the January 2010 list had recent patrol experience. Whereas most of those on the list who had spent more time in special assignments comprised the middle of the list and lower. Still, if you follow the trend for promoting lieutenants in 2010 before and after Diaz' arrival, this is what you would have seen.

The sequential order of promotions in a field of 12 eligible candidates as like this: 6, 5, 9, 11, 2 and 1. The last promotion was done involving the highest ranking candidate on the list in use in January 2010 but during the period of the next test where the grading had been switched from numerical ranking to the banding system. So why patrol officers dominated the lists for lieutenant, it was those who worked special assignments who tended to be more represented percentage wise in the final selections.

What was noticeable about the production of the latest lieutenant's list is that the process of grading the lieutenants had changed offering up Diaz more control of that process. The composition of the list had changed as well with the top of the list being dominated by officers who had spent time, sometimes quite a bit of time in special assignments. The two "A" band candidates were both working in special assignments inside the chief's office at the time and one or both of them had previously been worked a special assignment before picking up their current position. The other interesting change was that unlike his first round of promotions including three lieutenants in July 2010, Diaz began promoting straight off the lists choosing "A" bands for lieutenants and going by the numerical ranking on the sergeants' lists.

Three females were promoted into supervisory positions by Diaz since he arrived in Riverside and at least two of them had to pass several "tests" before their promotions were solidified. The female sergeant most recently promoted had to be interviewed by Diaz with two other candidates who ranked below her on the sergeant's list. A female lieutenant had to work three different assignments at the same time in the month or so before her promotion. It's not clear if the male sergeant who topped the most recent promotional list was interviewed by Diaz before his promotion along with the female sergeant candidate and another one or two male candidates or if the recently promoted male sergeant was interviewed again by Diaz along with the other "A" band candidate before their promotions took place. It's also not clear if the decision to re-interview candidates on the promotional lists is new practice that Diaz has instituted or whether it was just used with this particular promotion. The practice isn't necessarily bad and might be useful but if it's selectively applied, then that might raise issues.

The promotional process and Diaz' promoting off the list in sequential order, whether he's doing these special interviews or not, once its composition changed left individuals working in the department's patrol division not surprisingly feeling very concerned. The belief that officers needed to work special assignments to have any shot at getting promoted if they were field officers began to grow and field officers wondered if it was even worth testing for sergeant and especially lieutenant if you were a field patrol officer. Whether that concern is widespread may or may not be reflected in the size of the promotional lists after the next testing process. Will the numbers of those who apply and pass tests increase or decrease during the next round?

After all, when Diaz arrived, there were 35 candidates who had passed the sergeant's test which was quite a bit higher than the last promotional list under Leach. Not uncommon one would imagine when a new chief arrives on the job and is given a clean slate. But the interviews done in the latest round were certainly interesting. Not that it's bad to do that but it should be done more consistently if so not to single out one individual.

Sergeants:

1) Charles Payne (promoted not interviewed by chief)

2) Deborah Foy (promoted after interview)

3) Robert Tipre (interviewed)

4) Peter Elliot (interviewed)

Lieutenants

A Band (alphabetical)

Mark Rossi Special Assignment, Chief's office (Not interviewed)

Russ Shubert Special Assignment, Chief's office (Promoted, not interviewed)

B Band

Frank Assumma

Steve Bradshaw

John Capen

Christian Dinco

Val Graham

Julian Hutzler

Dwayne May

Skip Showalter

Lisa Williams

C Band

Brian Dailey

In the meantime, rumors of a captain's vacancy would begin to grow even as members of top level management denied anyone would be leaving. But with an anticipated departure perhaps as early as April, the short list of captains began to get busy. Diaz began having dinners with some of the candidates and another was mentioned by him as being the "entire package" for a captain. These promotions in particular have garnered a lot of interest because Diaz had promised at his swearing in that when he left the department in a decade or so, the next chief would come from within the department. That means building leaders and managers from the lower ranks.

The captains' rank wasn't seen as particularly strong due to the focus on how well candidates allegedly called favors, did favors in the middle of the night and lobbied themselves in front of the chief as shown in sworn testimony by several high ranking members of the police department's management team. This was shown by the fact that when Diaz picked his cabinet, only one of them Deputy Chief Mike Blakely came from inside the department and the management level above the captains had collapsed quickly enough like a house of cards. The department had never had more captains than it did at that time and never had fewer in recent history who were in the running for promotions.

Blakely had been the most senior captain and had avoided the jousting matches to become a captain that apparently dominated the process in the five years preceding the arrival of Diaz. The city itself showed how much when it settled a lawsuit filed by two former lieutenants rather than take those issues to trial in a public forum. The promotion of the next captain in the department will be an interesting and very telling process to witness because how it's done will define a lot about what the department has become under Diaz' watch.

Retirement Postponed?

But that process became delayed when the captain set to retire decided to pull the papers back postponing that decision to leave the agency. That action apparently sent shock waves through the short list of lieutenants on the captain's list.

[City Manager Scott Barber is Diaz' new boss but appears unlike Hudson, to give his employee free rein]

Diaz does have a new boss in City Manager Scott Barber, perhaps the least suspenseful selection for city manager in the city's recent history. It's a given that when you have a city manager who abruptly leaves for another job by announcing it in the middle of a closed session evaluation that the city's not going to want to hire anyone from the outside to wrinkle their noses and question any potential messes left behind. Barber fits that bill quite well, being as far different from City Manager Brad Hudson in temperament as one can get. But what kind of city manager he'll turn out to be remains to be seen as the city enters its fiscal budget crisis. And yes, Nancy Hart there is a crisis given that Barber and others told city employees in labor negotiations that the city was financially in apparently worse straits than we've all been told publicly. This led not surprisingly to employees saying, hey you just told us we were in better shape, could balance a budget and now we don't have enough money? Color some of us confused as well as to the why the city's sending out mixed messages on its financial status to different parties.

The Riverside Police Officers' Association for example just ironed out its long overdue contract with the city and is awaiting city council ratification on it. It held steady compared to the last one but the union leadership hired an auditor to look at the city's finances. That's good news in the sense that it means that two groups were currently auditing the city's finances, more people should be paying attention to what's going on that the city's not publicly telling people. But as confusing and overwhelming as it all might look, here's a benchmark to look at in the upcoming year if you're a city resident.

Look at your utility bills, electric water and yes, sewer. Look for rate hikes, new "fees" and taxes on your bills. You'll be seeing hikes and here's the reason why. The city rakes in a lot of cash from owning its own public utility but it's limited by the city's charter in how it can access that cash flow and how much of it. The city charter currently states that the city can take no more than 11.5% of that cash from the utilities and there were no efforts to raise that cap. There were discussions on lowering it but no action was taken in response. So if you can't raise the cap legally but you need more cash in a hurry, what do you do?

There's only one thing the city can do and that's raise rates and impose fees and taxes for all these services. That's what the city will be doing to pay off its accumulated debt and the money owed on the $2.1 billion in Riverside Renaissance projects.

That will present challenges in a city where it can't even say how it intends to provide $1.4 million in funding to relocate the police dispatch center, money that truly should have been secured before the city entered and probably influenced the highly questionable four-way land swap that has the police department moving out of the Orange Street building a few years earlier than planned. The county responded to that action by planning to retake that building by the end of the calendar year which has increased the necessity of the relocation of dispatch. Since it's likely that the land swap was done largely to benefit the developer who needed lease revenue to pay off $37.6 million in state revitalization bonds for his new office tower, it's too bad that more attention wasn't paid to the details that impact city departments. The developer needed that lease revenue from an anchor client in his tower because the property he put up as collateral for the bonds, the Raincross Promenade, couldn't lease out enough of its condos to make the bond payments which have to come from lease revenue.

It's beyond mind boggling that in the midst of this musical chairs taking place with developers, high priced law firms and city departments over four pieces of property that it was one of the most important components of all, the dispatch unit that was left without a chair.

Then again perhaps not.

But then if you read through the city's enforceable obligation payment schedule, involving the soon to be dissolved RDA, it provides some picture of the city's financial picture.

The city council for the most part didn't even seem to have read it but then it's not clear who reads what agenda reports, though it's clear that with some council members they are taking their first look at them when they are on the dais. It and its management tell the public and the press one thing and the labor unions another which clouds the picture even further.

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

[Riverside's soon to be vacated Orange Street Station which has seen its fair of drama...and locksmiths this past year]

But while Riverside's halls of power continue to sort out the financial picture or cloud it further, a few blocks away sits another power structure of sorts at the Riverside Police Department's administrative headquarters. This is where Diaz and two members of his cabinet, Asst. Chief Chris Vicino and Deputy Chief Mike Blakely set up shop and do their respective jobs. Greer is stationed about 10 miles away from the epicenter and runs a pretty low-key operation apparently in respect to the rest of management. Whether he appreciates the added distance between him and Orange Street isn't clear. But the people who are currently inside the aging building better not get too settled because Riverside County intends to kick them out at the end of the year if they're still in residence.

How the upper management is run closely mirrors the administrative style of another police department situated 60 miles away in Los Angeles. The members of the chief and his cabinet keep a low profile inside their agency certainly from the other stations like Lincoln Field Operations and in a pretty cramped old-style building, certain dynamics come into play as they did fairly early on.

One of the first dynamics to play out apparently involved Vicino and Blakely who both work in their offices on the second floor at varying distances away from the hub of power which is the chief's office. The design of the station provides opportunities for various members of the management staff to either allow easy access to them by other members or to place restrictions on it. This is easily accomplished in most cases because each office is connected to the neighboring one by a door. It's pretty easy to get a good sense of how the dynamics of the administration are set up by whether or not these entry ways are open or closed and which ones. There have been some administrations that pretty much had an open door policy and kept the doors open connecting all the offices together.

Then again, there have been some administrations where access has been restricted. This allegedly took place in the case of Vicino and Blakely who both have fairly dynamic and strong personality styles and their own ideas about how things should be done. So perhaps it's not that surprising that one or the other might want to place some barriers between them. While Diaz quietly watched, the two allegedly had their passionate disagreements, sometimes in the parking lot at the station. At one point, allegedly a locksmith was called out to change the locks on Vicino's door. Some people saw it as a dynamic between the older and more established guard at the police department and the newcomers.

At one extended command staff meeting early on, Diaz was allegedly concerned that members of his management were perhaps making it difficult for him to accomplish his objectives in branding the police department with his style and sending it in his defined direction as any chief would do. So one lieutenant asked him, give us an example and Diaz allegedly related the conflict that arose early on in the police department and City Hall regarding the selection of his cabinet. One of his choices, not being backed by City Hall, most likely Hudson who was his boss at the time. Diaz' initial boss had been heavily involved in the police department rendering the police chief he supervised and many say, micro managed down to the last paperclip completely inert. At the time Diaz had been receiving advice and assistance from DeLaRosa who had been his tour guide of sorts when Diaz had first been hired, a decision that some questioned concerning what had happened with DeLaRosa in the wake of the DUI incident involving his former boss.

But Diaz kept his cabinet choice and when his cabinet was assembled, they began the task of deciding how to manage and operate the police department. Clashes developed in large part because people bristled at language used to make changes by stating "this is how we did it at [insert former police agency]" as the Riverside Police Department didn't want to be defined as another agency. Sometimes it came down to whether you trust what you know, or trust what you don't. The department had a recent history of alternating between inside chiefs and those hired from the outside but in this case, it had just received its second outside its chief and another one with an extensive history in the LAPD.

Diaz and his two outside hired cabinet team members were awarded "at will" three year contracts that expire in the summer of 2013. He had said at his swearing in that he'd be a long-term chief in a department that like many in the nation had only one in recent years that had lasted nearly a decade. However, Vicino unlike Diaz had prior experience twice as an interim chief in the Pasadena Police Department and it wouldn't be surprising if he was interested in becoming a permanent selection in another jurisdiction. So the experience and good recommendations would help him greatly in that endeavor and his time spent in Riverside has been that he's been put to a pretty demanding work schedule by Diaz. He's also been placed in the responsibility as head of administration to institute changes initiated by Diaz in various divisions under that umbrella.

But no one in the cabinet including Diaz had prior long-term chief experience.

Some of the most changes instituted by Diaz and Vicino being how the department handles administrative investigations carried out by its Internal Affairs Division which then has its work product evaluated, reviewed and ultimately signed off (or not) by Vicino and Diaz. Formerly, Blakely had played a much larger role in that process involving the Internal Affairs Division but changes led to Vicino playing a much larger role which not surprisingly had a large impact on how the police department conducts that side of its business. Staffing in the Internal Affairs Division was cut from five sergeants to only three even as the department still struggles to complete the investigation and review process of citizen complaint investigations to better accommodate the guidelines for competition in that process stated in RPD policy 4.12.

That division had been commanded by Lt. Mike Cook for several years but Lt. Bob Williams would be moving in at the end of the month to take the helm. Williams, a strong candidate on the captain's list would be overseeing the operations of the division that oversees internal investigations. One of his roles and responsibilities is to determine whether or not investigations will be launched and who will be doing the investigations. In the role of citizen complaints, this might mean farming the majority of them out to be handled by field supervisors. But Internal Affairs had seen more than its share of politics and power plays during the Leach years.

In 2010, it also had played a role in the investigation of the Leach DUI incident though Hudson and his assistant city manager, Tom DeSantis pretty much controlled that whole process. The division launched an investigation against then Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel and then provided a case lesson on its differential treatment of officers who are under investigation compared to management team members.

In one case, a male deputy chief was told to wait inside a police station to be informed of when he would be interviewed by Internal Affairs and a female officer was essentially forced into a car without much explanation, driven across town and then interrogated for hours as if she had committed a major crime and really had no rights under the process. It's difficult not to notice the disparity in treatment between a management male employee and a female subordinate employee in an investigative process and not believe there's a double standard there.

Within days of her interview, most everyone knew about the content of its content. When the department couldn't treat one of its own like a human being during a process where an individual is afforded rights then what does that say about everyone else? The department and city had spent as much time during its investigation of the Leach incident trying to find out information on th0se who had blown the whistle on it. Lawsuits and early retirements abounded that year as the whistle blowers left the canvas as well. The cost of litigation in response to what happened in 2010 just in terms of what that one division was ordered to do by higher ups is still being determined.

In late 2010 and 2011, the climate changed and at the December meeting of the CPRC, the dynamic between Vicino and the Internal Affairs division members giving a presentation at the meeting seemed downright chilly but then the dynamic had seemed chilly among management and supervisors and/or members of other divisions too. How can you miss the fact that there are members of Diaz' management team who only stand on opposite sides of the city council chambers from each other and never acknowledge each other like they do with other individuals?

In the particular case of the CPRC meeting, it caught the attention of a couple people in attendance and was in contrast to interactions that took place in the past. If you've been watching the fabric for a while, it's not difficult to see a wrinkle in it. And some of these chilly or hostile dynamics get noticed.

One wonders what the reasons for all these curious dynamics that appear in public might be because there's a lot that people recognize on the outside but don't see the origins of why that might be in any dynamic that rises to attention. But the division itself is most known for the investigations it didn't do when two key incidents involving some of the personnel that Diaz kept closest occurred and investigations weren't conducted in either case. When a chief walks away from questions on whether an investigation should be conducted in one case by allegedly saying he didn't want to hear about it, then it's not surprising that's going to cause some ripples around it. Every chief has faced those kinds of tests and how they are handled or whether they are handled at all does define their tenure in the seat they've been hired to fill. But what will happen if another employee say a lower ranking one gets into a similar incident and it becomes about whether or not to institute a double standard by investigating that individual when a prior individual was treated much differently?

That likely will be determined next time.

Until then, this month, the police department underwent its most recent shift change. Like most city departments, the police department had already stopped posting its management and supervisory hierarchy on its Web site. But Capt. John Wallace and his executive lieutenant, Gary Leach were both reassigned out of the patrol division. Wallace went to Personnel and Training and that lieutenant, Mike Perea is now at Lincoln Field Operations Station in charge of field operations. Leach is now assigned to the West Neighborhood Policing Center with Lt. Andy Flores replacing Lt. Vic Williams in the East NPC.

As 2012 continues, more dynamics continue to play out. In December, a confrontation occurred between an officer retiring from the police department on medical and Blakely during the roll call ceremony. Some say Vicino continues to play the muscle for Diaz out in certain areas of the department and Greer stood firm against Vicino and Diaz in the face of a growing budget crisis in the city. Civilian staffing continues to get depleted, new police union leadership is elected and the dispatch division remains in limbo over $1.4 million which is the kind of money Hudson used to call chump change in a city with a "balanced" budget.

To Be Continued....

State of the City of Riverside
And Whether to Allow Its Residents to Amend Its Charter

[Mayor Ron Loveridge gave his final State of the City Address and meant it this time, which still leaves him time to weld his influence on the dais like he did with the Charter initiative process]

7-o vote by City Council

No to Vote, Yes to Afternoon Workshop as Councilman Steve Adams warns that some of them might not be "charter worthy" or have unforeseen consequences.

[A packed city council chamber listened to the city council's plan to postpone voting on the charter amendment initiatives]

[The Finance Committee has once again dropped off the canvas even as fiscal accountability dominated discussions during the Charter Review Committee process]

Even as the Finance Committee again starts dropping meetings off of its schedule, the city council grappled in the face of the charter initiative recommendations that were brought to it by its own hand picked committee this past week. It's difficult to say which ones had the city council and mayor most concerned and why unlike with past charter review processes, this leadership decided to go against its own committee that it had just praised so heavily minutes earlier and postpone the whole process to an afternoon workshop session next month.

There was a lot of rhetoric about how concerned they were that the public hadn't fully participated, which is somewhat...belated in nature. After all, when the concerns about the number and scheduling of the public forums was brought up including to elected officials several months ago, only one council member, Paul Davis, raised any concerns about the lack of meetings in the city's largest ward. Total silence from everyone else on the dais, including from three members who at the time had no public forums scheduled in their wards.

Councilman Steve Adams said it had to be determined whether the initiatives were "charter worthy" or wouldn't have unforeseen and unpleasant consequences. They might, if the initiative on the independent auditor passes because the city council has made it abundantly clear that it has little or no desire as a body to involve itself in its duties involving fiscal accountability and oversight choosing to rely on "staff" to do that for it. After all, the city council had little or no knowledge that its previous city manager had generated expenditures in his discretionary fund of between $29-45 million annually. It still has very little or no interest in those expenditures which far exceed those afforded a city manager in most other cities.

It's likely that the biggest stumbling blocks in the recommendations were the ones involving fiscal accountability (which dominated the discussion at the Charter Review Meetings) and changes involving Riverside Public Utilities.

Will the city council use the workshop process to actually stonewall public comment? For public workshops, public comment is entirely optional and left to the discretion of the mayor and the fact that it's being held in the afternoon, that speaks for itself. But it'll be apparent soon whether this is all being done to truly elicit public input or to stonewall the process so that the city council and mayor can winnow down or even out the initiatives it doesn't like. As this workshop approaches, a list of the proposed ballot initiatives will be featured along with their accompanying "danger factor" score, meaning which ones will most likely be viewed by the city council and mayor as the greatest threats.

So far the call for an independent auditor that reports to the city council is at the top of the list as surprisingly (or really not) this one has very little support on the dais at the moment.

The workshop is currently scheduled for Feb. 7 in the afternoon.

The Charter Review Committee submitted this report to the city council on its recommendations and they include the back stories of how they came to be part of that list. Some of these if passed could present an unforeseen consequence to the city government by pushing its accountability score up a few notches up. And yes, there are some on the dais who might see that as a development of the most dire nature.

First Fight Breaks Out in Mayor's Race

Adkison Vs Bailey

Round One

[Mayoral candidate Ed Adkison has lobbed the first jab at one of his rivals in the 2012 mayoral race]

The Riverside's mayoral race is off and running with its very first controversy launched before the opportunity for filing your papers has even closed.

Rusty Bailey's current campaign site doesn't list any endorsements received. Google produced an endorsement page which when clicked, produced what's known as a 404 Resource Not Found page which is commonly found in cases where a page once existed but has been taken offline.

Adkison has a facebook page as well as a campaign site. The brouhaha died down soon enough and it's certain that the next fight will be on civic issues including the lack of true financial accountability and fiscal oversight over this city and the city council's recent stumbling over the very idea that initiatives might be placed on the June election ballot addressing these shortcomings. The useful aspect of this brouhaha that broke out is that perhaps it's pretty much informed people which candidate retained political consultant Brian Floyd's services for this election cycle.

[Councilman and current mayoral candidate Rusty Bailey won't be able to nod off during the 2012 elections]

So far besides the aforementioned Adkison and Bailey, Council members Mike Gardner and Andy Melendrez have also entered the race along with Dvonne Pitruzzello and Peter Benavidez. The election is sure to heat up soon and hopefully focus on the many issues pressing this city as the cycles are set to coincide with several key incidents in early 2012.

Adkison so far has picked up the most endorsements and there's more to be handed out and boasted about in the upcoming weeks.

Election 2013 Already Beginning?

[Councilman Paul Davis might already have company in his re-election bid]

It appears that Election 2013 is already getting started Where else but on Craigslist? It's been rumored for a while now that Charles Condor who is the legislative field representative for Councilman Chris MacArthur is planning to run against Councilman Paul Davis in 2013 but most people didn't seem to actually believe these rumors. Still, it will be interesting to how this plays out including when people actually file for the election.

No City Council meeting on Jan. 21.

2012: Bring On the Mayor's Race

2011-12-22T08:18:00.000-08:00

Riverside City Council Votes to Postpone Charter Ballot Initiative Vote

7-0, the city council votes to take issues to afternoon workshop to do as Council member Steve Adams said, determine if they are "charter worthy" Which recommendations made the city council balk?

Stay tuned as this exciting drama continues....and what about the $29 million in sewer loans, will the sewers ever see that money again?

[A full house inside the city council chambers during the discussion on the recommendations generated by the Charter Review Committee]

UPDATE: K9 Officer Ray Soto to retire after 30 years.

Officer Ray Soto and Carat, 9 who also is retiring

Update: Peter Benavidez a community activist and member of the Charter Review Committee joins the mayor's race.

[UCR police officers in riot gear in the Common Areas at UCR on a day where students protested a UC Regents meeting]

Reports of police officers shooting rubber bullets at UCR students as Riverside County Sheriff deputies including a van arrive...

[Dozens of attorneys chilling at the City Hall Cafeteria waiting out an evacuation caused by bomb threats against the downtown county court buildings]

Update: Officer Debora Foy promoted as the top candidate on the list to sergeant but not before Chief Sergio Diaz interviews the top three candidates as speculation arose as to why the delay after the lieutenant promotion.

Double Dipping of Pensions Needs to Sunset in wake of revelations about the two pensions that will be received in Sacramento by former Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson.

Update: In the Midst of a financial crisis, Riverside's Finance Committee once again goes dark for the second straight month. In the midst of all this turmoil could it be true as Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen said, there's nothing important to discuss?

A Tale of Two Wards

“Those of you who don’t like redevelopment will see what happens without it. All the things that you want in La Sierra aren’t going to happen now. We don’t have the funds and that’s just the way it is. We’ll just have to muddle through.”

---Riverside Councilwoman Nancy Hart

UPDATE:

"Worse than Leach":

Special Assignments and the RPD

To Be Continued...

including who said, not on my watch

UPDATE: Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz promotes Russell Shubert to lieutenant.

but is the implementation of a certain departmental policy about to set off a firestorm in the RPD?

[Did the decision on a special assignment of an officer force a standoff between Diaz and a member of his management team?]

Six implementations of the department's policy on special assignments/transfers allegedly lead to complaints by the Riverside Police Officers' Association, But Diaz wanted to carry out a seventh transfer that sparked questions and led one of his management team members to put his foot down.

Which member of Diaz' cabinet told him no?

Maybe there are other ways to relocate this dispatch center — a move that was necessitated by the city’s scheme to remove RPD from its $1-a-year headquarters as part of a sweet deal to help a big law firm get out of a lease and move into a new building.

---Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein

Riverside Redevelopment Agency's debt amount per city resident:

$4,950.50

City's Monthly Investment summary for November 2011 is a document that it's wondered if the city council and mayor ever read it. Check out page 24-8 where it tells you how much money's in the city's different funds. Currently the general fund which pays for the vital services (minus utilities) that residents depend on is holding about $2,154 in it. Now there's an asterisk only this time it's not that the general fund is being co-mingled with Redevelopment money but that property taxes will replenish the general fund by December 2011. Actually, the money probably won't reach the city until possibly February 2012 and county sources say the property taxes won't be what the city anticipated receiving this year.

Let's do some comparative shopping for November 2010 and 2009.

In November 2010's investment summary the general fund housed a deficit of $2,556,808 and in November 2009's investment summary, it housed a deficit of $16,067,776.

The sizable deficit in the transportation account this month has been attributed to waiting for TUMF funding which are being billed.

Still there's something rather unusual about the latest investment summary involving its other funding sources.

In this month's report higher monies in the city's three utilities than usual and better get used to that especially when rates and taxes for all three, electric, water and sewer start increasing and Riverside residents, business and residential, start seeing it on their monthly bills.

Then there's that RDA bond proceeds 2011 fund now housing less than half of the original $65 million that the city sold itself in "bonds" last March and then paid off a portion of several months later during the months of co-mingling general fund money with RDA money not to disguise the balance of the general fund but to disguise the balance of the RDA fund and not from the city residents because City Hall didn't think anyone outside of it read the summary reports. Asst. City Manager of Finance Paul Sundeen explained why the city engaged in moving the monies during a recent Investment Committee meeting which was very helpful in shedding light on these actions.

The city's post-RDA plan is here.

"I can't write a book. If I did, too many people would go to jail."

-Anonymous

UPDATE: Former City Manager Brad Hudson spends money on a shoe polisher but since he's double dipping pension plans, you think he could afford it.

Someone said the above to me once during a conversation about Riverside City Hall a few years ago and they sounded like they weren't joking. And I wondered to myself why would anyone think that way about the All American City (tm)?

But that was several years ago and thousands of pages of documents filed away in my memory and this is now on the eve of 2012. Still, what did this person mean with this observation? Hyperbole or cynicism, or something in the broad expanse in between.

Besides when the anonymous and very nasty prose starts showing up on Craigslist, it's pretty clear that there's more lurking in the underbelly of the All-American City or the City of Arts, ~~Culture~~ and Innovations than those entrusted with it want its residents to see. Now writing about some of it or even asking questions about what is going on in this city's enough to get you labeled as a "bitch" or a "tramp" but this year, there could be a lot more of us including male folks who are filling up those classifications as more and more of what's going on in Riverside proper comes to light. But it might start costing city residents more financially before reaching that point.

Must the public wait and start asking questions when our utility rates skyrocket in the not so distant future (as has happened in other places like this King County city). But in the case of Renton, the increases across the board in electricity, water and sewer went to rehabilitate and upgrade the utility infrastructures related to these services. In other words, revenue generated through utility bills was actually put back into improving the condition of the equipment that provided the utility services including a waste water treatment plant.

That doesn't appear to be the case in Riverside, California.

After all, revenue from the city-owned utilities is pumped into the nebulous general fund, 11.5% of that overall revenue as set by the city's charter, and monies from utilities has served time as a place holder for loans used to buy up properties for private development until the much beleaguered Sewer Fund could pick them up longer-term. While the aging sewers continue to haunt some older neighborhoods with basement backups and toilet issues, the money generated for the sewer fund collected by city business and residential customers seems to be spent or "loaned" elsewhere.

[The ATM machine at City Hall is an appropriate metaphor for the city's much taxed (and overtaxed) Sewer Fund]

While money was raised but mostly borrowed (about 60% of it) to spend on the Riverside Renaissance. That term was borrowed from history but in actuality, the term "renaissance" is falling out of favor, as the periods of history itself are being redefined and in some cases, renamed.

Johan Huizinga, who wrote The Waning of the Middle Ages called it a period of decline instead saying much of what was progress had been destroyed or lost instead. So the value of the original Renaissance is up to date just as with the case of the new one. Admittedly, a few of us haven't quite jumped on the bandwagon of the $2.1 billion and growing experience because it seemed like the first ones to benefit from it were the private out of town developers including a couple who financed some pivotal

It remains to see what the "Renaissance" will mean in Riverside including when the future generations of its residents are stuck with the bills literally. Meaning that it's more than likely they will pay its cost through fees and taxes collected through increases in utility rates involving electricity, water and sewer. Rate increases for electricity service alone have been considered as high as 60% when the "freeze" period on those rates ends. Other cities which own their own utilities which have undergone ambitious if overdrawn restructuring plans like the Renaissance have followed them with massive increases in utility rates. Sometimes beyond what many people including those on fixed incomes can pay out. Those who are poor, seniors and the disabled often are the most impacted by these increases in delivery systems to bring utilities to their homes and businesses.

There might be higher sewer fees and money owed as well to go into a fund that's been borrowed against to purchase properties in the downtown area including those on Market Street later handed off to a private developer. That money will be tied up for at least five years and possibly longer. That's money that can't go towards its intended purpose of paying for the maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure in the sewer system.

The downtown library could very well be a pivotal issue in the upcoming mayor's race as well. Even as other libraries were built including in La Sierra and Orange Terrace and others were renovated including in Arlington and Casa Blanca, the downtown library which is the cornerstone of them all went completely ignored. Yes, there was some discussion and proposals under public pressure to address its deterioration but nothing concrete has been done during times when the city was more flush. Now that the city's finally acknowledging a piece of its deficit, even the tiniest improvements likely have been postponed indefinitely.

[Help! Riverside had its Renaissance and totally forgot about me]

In a way the neglected downtown library is lucky. Unlike its brethren in Arlington and Casa Blanca, at least it's not being used as lease revenues stream collateral for the $20 million bonds the city took out for an out of town private developer hoping to build a hotel in the worst economy for one ever. Now why on earth would the city use city-owned property which also includes two fire stations as collateral to essentially give a sweet heart deal of a hotel to a private developer?

The developer had to turn to the city because no bank or other lending institution would finance the Hyatt Hotel in Riverside because this region of the state has the highest foreclosure rate for hotels and inns in the state. Then after the city, not the developer (who so far has just had to purchase the land at somewhat less than its assessed value) puts money into this private venture, it announces that when the Hyatt opens in 2012, the Riverside Convention Center near it will be closing down for extensive renovations until sometime in 2014. And since the conventions at the Center create much of the traffic for the three closest hotels including the Hyatt, they all three will have to cope with paying for themselves during the time the convention center is offline for use. Of course, it'll be the newest hotel, the one subsidized by the city's loans to the developer that will have the most difficult time doing so. So first the city council sells the hotel as something the developer will be solely responsible for financing, then that turns out to be not quite the truth according to documents filed involving the Hyatt including the purchased bonds. And then the city show more signs of poor business decision making by timing the renovation of the main bread and butter for the Hyatt, the convention center with the first two years of the Hyatt's existence.

But have no fear. If no one can make the bond payments, the city's put up four of its properties as collateral.

[I got a facelift but now I'm collateral to help the city loan money to a developer for the Hyatt Hotel miles away from me]

[Me too, here in Casa Blanca. All that renovation and I could be sold off and demolished if the city or developer defaults on the $1.5 million in bond payments and that's just the interest!]

But while in many cities, public buildings only are single use, here in Riverside it goes double. They serve both as facilities to serve and be used by the public and as collateral so that the city can continue its "loan" programs to its favorite private developers.

One citrus farmer's stand against using retreated sewage water in his groves. In 2009, the city of Riverside had stated it wouldn't be using this retreated water

Finance Committee Watch 2011 Report

Set up in 2010 when the committee that serves as a layer of fiscal oversight fell off the radar

Mystery Solved!!!

[Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen said the Finance Committee didn't meet "for a period of time" because there was nothing important to discuss.]

It was delightful to learn during the December Charter Review Committee meeting that when Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen (who didn't smile so much at this meeting) answered some questions about the city's financial structure including the issue of the here today gone yesterday Finance Committee.

As you know, the Finance Committee is a subcommittee of the city council with three city council members sitting on it. Nancy Hart is the chair and Paul Davis and Mike Gardner are the other members on it. They are entrusted to receive reports on financial issues impacting the city including those involving certain taxes imposed and then make recommendations to take to the full city council. But for nearly 12 months in 2009, the Finance Committee never met while chaired first by Chris MacArthur and later Nancy Hart.

When public pressure began to build, Hart addressed the lack of meetings during a city council meeting essentially saying that she only met when the city management including Sundeen told her there were agenda items to discuss. Meaning that the city management set the meetings rather than the city council with elected leaders waiting to be told by "staff" what to do including when to conduct meetings to evaluate and discuss staff's work product. The tail wagging the dog instead of vice versa but then it hardly seems that the city council's actually serving in the leadership position rather than as servants to some of their own direct staff.

Not long after that the Finance Committee began holding regular meetings again.

Was it the pressure put on Hart and others or was it the fact that after a long drought of unimportant financial matters had finally ended? That for some inexplicable reason the city had no relevant financial business to discuss for nearly a year and then all of a sudden, it had its plate filled with issues enough so that some meetings now include more than one agenda item?

You can research the statistics on how often the finance committee met by checking out the minute records for each year on the city's Web site but the following numbers are what you'll find on your search.

The situation involving the Finance Committee is one of the most blatant examples of how the city council began surrendering its mechanisms of fiscal accountability entrusted to it by the voters of the city to its "staff" or city management. In fact, while the Finance Committee met 11 times in 2005, nine of those meetings took place before June which was when City Manager Brad Hudson started working. The next meeting after he arrived was held in the autumn and then the number of meetings started dwindling off until they disappeared off the calendar altogether.

Finance Committee Meetings (2003-2011)
(according to online records at Riversideca.gov)

1999: 20

2000: 19

2001: 19

2002: 17

2003: 8

2004: 21

2005: 11 (nine before June 2005)

2006: 6

2007: 3

2008: 4

2009: 2 (November, December)

2010: 9

2011: 10

Several dates are noted above. June 2005 was when interim City Manager Tom Evans stepped down and newly hired city manager, Brad Hudson stepped in his place. Although the city council's composition didn't change nor did that of the Finance Committee, the number of meetings began to decrease almost immediately. In fact, the Finance Committee took a four month sabbatical almost immediately.

One of the watershed dates was Feb. 13, 2006 which was when the Finance Committee decided without a formal motion to recommend the hiring of Meyer Hoffman McCann to audit the city's books based on this written report submitted by Hudson, Sundeen and City Attorney Gregory Priamos even though they were half-way through a contract with their previous firm according to this earlier report. It was partly based on strong recommendations from "staff" in Pasadena the city that would later hire as its city manager, Michael Beck.

The Finance Committee did meet once nearly every month while being chaired by Hart. Not that some of the meetings weren't painful to watch. But it was during one of those infrequent meetings held by the more nebulous Investment Committee (which seems to mainly consist of two people) that some of the more interesting comments were made including by Hart.

"Because everybody else is having such a hard time, they don't understand why we're not and they think we're hiding something because we're not having a difficult time. And I find that offensive."

---Riverside City Councilwoman Nancy Hart at an Investment Committee meeting

To hear that a city councilwoman is offended by people asking questions or criticizing the state of the city's finances is somewhat troubling but then this is the council member who admitted publicly that she thought public documents should be disseminated on the basis of the motivations of the person doing the requests. Meaning that she didn't feel that they should be given to people trying to catch the elected officials in a "gotcha" moment. Apparently she doesn't realize that the California Public Records Act requests doesn't discriminate in that fashion although there have been occasions when municipal governments beholden to it have tried to do exactly that. She moved on from that episode but she seems to be one of the majority of city council members who can't really answer any question on finances or well on....anything without referring it to "staff" to answer instead.

Hart is a woman in a man's world and has allegedly told individuals that she wished she had what the men had without realizing that her problem doesn't lie there. Her problem lies in the fact that she apparently doesn't appear to understand half of what goes on during a city council meeting including what's even in the monthly investment summary reports. But then again she's not the only one on the dais with that problem. Most of them look somewhat befuddled when discussions of the city's financial issues and expenditures arise during meetings. They hardly ever answer any questions themselves but almost always refer to "staff" sitting on the sidelines. But that's what comes from not being engaged in that part of it.

How many city council members know what's in the general fund when all the RDA funds that are co-mingled with it are taken out of it? How many city council members read the monthly investment summary reports, how many know the banks where the city places its investment including those that are located outside the state of California?

Hart beat out incoming councilman, Paul Davis for the position of chairing the Finance Committee. At the time that didn't involve much time or effort on her part because the committee hadn't met for over a year. But then that's what led to her appointment by Mayor Ron Loveridge and the mayor pro tem who are encharged with considering requests by council members for spots on different committees and then making the final selections themselves.

[One wanted the top seat. The other got it but who will control the direction of the Finance Committee in 2012?]

The Finance Committee will likely continue to make news into 2012.

Are Redevelopment Agencies (Not Redevelopment) Really Dead?

Redevelopment is a mixed bag, not a money bag. But that’s not how its champions see it. They see an entitlement program and they’re hooked on it. Tax increment is their heroin. No wonder they went to court.

---Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein

Kind of related to all the intrigue involving the Finance/Investment Committees but also apart from it was the State Supreme Court's decision on whether or not Sacramento has the power to ax Redevelopment Agencies. As it turns out, the powers that be can dismantle what they create in terms of divisions and those include RDAs according to the state's highest court. What Sacramento doesn't have is the right to direct the use of local resources as payments or "ransom" as they've been called by some local city officials back to the state to keep an RDA in place.

An emergency meeting was held by Riverside's own city government amidst the holiday season when regular and public meetings are not held but whatever decisions were made during this meeting (which even under the emergency provision of the Brown Act required a 24 public notification) are top secret along with most of the other business conducted in this city.

Those that lobbied heaviest for the RDAs including the League of California Cities brought this worst case scenario as they call it on themselves when they decided to go "all or nothing" in the litigation they initiated against the state after two legislative initiatives were passed earlier last year. They took a huge gamble to have everything rather than less than what they had and they lost it all in one swoop in the form of a judiciary decision.

Redevelopment Agencies could return as infrastructure financiing districts and it's more than likely that what the court decision will ultimately do is not end Redevelopment Agencies but move the parties back to the negotiation tables to restore them in some form, but will any newly erupting "districts" have more mechanisms in place to make them fiscally accountable both locally and in Sacramento?

Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein wrote a pretty insightful column on the situation. Former city council candidate Bill Scherer wrote about the day redevelopment in California died. He writes about how redevelopment became more of a tool for politicians to remain in power than in actually engaging in...redevelopment in a city.

(excerpts, Scherer)

The city of Riverside has about $1.8 billion in bonded redevelopment debt (including interest) that must be paid, a burden left to us by the redevelopment agency—the city council. Local agencies like Riverside’s are supposed to remain until their debts are paid, then they will sunset as they were originally intended to do. The credit card has been taken away, but the kid is still responsible for paying off the balance. Except, in this case, those who ran up the balance walk away as the citizens pay off the debt. Don’t expect them to walk far, either.

............

If power was not the purpose, then the failure of Riverside’s agency to improve the economic condition of Riverside in the 50 years they have existed here would have resulted in the prescribed sunset of project areas and a shift to a proven, productive model. Instead, new blights were “found,” new project areas created, and project areas scheduled to sunset were “merged,” a Byzantine method of keeping them alive.

Riverside currently has one of the highest unemployment rates and an extremely high housing foreclosure rate (including underwater mortgages) in the country despite and perhaps in part because of RDAs which perhaps helped the region become more highly dependent on its primary industry, new building construction than it otherwise might have been. Part of that dependency was fed by the rapid growth of the areas caused by migration from the coastlines towards areas with more affordable housing but what did RDAs do to broaden our economic base in the Inland Empire and in Riverside? Elected officials especially when they're up for reelection talk about all the thousands of jobs created by RDAs yet in the city's own documentation of RDAs and job creation that it sends up to State Comptroller John Chiang, the numbers cited belie that claim.

Why weren't more successful models for redevelopment created in Riverside and other places when the current ones weren't successful, or had to be merged mixing areas truly in need of redevelopment with those that didn't but received a lion share of the resources anyway (i.e. the merging of University corridor with Sycamore Canyon for example)?

Too Broke to Fund the City's New Emergency Communications Center?

Waiting to find out with Bated Breath

The city council's already starting to round up its hostages beginning with the renovation and relocation of the police dispatch division.

(excerpt)

“My funding hasn’t been approved (by the City Council) at this point,” Deputy Chief Mike Blakely said. “I’ll be waiting with bated breath to see what the city will do in response to the Supreme Court decision and how that will affect my project.”

It shouldn't be a long wait for Blakely because after all, it's not like the city's broke or anything. So the check should be in the mail for his project by the end of the week. After all, the city's spent half a million, a million or so dollars on projects that were luxury items even risky investments outside its municipal scope, not necessities.

Apparently most of the $1.4 million costs of this project were to come out of redevelopment funds but it's not clear why or why action wasn't taken to seek alternative funding sources as soon as the Court issued a stay on Redevelopment including funding back on June 30 like the city did with other projects including those not nearly as vital. It's not even clear why the dispatch center was to be funded through redevelopment in the first place unless it ties in with earlier attempts to move it and a fire station facility to property in Olivewood that the city lost a chunk of change in purchasing the parcels. But then one of the city's patterns and practices with land is to buy it for a lot and sell or give it away for less.

But hey, if the city can afford to run a theater at a loss, a parking program at a loss and invest in hotels, then coming up with the money to fund a dispatch center shouldn't be so much of a problem. After all, the city pays out the total cost of the dispatch renovation and relocation out annually as part of its payments on bond interest in relation to the Hyatt Hotel as a "loan" to the developer. Have the developer foot his own bill for one year's payment and then there will be funding for the dispatch center. Problems solved.

After all, the city council and mayor and their entire finance division spent most of 2011 getting up to the podium reassuring the government and the viewing public how flush the city was in terms of spare change compared to other cities. Because if the city can't afford to come up with its own funding for a service required to be operational at all times by state law, then yes, Virginia, the city must really be broke.

But not too broke to help a developer pay off the bonds he used to build his office building in the worst market for it. That led to a four way land swap which left the police department and unfortunately, its vital dispatch unit holding the bag and the city up a creek. That four way land swap served no public purpose for city residents, is going to cost city residents quite a bit of money and ultimately, could put the city's provision of emergency dispatch services in danger.

Sacramento County's Own Marie Antoinette Redecorates and the Mayoral's Race Heats Up

[Former Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson and current mayoral candidate, Ed Adkison at Hudson's going away soiree.]

In the meantime, former city manager Brad Hudson now CEO of Sacramento has been very busy building his fan base there including through the money spent decorating his new digs. One self-identified county worker wrote in the comment section about he tried to drop in on Hudson once in his new office in the "rustic" building and was told that Hudson was too busy having his shoes shined. While layoffs continue in Sacramento County and budget cuts are ongoing, it seems that Hudson's been giving the blessing of his bosses, the Board of Supervisors to redecorate the place. First his own office and now the entire building.

But closer to Riverside, the new year 2012 has finally arrived and that means that soon the mayoral contest will be heating up in earnest as the filing deadline approaches. So far you have the entire left (by seat assignments not political leanings) wing of the dais running for that office. Councilman Andrew Melendrez announced his candidacy first and some say a little bit earlier than they would have liked. Recently re-elected Councilmen Mike Gardner and Rusty Bailey have also tossed their names in the ring along with former Councilman Ed Adkison. But there is still room for more candidates so if anyone feels like jumping into the fray for the first so-called open contest since the early 1990s, then visit City Clerk Colleen Nicol and take out your papers.

It's not a bad gig. Higher paying than a city council position, involving lots of travel even in these tight fiscal times and since the mayor's powers were neutered back when the city elected someone from the Ku Klux Klan back in the 1920s, it's mostly ceremonial.

Except when it all gets political of course.

It's a Mad, Mad World at Orange Street Station

[The aging dilapidated headquarters for the Riverside Police Department houses some interesting dynamics involving the police department's leadership]

[Chief Sergio Diaz prepares for 2012 as interesting dynamics at the top will likely play a role]

The next installment of this ongoing series about the dynamics driving the leadership and management of the police department and how they will impact the incoming year including the mayoral election. The recent incident that allegedly took place at Lincoln Station between a retiring officer and a member of Chief Sergio Diaz' management team put the spotlight on what goes on at the very top. Not to mention high volume arguments in parking lots and visits by locksmiths on the second floor. Who's clashing with who, who's lying low and with three year contracts set to expire in July 2013 among several of them, what will the future hold?

How will newly anointed City Manager Scott Barber factor into the equation and will City Attorney Gregory Priamos be remodeling or removing his office shrine soon? And what of promotions given that one captain took out PERS papers and others have retired including a lieutenant and sergeant who are still in the books?

And are more lawsuits looming?

Human Resources Department Responds on Public Utilities CPRA Request

A representative from the city's Human Resources Department kindly and promptly responded to my CPRA request through an email carbon copied to Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout and Deputy City Attorney Susan Wilson.

Good Afternoon Ms. Shelton:

The City of Riverside is in receipt of your request for public records dated and received on December 22, 2011, for documents related to any formal and informal complaints and grievances regarding employees of the City's Public Utilities Department, including statistical data compiled by the City and reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Please be advised that personnel files of employees are exempt from disclosure under Section 6254(c) of the California Government Code, and therefore City denies your request for any such documents. The City has located responsive documents which will be made available for your review. Please contact me to arrange for a convenient time for you to review the records.

Alternatively, the City will provide you with copies of the documents. Under Section 6253(b) of the Government Code and the City's Fees and Charges Resolution, the City charges direct duplication costs of $0.60 for the first page and $0.10 for each additional page copied at the same time. The City has located 67 pages of responsive documents. Accordingly, please remit payment in the amount of $7.20, and we will send you the documents.

Should you have any further questions in this regard, please feel free to contact me.

Gina Villaseñor
Human Resources Analyst
City of Riverside
Ph: (951) 826-5970
Fx: (951) 826-2552

On to the next request...

Jolly Good Holiday Season in River City

2011-11-29T08:31:00.000-08:00

[Lincoln Field Operations Station, where the alleged incident took place]

Update: An alleged confrontation at Lincoln Station retirement ceremony between a retiring police officer and member of Chief Sergio Diaz's management team while Diaz and Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer stand and watch. In front of a packed crowd in the roll call room, one of Diaz' management team members introduced the officer by saying that he only knew him through the civil lawsuit.

This led the officer who was in attendance with his wife and family to stand up and say:

"Stop. I am not a racist."

His wife who was in attendance and is African-American stood up and also said her husband was not a racist. The room fell silent as Diaz and just sat and watched what unfolded. After the alleged incident, the management team member who made the comments left by a side exit from Lincoln Station.

[What did Chief Sergio Diaz think about alleged comments made by one of his management team members at a retirement ceremony in roll call?]

[Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino observe a public forum in the community but what's going on closer to headquarters?]

The lawsuit involving the officer is detailed in this article and it was covered in this blog not long after it happened. The city ultimately settled it for $175,000. The lawsuit was mentioned as part of the introduction and sparked the alleged incident. Just another incident from the top that makes one wonder what's going on up at the top? And what it means for the future of the RPD.

More to come...

UPDATE: State Acted Legally Closing Down RDAs, Supreme Court rules.

Ruling issued on law suit to State Supreme Court is here. What will this mean in the days and months to come for River City? And why the words "redevelopment" and "redevelopment agency" have little to do with another and if the RDAs are creating jobs, then why is the city's own paperwork submitted to Sacramento's State Controller's office not listing these jobs created? Ironically, Redevelopment Agencies were set up to help create more affordable low to moderate income housing but what fund did Riverside's city government raid to pay off its SERAF this year?

The low to moderate income affordable housing fund. Redevelopment agencies were created to foster positive changes in communities but unfortunately, that's not always what happened. Redevelopment gave us a strip mall that went into receivership for a while. It gave us high-priced condos that can't even be given away and cost over 50 mentally disabled people their homes at a board and care facility across the street in between that failed housing project and a slumping combined usage project. A performing arts theater that's in the red.

Amount of RDA debt: Approximately $1.8 billion or higher

"The projects "had nothing to do with reversing blight, but everything to do with subsidizing private real estate ventures that otherwise made no economic sense"

---Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Zev Yaroslavsky

"We hope the Legislature goes back to fix this. This is a tool the state cannot afford to lose."

---Chris McKenzie, executive director of the League of California Cities

"Where will the money come from? The state's broke."

---State Assemblyman Chris Norby

[A supervisor from Riverside Public Utilities and a couple of other workers take time off of their schedule to fix someone's car in a city parking lot]

Brad Hudson Redecorates His New Office for the Holidays

But will County residents get coal in their stockings in the form of higher Sewer rates so private developers can pay less?

[Brad Hudson (l. with former councilman and current mayoral candidate Ed Adkison) has spent thousands redecorating his new digs among layoffs up in Sacramento County]

"I wanted something that was appropriate for the work that we do," he said. "It's not extravagant. I just want people to feel like they can come in."

---Sacramento CEO Brad Hudson about the $21,000 spent to redecorate his office and he also billed Sacramento County for eight flights to Ontario Airport and back.

"We've had layoffs; we've had contract concessions; we've had programs cut," he said. "Office expenditures may not be such a good idea."

----Daniel Uselmann, former union head of government employees

Judging from the comments, it sounds like they want to mix up the tar and feathers on the ex-Riverside employee. But then Hudson's new bosses, the Board of Supervisors spent $1 million on their own digs.

One commenter attempts to decipher those plans in the Sacramento Bee blog comments.

Rumor has it from my county buddies that the new county Exec doesn't like the junky look of the offices, demanded the BOS makeover, and wants to institute a dress code.

Of course, it is true that welfare workers tend to dress like recipients....so maybe I agree with that part...

Of course it would help if the County spent some time communicating with its workers and not just looking for photo ops.

And another....

This is of no surprise to County Workers. Brad Hudson hasn't even introduced himself to County Employees since he came to work in August of 2011. And from what we hear from his Administrative staff he is a man full of himself, ego, and an attitude of my way or the highway. Shame the BOS didnt do a little more research before picking Mr. Hudson. He has a very low opinion from his Executive staff who are with him daily.

Maybe the Bee should look into why he has directed the Municipal Services Agency to go around town and pick up shopping carts and deliver them back to the stores, ON THE PUBLICS DIME! Its all about image for the egotistical man whom the Board of Supervisors placed in command.

This latest spending of the publics money to redecorate his office and the seventh floor conference room is just plain wrong. And the Board should inform him that his decisions in these poor economic times when the County is struggling finacially is a laspe on good judgement.

Lastly to Mr. Hudson~~ I pass you daily in the hallways of the Administration Building. You have greeted me only once. Is it becuase of my finely pressed jeans and laundered shirts I wear? Do I not fit into your 'mold' of what a professional worker should wear? Good luck! You can take it up with my Union. I'm sure the Board buying you out of your existing contract would be cheaper then the ensuing court case.

Update: Former Riverside Police Chief Linford "Sonny" Richardson died at 69

Four major earthquakes hit Christchurch, New Zealand

No deaths

[Rock slide just above Sumner Beach, a suburb of Christchurch from one of four large earthquakes to strike the beleaguered city within three hours. Vantage point is near New Brighton and South New Brighton (one of the epicenters)]

UPDATE: Riverside County Sheriff Deputy Dayle William Long Arrested on $1 million bail in connection with a fatal off-duty shooting at a Murrieta bar.

UPDATE: Finance Committee Watch 2012 report includes the following statistics:

Finance Committee Meetings (2003-2011)
(according to online records at Riversideca.gov)

1999: 20

2000: 19

2001: 19

2002: 17

2003: 8

2004: 21

2005: 11 (nine before June 2005)

2006: 6

2007: 3

2008: 4

2009: 2 (November, December)

2010: 9

2011: 10

UPDATE: The following request for public documents has been sent to City Hall

Pursuant to my rights under the California Public Records Act (Government Code Section 6250 et seq.), I ask to (inspect/obtain a copy of) the following, which I understand to be held by your agency:

Available for copies and examination, documents pertaining to any and all formal and informal complaints and grievances filed by or involving employees of the city's public utilities department in the calendar years of 2010 and 2011 including statistical data compiled by the city including that which it reports to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I ask for a determination on this request within 10 days of your receipt of it, and an even prompter reply if you can make that determination without having to review the record[s] in question.

If you determine that any or all or the information qualifies for an exemption from disclosure, I ask you to note whether, as is normally the case under the Act, the exemption is discretionary, and if so whether it is necessary in this case to exercise your discretion to withhold the information.

If you determine that some but not all of the information is exempt from disclosure and that you intend to withhold it, I ask that you redact it for the time being and make the rest available as requested.

In any event, please provide a signed notification citing the legal authorities on which you rely if you determine that any or all of the information is exempt and will not be disclosed.

If I can provide any clarification that will help expedite your attention to my request, please contact me at (provide phone or fax number, pager number, etc.). I ask that you notify me of any duplication costs exceeding $0 before you duplicate the records so that I may decide which records I want copies.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. You have been very helpful when dealing with public records requests which is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: Recent Intrigue at the Border allegedly leading to a detention and arrest? Who and What happened and what could it mean for River City?

Stay tuned....

More fan mail.....

It is funny how, some of the so called supporters of LADY KA-KA bunched together to claim that S.Santana is attacking women ... Nothing further from the TRUTH

S.Santana is deffending himself from attacks perpetrated by the stinking, smelly ass, braless M.Shelton "Lady KA-KA" from 5 before KA-KA

The BITCH...is also attacking Police Chief Sergio Diaz.. for the 50 Cents newspaper fiasco... that "Charles 1" caused when a homeless man took some P.E. papers from a coin operated box. After all the attention and courtesy that the "Little General Cheetos", gave to Lady KA-KA..I guess the honeymoon is over...

So women of the World... Nobody is attacking the female gender... S.Santana is responding to attacks by Lady KA-KA, ( Lady SHIT ), ONLY... Looking for all the attention, that she can get.. by insulting people, with her accusations.. against everybody... Lady KA-KA, is a classic example of 1 ( ONE ) stinking flies in the butt bitch against ther rest of the WORLD.

Her list of so called deffenders includes... C.DURAN, , K. WRIGHT, ETC... do we need to say more..

Am I the only one creeped out a little by someone who actually tries to figure out if women are wearing bras or not? That's just gross and it's sexist. If you want to talk about how gross someone else is, then you probably shouldn't act so gross yourself. Calling women bitches, not very progressive are you? Well, we can always work on that.

Chief Diaz is so fortunate to have such a nice friend like you in his corner if he's aware of you at all. So articulate, so coherent, so adult, so non-misogynist in your choice of language and during the holiday season too. And why do you address us all like we're wearing name tags? Why the use of commas instead of ellipses? Why the double consonants? Why the need to call women bitches and use potty talk to express your very adult points?

Between the two of us, I'd rather be me than you and keep blogging. Rather than popping up anonymously on the only online site available to you engaging in such immature and women-hating behavior to defend a police chief who oversees a department that employs female employees including sworn police officers and civilian employees. If you're a truly a supporter of a police chief who has said that all his officers are equal including the women, then you'd refrain from using such misogynist terminology as "bitches" and deriding a woman's appearance. If you have no respect for me, at least have respect for the leader of an agency that's employing women and the women employed in it.

Because frankly, any progressive police chief who understands that women are actively involved in law enforcement wouldn't need a "friend" like you. If he did, then that would speak to much larger institutional problems in this city than just one cowardly misogynist.

[Chani Beeman speaks before the panel on the independent auditor item]

[A packed house showed up for "do or die" night for several proposed charter initiatives including one for an independent internal auditor reporting to the city council which passed overwhelmingly]

The room filled at City Hall for the final day of community input and discussion of possible charter initiatives to forward to the City Council. Also watching were City Manager Scott Barber, Asst. City Manager of Finance/Chief Finance Officer/City Treasurer Paul Sundeen and Finance Director Brent Mason, all looking more than a little tense at the proceedings. Internal Auditor Manager Cheryl Johannes' position became the topic of much commentary and debate in terms of who the auditor should report to, the city manager or city council. She later said that she has one other auditor besides herself working in her division (and one vacancy) as part of the city's overall budget and staffing cuts. Ironic and disturbing that the city's internal audit division loses a staff position yet the mayor not only gets to keep his but give his chief of staff Kristin Tillquist a 15% raise. That definitely tells you where City Hall's priorities are and where they are not and maybe adequately funding and staffing the auditing department's not on the list.

The panel overwhelmingly voted to send a different version of the independent auditor initiative to the full city council but killed the proposal to set up a citizen audit committee. All these initiatives go to the city council and mayor for a final discussion and vote on which ones the public will be allowed to vote on.

UPDATE: Some splendid news. The city is set to replace the missing letter on the downtown library sign as soon as next week. But the library itself will have to wait at least a couple years. But more news to come during the mayoral election for sure as candidates grapple to come up with the best ideas to address the library that Riverside Renaissance forgot.

The Library that Riverside Renaissance Forgot

UPDATE: Here's a Merry Christmas message I received from a perfectly sane individual who's unhappy with what I've been writing about City Hall. You have to ask yourself if Riverside was doing such a great job and everything was so on the up and up as it claims, then why are there individuals writing these types of frankly sick messages?

She is getting what she deserves...M.Shelton attacks everybody,,She shits all over the place at City Hall..

AND THEN SHE WANTS TO BE THE VICTIM...?? M.Shelton is a dirty braless, stinking bitch.. that NO man, will take that piece trash to bed.

AND THOSE ARE THE FACTS... Misspelled or NOT...

5 Before KA0KA

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too....just another year ending in River City. And to think it started with the blog supported by the Riverside police chief and all the city officials at City Hall including those who purchased campaign advertising. They'll have more to hate and spew about next year in 2012 as more about how the city does business perhaps comes to light.

Because face it, if City Hall were really all on the up and up, there wouldn't be any need for people to get nasty defending it. People would write about its greatness, its accomplishments and they would put their names on what they wrote. Some do that and don't engage in nastiness but others opt out of that.

This person didn't tell of Riverside's accomplishment, they didn't even talk about the city at all just a person who's been critical of parts of it.

But tips have already come in regarding the probable identity of the above individual who apparently isn't all that quiet about his online activities or having called women "bitches" in the past. What is it in City Hall that this individual doesn't want you to know?

So this blog will continue to be published and those who feel the need to defend the city in such nasty fashion will likely continue to do that showing again, how wonderful the city's doing its bookkeeping through their own actions. In the meantime, this blogger's got a lot of stories to work on for the new year and you'll find out exactly why the nastiness exists and why now. And considering how nasty this vitriol has been, there's likely plenty of truths out there to be discovered and exposed about what's really going on at City Hall. What's going on that brings out these defenders in all their nastiness, maybe that's something is the truth.

The Truth that no one else will print and some don't want printed without getting all nasty about it.

That said, thank you to all those who are supportive of this blog and may you and your loved ones have a very happy and safe holiday season.

UPDATE: Riverside County's employees start their migration up to Sacramento County courtesy of its new CEO, Brad Hudson.

[Former Riverside City and County employee Brad Hudson is apparently missing some of his former colleagues at his new digs in Sacramento County]

UPDATE: Is there more to the firing of two Riverside Public Utilities workers than meets the eye? And what was supervision doing?

Councilwoman Nancy Hart: Offended by people's concerns about the city's finances

Nancy Hart made statements at an Investment Committee meeting that she'd prefer personnel cuts or service interruptions on a temporary basis say three months rather than dipping into the city's $40 million reserve fund. She voiced her opinions on concerns about the city's finances as well.

"Because everybody else is having such a hard time, they don't understand why we're not and they think we're hiding something because we're not having a difficult time. And I find that offensive."

Asst. City Manager/Chief Financial Officer/City Treasurer Paul Sundeen did say that the thought of anyone doing anything illegal with money "boggled his mind" and that there's too many checks and balances in the city for any money to be misused or stolen. That's reassuring to hear but what about the former part-time employee who was able to get paid over $770,000 in contracts and salary in less than a three year period with apparently no oversight. Payments in the form of $25,000, $35,000 (from Police Asset Forfeiture to the general fund where it apparently vanished with no paper trail) and $50,000 were made from at least five different city departments that had little or nothing to do with work being done by this part-time employee or her department.

So if the city is so shored against questionable financial practices and payouts, then this part-time employee must just be a little bit smarter.

News broke about the 15% pay raise given to the mayor's chief of staff, Kristin Tilquest around the time she helped spearhead an effort to rename City Hall after her boss. Why isn't this being investigated given the sacrifices that city employees have to make with their own contracts and salaries? Is it like the time a certain department head no longer here received a 15% raise in salary while laying off people in her own department due to budget cuts?

If Nancy Hart is so easily offended by concerns and questions about the city's financial solvency then why when hearing this news about Loveridge handing out raises to at least one of his staff members in the midst of a recession garner at least a question from her or others on the dais?

It's pretty clear at least three city council members are going to check out of asking any such questions of the outgoing politician they hope will hand one of them the magical endorsement. Given how many times Loveridge has helped Councilman Andrew Melendrez shoot himself in the foot during meetings, you can probably rule one mayoral candidate out of the running for an endorsement.

Actually if anyone gets endorsed from the dais, it's most likely to be Loveridge's protegee, Rusty Bailey.

Bye Bye Middle Class....

Studies show nearly half of people living in the United States are in poverty or are low-income levels.

Riverside, CA -- On Friday, January 20, 2012, at the regularly scheduled bi-annual employee shift rotation, a number of management-level personnel moves are planned to take place. These changes are designed to expand the experience of Lieutenants and Captains, giving them the opportunity to increase their skill sets and prepare them for increased responsibilities. These moves are in keeping with our strategic goal of better developing personnel to lead the Department in the future.

Because it is not practical to move all management-level staff at one time, additional personnel transfers may occur at the mid-year shift rotation to ensure all employees have the opportunity to enhance their professional development. The following changes are currently scheduled:

Captains

Captain John Wallace From Field Operations to Support Services

Captain Mike Perea From Support Services to Field Operations

Lieutenants

Lieutenant Ed Blevins From Investigations to Field Operations, Administration

Lieutenant Mike Cook From Internal Affairs to Special Investigations

Lieutenant Andy Flores From Field Operations to East NPC

Lieutenant Gary Leach From Field Operations, Administration, to West NPC

Lieutenant Bob Williams From Special Investigations to Internal Affairs

Lieutenant Vic Williams From East NPC to Centralized Investigations

What does this mean? What of personality conflicts and broken alliances? And what of that captain's race?

To be Continued...

[Riverside Police Department K9 Division at the dedication ceremony for the new K9 training center. ]

[One of the Riverside Fire Department dogs demonstrating its agility]

[Riverside unveils the new K9 training center for fire and police dogs in Mission Grove]

[Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz pets K9 Officer Rocco as his partner Officer Brad Smith and K9 Sgt. Pat McCarthy (l.) looks on]

[Riverside Police K9 Officer Carat with his partner Officer Ray Soto]

[Riverside Police Department K9 Officer Marco and his partner Officer Mike Carroll after a demonstration at the new training station. Marco was considered by David Reaver at Adlerhorst International Inc to be a top dog. ]

A good turnout at the dedication of the new K9 training facility for both the fire and police departments which was opened at Fire Station #9 (which thankfully is not being used as bond collateral at least not so far) after renovations were done on the field out back to create the training course that can be used by K9 handlers to train or "tune up" their canine partners. Dogs which were used for police work as well as to do rescue or cadaver searches at disaster sites were put through their paces in a variety of demonstrations. Assisting in the police demonstrations were several police officers who are themselves preparing to apply for any openings in the police K9 division.

Attending were Chief Sergio Diaz and the rarely seen anywhere Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer.

Traditionally, the K9 division has been fairly low turnover (with people mostly retiring out) in comparison to other divisions or units but the division did see the additions of Officers Kevin Feimer (who trained for about eight years) and Jeffrey Barney due to a couple of retirements. They spend time in suits as "agitators" for the dogs after receiving training in that skill and apply for any position opening. When selected, the officers receive their dogs (which are considered city property) , equipment including a custom renovated squad car and after getting acquainted, are sent to a six week training academy of about eight hours a day, at Adlerhorst International Inc. which is a local business. After receiving a replacement dog, the new team undergoes a similar process.

They follow regular training practices and often train in different places in the city with their dogs. Having a regular training center makes it easier to do the training including while they are working their shifts.

The division underwent some policy and procedure overhaul in 2000-2002 including on deployment policy with assistance from the United States Department of Justice and receives the canine officers which cost about $15,000 apiece from local businesses including Fritts Ford. Its members also compete in competitions and one team, Officer Mike Carroll and Marco placed highly in the K9 competition in Las Vegas. Formerly under the jurisdiction of the department's special operations division, K9 was placed in field operations during a department-wide reorganization.

It was part of the changes undergone by the police department since 1999. During that time, the department and city were under a consent decree with the State Attorney General's office for five years.

One aide of Lockyer's look at that process was written up as this thesis paper which is a very interesting read. There's a very good passage written about the infamous trip up by some city officials in 2001 to dialogue with Lockyer where much of the concern was what to call the consent decree. Mayor Ron Loveridge apparently didn't like the words "consent" and "decree" especially when placed together so he offered up "Memorandium of Understanding (MOU)" instead. He thought that sounded better and that the city wouldn't face damage to its image around the globe as an cultural and economic jewel if it was called that instead of consent decree.

But great minds came together up in the state's capitol and they came to a mutual decision to call the consent decree the "stipulated judgment" instead. Much nicer to put on the city's brochures and Web sites with the rest of its promotional literature and advertising. Now there might be some people out there who might wonder why what a reform process is called receives greater attention than the process itself but then they wouldn't be all that familiar with River City.

May the Games Begin

"My Captain....My Captain...."

[Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz is pondering the captain's list]

The Powers that Be in the police department have apparently denied that anyone high ranking will be retiring soon but it appears that one captain has taken out their PERS papers and is set to retire by April. Given that management vacancies tend to be filled more quickly these days, that means that it's probable that a captain's promotion is on the horizon.

Already, Chief Sergio Diaz has been out scouting candidates and not too long ago, went with two off of the captain's list to dinner. In the past, candidates allegedly used a variety of means to grab any vacant spot in that rank but what will happen with a new management team including a chief in power? Will it be a kind, gentler process or as cut throat and stiletto packed as it's been in the past? Diaz promised in various meetings including those held in public before and after he started his job that he'd not engage in past practices involving the promotional process where it became more about what team you played for or on, who owed who what favor for what and who would be cashing favors in at others' expenses. That left a disjointed captain's rank that was so much so that the chief could only promote one captain into a higher management position and had to hire two from the outside.

But frankly some developments have caused some eyebrow raising and head scratching as to what's different from what it used to be. In terms of how much the rule of "one year in patrol in between special assignments" is enforced and on who. The rule about not being considered for special assignments while on probation including promotional probation. Who gets to fight off-duty, force their way into people's houses and get in trouble and who stays out of trouble because it's a "private matter". Whose son gets a chance at a "get out of jail without a paper trail" card for drunken and disorderly fighting and who's out of luck. And instead of multiple teams to sign up with, there's only one team. You're either on it or you're not, with some wondering if the promotional process is worth testing for at all. Or some waiting to be recommended by someone higher in the ranks to go out for it.

The department's personnel and training division did circulate a memo asking for people to sign up to be mentors in the department but it's not clear how many people responded and what areas if any they were concentrated in.

Now with those who engaged in multiple special assignments dominating the newly relevant lieutenants' list, those issues could come to the forefront as Diaz' "honeymoon" period comes to a close. But for now, the holiday season has brought renewed cheer as the department has held a successful Tamale Festival.

There's a clear favorite in the captain's race who's the "complete package" according to Diaz but as the process is still early and the lobbying is probably not quite at peak levels, so much still remains that could happen in this contest. If the candidate's got the goods, then it's a good time to show them off which would be very cool. It should come down to that whether than who knows who, or who went to dinner with the chief last week to talk about....the weather or who looks good in the World Series or in those Bowl games.

In other news, the Riverside Police Officers' Association has elected new leaders including its new president, Sgt. Brian Smith and vice-president Juan Munoz. So far, the board has promised it will take the organization in a new direction although labor negotiations for the next contract had been put on hold until a new permanent city manager was hired.

Interim City Manager Scott Barber Now Permanent Choice In Other News: Rain's Wet

Some people believe that reporting the appointment of Interim City Manager Scott Barber to the permanent position is breaking news. On one level, that's technically true but it's really not that unexpected that the city once again spent quite a chunk of change paying the same recruitment firm, Roberts Consulting Group to recruit and help narrow down the choices for the city management position. It's not a surprise that the city pretty much had its candidate picked out all along despite undergoing the recruitment process. Roberts Consulting Group when asked at a public forum how typical it was for a city to hire one of the candidates not recruited by its head hunting firm said through a representative that this was "very unusual". Well, after this latest hiring, it's probably a little less unusual or at least much less so for Riverside. But Loveridge really likes this hiring firm and that's why it's been selected for past city management hiring processes even when submitting the highest bid to the city for its services. They actually do quite good work, it just seems that this work is not really needed.

The names of some of those asked to apply for the position including those in our neighboring counties has been made known so efforts will be made to ask these individuals what ideas they had in terms of managing the city.

But anyway, Barber's more personable than Hudson to those outside of the group that a city manager answers to and personality-wise, he couldn't be more different. However, it's been interesting to listen to feedback from those reacting to the news about Barber's appointment or at least, job reclassification.

Scott Barber's contract and its $280,500 base salary

Barber answers commenters' questions.

His appointment might make it very uncomfortable for one of his subordinates, a department head overseeing a female employee who's a...friend of Barber's. But anyway, many City Hall watchers weren't surprised that once again, the city government paid off cash (in this case $30,000) to Mayor Loveridge's favorite headhunter firm to do another "national" search only to somehow hire someone who was probably their choice the entire time. Last time, the city government used this process to recruit candidates to interview at the same time 2-3 council members were trying to bring former city manager, Brad Hudson into the fold. This time, the city merely played it safe and hired someone inhouse who won't come into the position with too much of a fresh perspective which might cause them to say, look at a batch of financial records whether expenditures or investments and ask too many difficult questions. More than a few city council members have difficulties as their furrowed brows show handling even simple questions let alone the more complicated ones. They just rely on "staff" to tell them what to do and even in some cases, how to think as well.

But while there are those who celebrate Barber's hiring and yes, he's the polar opposite of his predecessors Hudson and his assistant Tom DeSantis, there are those who raise concerns that the city deliberately chose someone who wouldn't make any waves or take any serious looks at how the city's spending its money or how badly the city's heading into the red. Yes, it's refreshing to know that he's got no current plans at least to pack a pistol purchased from the police department, draft up a badge and drive a city owned vehicle packed with cold plates and arising from a still unknown but highly questionable funding source. It's good to know that he's not going to screw up labor negotiations for contracts with the bargaining units as Hudson and DeSantis allegedly did in the past.

But some have said that he'll know where all the city's bodies are buried so to speak and will not go digging for them or do anything about them. The city government has this way of declaring that the past is the past and not to be spoken of and to focus on the present and the future. Councilman Steve Adams even grumbled in one meeting when the issue of the money used to pay for the city issued cars came up, that they weren't going to talk about past expenditures by the city government.

It's one thing to say that to city residents but what if any outside agencies were interested in checking out the city's financial books? Would Adams and others on the dais issue the same dismissive response to questions anyone outside might have regarding past financial records and transactions? Hypothetically speaking of course, but this kind of attitude is what has gotten quite a few cities in trouble in the first place.

Is Riverside Complying with Federal and State Laws Regarding its Ambulance Ordinance?

What will Riverside Fire Chief Steve Earley have to say about the state's analysis of River City's way of doing business with ambulance franchises?

In the midst of this, is Riverside violating state anti-trust practices with its sweet heart ordinance involving ambulance franchises? And what of the federal anti-kickback statute which is a felony that carries prison time? Some ambulance franchises applying for licenses did express concerns about this particular law.

After all, the investigative process involving Fire Chief Steve Earley is so fraught with conflicts of interest involving the funding that American Medical Response gave to the fire department that it could "lose" if more franchises bit into AMR's share of revenue generated from BLS services.

You can bet that the first thing the elected officials did when they read that article was to go to the red line and call City Attorney Gregory Priamos to reassure them that the state's not only robbing them blind of all the city's money but they're liars as well. That's not too difficult to predict because the alternative would involve taking the initiative to do research, to ask difficult questions and perhaps even to take a bold and lonely stand and risk ostracism by the "go along to get along" group thinkers who currently make up most of the dais leadership.

This comment appeared at the Press Enterprise site on the ambulance article:

The City Council has allowed their friend Mr. AMR to cloud their judgement on doing what is right. If you recall several months ago, Mission Ambulance proved their is an absolute need for another provider, and they were denied. If you read previous articles you'll see how absolutely crazy this story is:

1) Mr. AMR is best friends with the City Attorney

2) Mr. AMR does give the council members a lot of money for their campaigns.

3) Mr. AMR is best friends with the Fire Chief

4) Mr. AMR does give the Fire Department 1.4mm

5) This is a Pay-to-Play city

6) No cities do not have the right to limit non-emergency transportation

7) Yes it is a conflict of interest that the Fire Chief is best friends with Mr. AMR, receives 1.4mm, and is responsible for denying applications.

8) Yes it is a violation of the Federal Anti-Kickback statue. Receives money in exchange for exclusivity is by definition a violation of the act.

9) AMR doesn't care because the fines they'd have to pay on the violation is pennies compared to what they make in the City.

10) Yes it is true that AMR receives 40% of amount billed. What receiving 40% of $5,000 isn't enough? Besides, it is the County's responsibility to create a contract that is a win-win. It is NOT the City's responsibility to take on that burden. So, just to clarify your comment Mr. Bigdawg86, the citizens and patients that receive healthcare in the City of Riverside are responsible for the other 60% that AMR cannot collect in all other cities??? C'mon...Really?

11) So does the City Attorney, Mr. AMR's goooooood friend, know more about the EMS laws than the State EMS agency? The answer is no, he only knows what Mr. AMR tells him, and that goes for the rest of the council as well. All you have to do is listen to them, they are saying what Mr. AMR tells them say, oh ya and that also comes with a check from AMR, Mr. AMR, or EMS Corp. There are many ways to hide campaign contributions and they seem to be the best at it.

12) Does anyone else see this scandal is the size of Bell??? If you really get down and dirty and look at true numbers, you'll see a HUGE story here.

Public Utility Workers Fired for Concocting Meter Readings

Where's Their Oversight?

And what about all those Unlit Street Lights?

The story came out that two Riverside Public Utility workers were fired for falsifying or just making up readings off of electric meters serving customers in undisclosed areas of the city. This story resonated in many ways but one was because of an experience that happened years ago when another employee was allegedly fired for turning off electrical power off of residents without checking to be absolutely sure he was turning off the right account. You can be totally paid up on your utility bill or have an online payment that just misses the "late notice" deadline and get turned off. Errors do happen and it's always worthwhile to try to pay in person or online and get some sort of receipt for your bill because even if your payment goes through your bank account, Public Utilities can still turn you off. The stories that you hear about situations like that are interesting. After all, not everyone can be City Manager Brad Hudson and get a personal visit from Public Utilities to make sure he pays his bill after he gets a posted 48 hour notice on his door. Ordinary citizens don't have access to that exclusive package service, they just take their chances.

But anyway, this situation garnered so many concerns and questions largely about oversight of the process of meter reading. How come meter readers independently engaging in it were both getting away with it for a while and were apparently "flagged" at the same time for illicit conduct? Bills were delayed and some folks were overcharged and perhaps paid more than they were supposed to pay. But at least they were finally caught in the act so to speak. People who heard that it had happened were asking what areas were short shifted, was cheating the reasons that their bills suddenly spiked? The city has assured the inquiring public that all these illicit bills will be fixed in upcoming months but apparently the two men were able to bypass the department's "flagging" system so how long has this been going on before they were caught?

Anyway in related news, people are talking about the high number of darkened or burned out street lights in Riverside lately. In the past, you might see an occasional one, but now there are series of lights that aren't on at night. One problem with the lights is that they attract copper thieves who break into them to grab the live wire underneath which is extremely dangerous. Construction projects take out more of them and sometimes they don't return into service as has happened with several street lights on Chicago near where the sinkhole led to major repairs on that street after flooding rains a year ago.

You see it all around you. Untrimmed trees, burned out lights, streets uncleaned after storms, it's not about work ethic of the city, it's about money and the fact that the city's been facing a shortfall it doesn't want to talk about far beyond the $3 million in cuts currently planned for the budget.

The city's now borrowing $4 million from Pinnacle Public Finance to pay for renovations done for Tesquesquite Park. Quite a few campaign promises were built on the proposed improvements done to what's now mostly open space near the Santa Ana River. Pinnacle Finance recently experienced a few shakeups at the top of its operations.

It will also be interesting to hear how the city is going to reconcile building athletic fields on top of a former city dump and how the issue of methane gas arising from the old dump will be addressed. Originally the city had done an environmental impact report saying that portions of Tesquesquite Park couldn't be developed because of methane gas deposits. So what the city did was they hired different experts to do a new one and the newer report said that it was okay.

Methane gas can be harmful if people are exposed to it and it can also be explosive in some cases. Years ago, I actually just narrowly missed this explosive incident where a strip mall experienced a methane explosion and 23 people were injured inside a store. But city officials assured the public that nothing will be built on the abandoned dump.

Riverside's Mayoral Race Getting Ready to Really Launch

More Candidates in the Wings Waiting to Enter the Stage

[Mayor Ron Loveridge (l.) isn't running for mayor....is he? Councilman Rusty Bailey who's not nodding off here is one of the four declared candidates so far]

[Councilman Rusty Bailey tries to stay awake during a high school class]

Yes it's true, not all the candidates have declared yet in the mayoral race. So far you have the entire left half (by ward not by politics) running for office and that's Councilmen Mike Gardner, Andrew Melendrez and Rusty Bailey as well as former Councilman Ed Adkison. However, the mayor's race is still very young. When the new year begins, more candidates will come forward and declare for the office.

The more the merrier I say. Since the mayor's position was weakened way back in the 1920s by the city, the election itself is most valuable for its entertainment value at the moment.

Governmental Affairs Committee to Meet on Ward Redistricting

This report is on the consent calendar of the Dec. 6 city council meeting and it gives a timeline for redrawing the lines of the city's seven wards and how over or underpopulated each particular ward is at the moment. Not surprisingly, Ward Four once again underwent the most population growth and is about 11% over the optimal level for that ward. The issue will go to the public workshops by the Governmental Affairs Committee in March 2012.

Public Meetings

Tuesday, Dec. `13 at 3pm and 6:30 pm The Riverside City Council under all its assorted titles will be meeting at City Hall to discuss this agenda. This agenda is packed with a lot of excitement including the afternoon hearing on the denial of Alpha Ambulance's franchise application and the closed session discussion of the city's lawsuit against Bank of America.

Not to mention Police Department tow service agreements. How many of them appear on the campaign donation lists of city officials will be audited.

Wednesday, Dec. 14 at 5:30 pm. The Community Police Review Commission meets at City Hall to discuss this agenda that includes presentation of a 2008 report on the commission by police practices consultant Joe Brann.

The Library that Riverside Renaissance Forgot

2011-11-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

Who's the man in this photo and what's ahead of him in 2012?

Riverside picks its new city manager?

(and is anyone really surprised It's Scott Barber?)

More to come...though this one wasn't exactly the hardest race to call....even outside City Hall.

NEW RPOA Leaders:

President: Sgt. Brian Smith

Vice President: Officer Juan Munoz

[Riverside unveils the new K9 training center for fire and police dogs in Mission Grove]

[Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz pets K9 Officer Rocco as his partner Officer Brad Smith and K9 Sgt. Pat McCarthy (l.) looks on]

Readers sent this link with the above cartoon from The Truth publication which professes to attack me for using venom yet anyone reads it knows who's really putting on a display of what it means to really be bitter and miserable in life especially during the holiday season. I haven't written anything of this nature about him at all. In fact, I've hardly blogged at all since his bitter diatribes began.

It's ironic because I actually sent the publisher Mr. Santana of the Truth Publication an email with a template on how to do a California Public Records Act request because he had not received that information from the City Attorney's office. I also said that if anyone violated his free speech rights, I would defend him though I might not be the first person. I did so because despite his attitude towards me and his personal attacks, he still has free press rights that should be respected, that the state law on public records said should be respected. And if any publication doesn't enjoy that right then all of them are less free.

Yet this is his response in his blog:

"Yes, I do not deny it, I am a woman tramp full of hatred and envy. I cannot stand to see other people to be successful. I hate the government and the police department. This is why I write a blog and speak at the City Council meetings expelling my venom. Well, after all, that's my mission in life, which is frustrated, sad and miserable. How I do make a living is nobodies business. Oh, I also hate The Truth Publication Online."

The sad thing is that no one who writes something like this is anything but an unhappy person but I'm not going to respond in kind. After all, I just would rather focus on city and police issues and less on someone who clearly hates me because what I do. What else is to be interpreted from blog postings with derogatory cartoons that focus specifically not on the issues I write about but on me? If people are flocking to his blog because of it, then that's great for him and his advertising. If future politicians want to purchase advertising from someone who calls women "tramps" , then that's just a commentary on what they stand for as well and that's how they are choosing to spend their campaign dollars. I think they should keep spending their campaign money on advertising from him because of that reason if it helps them to win.

I don't really envy him because he must be so unhappy to behave this way to someone who hasn't responded and won't respond in kind. Why would anyone envy someone who's clearly so unhappy? And what can you do when someone's unhappy but extend sympathy and hopes that he finds happiness again?

I'm not taking his bait. I'm just going to continue to blog and whether or not I like or hate the city or the police department is subject to interpretation of whoever reads my blog or hears me speak. But exposing problematic and even scandalous behavior in both entities doesn't equate hating them. Anymore than standing by and watching silently while scandals take place that negatively impact so many people who live and work for this city is a sign of support of either the city or police department.

If it weren't for some people who paid the price and took risks for coming forward on these scandals, we still wouldn't have ever found out about what happened. Did it ever occur to Mr. Santana and others supporting these individuals who engaged in this behavior that there were those who didn't want dishonesty and bad ethics inside their police department? Not after all the hard work that they had done for over five years. The police department has its strengths and its weaknesses but you can't fault the work it put into improving and modernizing its practices during the past decade. But it deserved better leadership and management than what it got inside and outside of it.

How does it support a police department to ask for the police chief to get a pass or say what's the big deal if he gets a ride home instead of being cited or going to jail like anyone else? How does it support a city when illegal behavior is done and then just brushed away because of executive privilege? Some people would rather you not pay any attention when important people commit such actions that are a detriment to the city like purchase guns through an unlicensed weapons vendor which is illegal, they would rather you go along to get along.

This blogger would like to extend my prayers to Mr. Santana and his cohorts to cleanse their hearts of hate and embrace the same spirit of Jesus Christ that they expect in others. Because while he accuses me of venom, he gives a perfect showcase of what it really looks like. Why not debate what I write on the issues with factual information in his blog? Why not cite links that people can access information to make up their own minds on the issues? Why focus instead on hateful, vindictive personal attacks on one female blogger? I mean it's about City Hall right? I'm not even a politician just a blogger who's never made a personal attack against him.

That said, this blogger would like to extend prayers to Mr. Santana for his expression of hatred and misery and the best wishes for a happy holiday season. Merry Christmas to Santana and the staff of the Truth Publication and the best of a new year! May Christ heal your wounded heart.

Update: As the Riverside Police Officers' Association election process cruises right along, Sgt. Brian Smith is in an uncontested race for president while the process for choosing the vice president to replace him continues. Contesting for that position was James Riedeman, Juan Munoz and a recently added and past president, Sgt. Pat McCarthy.

UPDATE: Riverside Finance Department reports to Charter Review Committee that proposed ballot initiatives like having an independent auditor report to the city council and a citizen audit committee aren't necessary. Nothing needs to be changed, they say but those measures receive enough votes from committee members to move forward. Those against it not surprisingly included former Councilwoman Maureen Kane and current Best, Best and Krieger Attorney Michelle Olette.

The meeting in La Sierra was well attended by those including Chiefs Steve Earley and Sergio Diaz.

Not surprising that the city doesn't want a citizen audit committee because essentially they already have one.

This will happen before Riverside ever grants a second ambulance contract

UPDATE: Alpha Ambulance Company has applied for a franchise agreement for Basic Life Support services and it goes before the Public Safety Committee. Expect Fire Chief Steve Earley to recommend in his "investigation" for this application to be denied. But is this application process part of a larger strategic plan to challenge the way River City does business?

And sure enough, the recommendation to the committee is for application to be denied. Isn't that shocking?

And yes, the Public Safety Committee did vote 3-0 to recommend that the entire city council deny the franchise license. But is this whole arrangement the city have with a single ambulance company complete with funding incentives in compliance with this federal law? Maybe it's time to give the Office of the Inspector General a call and ask it.

Chief Steve Earley

Under the gun once again....to deny another ambulance franchise an agreement for BLS support...if the current franchise threatens to pull paramedic funding already guaranteed under the current ALS/911 contract.

Stay tuned....

Death Threat?

She does NOT work a single day of her miserable life... She gets money from a fund.

Mary KA-KA from 5 before KA-KA... has infiltrated the Police Dept. That's how she gets mud on everybody

LETS GET RID OF KA-KA

Thanks for passing this threatening message to me from Inland Empire's Craigslist. Click the link and see what some anonymous person has written. My blog might be controversial but this is a bit much. I don't believe this person works for the city or the police department, as some information is coming in about who it might be but further information is still pending. However due to the nature of the suspect list, reporting it to the management of the Riverside Police Department isn't an option at this time.

I believe this might have been the person in the past who tried to post my address on Craiglist and did other postings there.

The link has been cached in case it's removed from the site or altered in any way. A photograph of it in the current form appears above. The writer has been tentatively identified through some helpful information provided by readers here and his possible identity and all relevant information will be provided to the authorities outside of Riverside including the FBI and the Department of Justice. I can tolerate a lot really, but threats to my personal safety and my life...No. That would just be stupid. I promised my mother she would not outlive me. Craigslist will also be notified, thanks for the person who provided legal information on how to do that in an expedient matter. I'm going to continue blogging and let the contacted authorities outside of Riverside handle it and the person responsible.

Now Moreno Valley's Interim Human Resources Director...hope someone keeps a sharp eye with him while he's on the clock unlike in River City

Riverside's Downtown Library

While riding or walking through town the past couple of weeks, I've noticed how many street lights were burned out and started counting them. Usually there's one here and there but lately there are many more of them including sometimes three or four of them in a row like on Central and on Canyon Crest on the way to Trautwein. Not to mention other places as well. Some of the outages stem from thefts or attempted thefts of copper wiring from inside the lamp posts and if you look on some streets, you'll see light pole after light pole that appears to have been broken into by thieves who are desperate enough to risk electrocution to get some copper and other metals to sell at scrap places.

And then there's other places where the antiquated sewer system has led to noxious odors seeping out of vents including on Central near the entrances into Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Park and apparently causing backups and leakages in some neighborhoods including the Wood Streets. With $20 million dollars of the Sewer Fund being tied up in loans that were taken out to purchase properties on Market Streets through Eminent Domain to help out developers, it's not clear how much attention the city's sewer system is receiving.

But then in the mix, you have "Charles1" who has been patrolling the downtown area and keeping it safe from newspaper thieves who attempt armed robbery against news racks. When "Charles1" comes on the radio offering his assistance and asking questions about police calls, his gigs become the hottest tickets in town. But then every town has its town sheriff who walks the streets, including the currently being fertilized downtown, where Occupy Riverside tents stand not too far away from where an ice rink is being assembled. It's rumored that they won't be around much longer, the merchants having been assured and reassured by the city that even the memory of the city's Occupy memory will be erased from City Hall before the permits for the festival go into effect. But not every merchant resents their presence so that news rung through the mall quickly enough.

Occupy Riverside's response upon hearing the rumors is that they had a trainer come and teach them civil disobedience techniques and so it remains to be seen what will happen next in that ongoing saga. While not a member of that movement and not someone who really agrees with the whole "occupying"part of it ( and all the drama including splintering associated with its application), there are issues that have been raised that resonate with quite a few people from different backgrounds. Talking to an elderly man, a conservative Republican who lost his house to foreclosure and had only three days to leave it while nursing an injury. A family where one injury to one of the bread winners sent them spiraling into foreclosure as well, it's pretty scary how so many people in this country are one illness, one injury, one tragedy away from losing homes. Having a brother who's about to lose his home because pancreatic cancer has left him unable to work, at least he has a support system for him and his three sons but how many people don't?

And how many people reading this have at least $10,000 or more in credit card debt? Credit became the currency of choice when salaries failed to maintain pace or fell behind the increasing cost of the standard of living.

But their individual stories inside a movement don't flash headlines of riots in the mall and anarchy so they often slip by the wayside, maybe not great enough headlines but they are among those heard by many people in this country whether they belong to a movement like Occupy or the Tea Party or not.

Whatever happens to the movement, hopefully the issues will continue to be discussed and looked at including affordable housing (in a city that's 14,000 units short of its own HUD goal) and the high unemployment rate which still exists in a nation that's been under the Redevelopment Agency system for decades.

Issues that adversely impact the middle class that some feel is disappearing. Issues that many feel that neither political party in Washington, D.C. with all the infighting and comparison of caliber sizes inside the walls of power. The bailouts of the banks when many of them spent that money on luxury jets and spa holidays. When this came to light, were any of them required to give the bailout back, no they were just told that the next time they got money, it would be more regulated. An economy that used to be manufacture based back, then became more service orientated and now it's more about buying and selling debt, Riverside's become a microcosm of that way of doing business through its Redevelopment Agency which can't exist until the city accumulates debt. Because it needs that high debt to borrow money or purchase bonds and borrow against the future generations of Riversiders to saddle them with debt.

A good way to scare yourself is to look at the city's bond repayment schedule including for the next couple of years. To realize that the $9 million of the general fund won't be amended by outside tax revenues until about February when property taxes roll in from the December payments.

In a city with a 15% unemployment rate and the third highest property loss value in the country, a lot of people are wondering how they'll survive. What I have met downtown in the past week have been a lot of seniors, disabled people and quite a few military vets, because in this country many return back from war zones with PTSD, missing limbs and traumatic brain injuries while seeing their services including medical cut. Their foreclosure stories and battles with the health care system to even recognize their injuries are among the hardest to listen to. When people ask me I tell them, yes there probably people there to instigate trouble but there's also many people who have been there who could be like most of those who judge the movement as a whole based on the actions of a few.

It was difficult to talk to some of them because they had been burned by a "reporter" sent in by a certain local blogger who posed as one of them, showing them clippings of his own arrest, acting as if he were already a member. Solely it appears to have gained their trust to try to get information to take back to the blogger as a report to use against them. He didn't say anything about fully participating in their meetings, or trying to sell himself as a member even though his own publisher had already called the movement rioters, just that they were anti-establishment and it was total anarchy. After something like that happens, it made learning about them more difficult but you can't really blame them for that after they got burned by someone they trusted with their stories.

The Festival of Lights being barely one week away. So downtown Riverside is preparing as lights and decorations are being assembled by men in cherry pickers and ladders.

Still, what's very noticeable among the bright and shiny of the annual holiday festival is the continued deterioration of one of the city's prized institutions, the public library downtown.

That's apparent when you approach it and you see the entrance sign and notice that part of it is missing.

$2.1 Billion spent on the Renaissance (mostly borrowed) and I didn't even get a lousy new sign

Mothers now have to wing it when they change their babies' dirty diapers but at least the bathrooms aren't closed and patrons told to try their luck to relieve themselves at the Mission Inn

The Municipal Museum like others have signs advertising the Riverside Renaissance and/or Redevelopment but you'll never see one at the general public library just across the street

Of course you won't see one on the nearly empty Raincross Promenade either

Separate and Unequal:

The Downtown and her "sister" branches

[The abandoned cafe at the Orange Terrace Library but at least it had one]

[Not sure if this is the infamous $10,000 Cappuccino machine or not gate gathering dust at the Orangecrest Library but the downtown library didn't even get a coffee machine]

These photos were taken of one of what Press Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein called the "sacred cows" of Riverside, its public libraries. Maybe through its collective vote, the city's residents sent a message to City Hall that it better not mess with the public libraries but when it comes to the main branch, the heart of the city's library system, it's clearly not paying attention. But hey at least the downtown library wasn't used by the city as "collateral" when it purchased bonds that it'll be making payments on instead of the latest developer to win this favor. That developer is the one who's building the downtown Hyatt Hotel, the same developer who given the high rate on hotel foreclosures in the Inland Empire couldn't borrow money from a bank or other legally recognized lending institution. It's hard to believe that any project that no bank or lending institution (as the city council freely admitted back in 2010)wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole could be viewed as anything but a high risk venture for the city. After all, when small businesses can't get loans, most of them are just out of luck.

Not so if you're one of Riverside's favorite developers, most of whom aren't even from Riverside at all. Because it's not libraries that are the "sacred cows" of Riverside at all at least not to the folks who really matter, it's the developers and their projects. The same ones who man many of the prominent committees on some of the downtown business boards and who when studying their projects and the generosity of the city towards them, you're left wondering how they got so many projects built or at least started with paying hardly any money at all. Even in cases, getting the land at a discount, even when their sole purpose of buying it is to clear it of "blight" in at least one case over 50 mentally ill and disabled people, before "flipping" it back to the city. The city must have been so grateful to the developer who did this to the Swiss Inn, that it managed somehow to pay the demolition costs for the leveling of a building on land it didn't own.

So Riverside's City Hall decided to be more than just his banker or his loan agent, it decided to play Santa Claus while the public library will once again see its own stocking filled with ashes and coals. Even as the city holds its fireworks extravaganza at the Mission Inn Hotel next door, the library will continue in its deterioration. Its roofs leaking in the winter rains, its plumbing antiquated and its fraying infrastructure inside. It's probably not even good enough in terms of its overall physical condition to serve as collateral on any bonds the city decides to take out and make payments on through "loans" to help out the strapped developers out there.

Another newer library allegedly gets a $10,000 Cappuccino machine which gathers dust while the downtown library can't even get a replacement letter on its sign.

However, the two libraries that were put up for collateral had been recently renovated during the Riverside Renaissance era. Maybe that made them both appealing choices to be put up as shoring for the city of Riverside's amazing generosity to yet another developer.

Collateral
Casa Blanca's Library was put up as collateral when the city bought federal bonds for the developer of the Downtown Hyatt Hotel

Collateral
The Arlington Library newly expanded is collateral for the federal bonds Riverside took out to build the Hyatt Hotel

Of course if Riverside makes the $1.6 million or so in bond payments, first on interest and then later on principle too, there's a good chance that the city might actually be able to hold onto its libraries and the fire stations #13 and #14 as well. And the president of the Riverside Firefighters Association assured me that the fire stations are safe because no one would want to buy a fire station because its use would be limited.

He's exactly correct in his assessment but the only problem is that it wouldn't be the fire station that would be up for sale. It'd be the land it's sitting on and to pay off the bond investors, it would have to be sold unless the city substituted a viable alternative property. Most likely after it was purchased, the fire stations would simply be bulldozed to rubble to clear away before the properties were put up for sale on the market. The reason why bonds are considered to be such safe investments with some more so than others is because the bond companies are the first priority for payback by those who owe them money on their bonds. That means that a city like Riverside has to pay back on those bonds before it pays its bills.

By the way, the general fund's bills were financed last month by a cashed in T note from apparently one of the small banks back East and also from one of the money market funds, according to information gleaned from the city's financial documents and summary reports. If it's hitting investments maybe that means that all the other funds which usually supplant the general fund when it's running low in cash are low themselves or tied up with other financial commitments. According to the city's own charter, the general fund has to remain solvent enough to pay the city's operational bills even if that means using inter-fund transfers.

Councilman Steve Adams Accuses Councilman Paul Davis Of Corruption without calling it that

Recently reelected Councilman says he doesn't want to head towards Bell

Councilman Mike Gardner: "No one's pointing fingers at anyone here."

(Um Mike, were we even at the same meeting and Steve, if you think we're heading towards Bell, you know who to call up in Sacramento...)

[The Moss Adams auditing team presented its work product for the Finance Committee]

[Adams (center) who claimed to have written the ethics code accused a councilman of misusing the legislative aide money, making illusions to criminal acts and Bell]

[Councilman Paul Davis missed the accusations that Councilman Steve Adams waged at him]

The Finance Committee met today to listen to reports issued by the auditing firm, Moss Adams which had spent the past couple of months doing audits of eight different funds in the city’s finances. The firm said that the city did quite well with no major problems yet some of the questions that were raised by people in attendance appeared to surprise them. The two auditors were asked about the depth of their audits in terms of whether or not they look behind the city’s financial statements and if so to what extent.

The city council diligently asked a few questions but the auditors discussed mostly their process rather than what they discovered. It’ll be much more interesting to read one of their annual audits when they go quite a bit more in depth involving the city’s finances rather than apparently limiting their scope. It's be nice if when I mentioned the proposed city and county swap of debt which became the $65 million in bonds the city bought from itself, the two auditors hadn't looked like they had no idea what I was talking about.

This meeting was a tea party compared to the one that followed it.

An hour later, the Development meeting was conducted in the city council chambers and Councilman Steve Adams took his gloves off going after Councilman Paul Davis and his use of the monies set aside for the legislative aides. No matter that the entire process of creating and then making these positions vested has created all sorts of issues which includes hiring campaign volunteers and managers to those now quite higher compensated positions. But the valid point is raised that there needs to be accountability for the money spent by any council member on a legislative aide or on community programs. The whole system of legislative aides should have included a documented financial trail and there should have been audits conducted of it since it started. Because these fundamental steps weren’t taken at City Hall, the whole issue of legislative aides and the monies allocated to council members has become a firestorm.

Still to listen to Adams claim directly and not that Davis was using it as a campaign slush fund, that it bordered on criminal acts and that the city could slide towards Bell, it was hard not to view it as something more than another chapter in the ongoing battle between the two councilmen. Adam speaks of transparency and accountability, two very important components of good government if overused terms at City Hall. If Adams were interested in preventing Riverside from sliding towards what happened in Bell, then all he has to do as an elected official is sit down, pick up a phone and make a phone call to State Comptroller John Chiang. Adams could then ask the state’s top auditor to come on down to Riverside and do a forensic audit of City Hall.

If he were truly concerned about corruption infecting the legislative aides fund and that it could pave the road to purgatory for the All American City, then he'd whip out his cell phone and call Chiang up in Sacramento asking for a forensic audit of the city's finances. It's amazing if all this was taking place with the fund that it wasn't picked up or commented on by the auditors of Moss Adams who had just presented their squeaky clean audit an hour earlier.

But while Adams is talking about accountability and transparency, perhaps he could explain why neither he nor other city officials told city residents about the guns, badges and cold plates scandals when the city council first found about them. Instead, they remained silent on those issues which attracted criminal investigators from the State Attorney General’s office until a lawsuit filed by two former Riverside Police Department lieutenants brought them to light.

Information that the city still won’t release pertaining to the assigned city cars given to some elected officials and their employees by City Hall. When requests were submitted to discover the monies used to purchase the five vehicles (all of which just happened to be cold plated), the city said it had no documents responsive to that request. So if Adams while he’s still feeling this spirit of accountability, transparency and wanting to stamp out corruption before it starts, then perhaps he could facilitate the release of this information. Not that the origin of the funds used to pay for those five cars is any real mystery except to most of the city’s residents, it would just be nice to see the city admit to where the funds were taken from through a written document.
At any rate, the committee appeared to agree to send it to the Finance Committee which is where it should have gone in the first place. The rationale for it going to Development Committee instead was apparently because all three committee members had legislative representatives so they could be impartial on the issue whereas those who didn’t have them including Councilwoman Nancy Hart and Davis on the Finance Committee apparently could not be.

Which naturally made a whole of sense to them but didn't make much sense to anyone else. But it remains to be seen how Davis will respond to what was tantamount to allegations of corruption made by Adams.

I mean when you sit in a subcommittee meeting expecting to hear a report on issues arising from the legislative aide program and hear a councilman strongly insinuate that another is a crook then is this going to be business as usual in River City?

This is the somewhat sanitized version of what happened. Hopefully the meeting was recorded for the public archives.

Life as a Tramp

[Maybe I'll get my mustache trimmed]

I got a flurry round of emails about people who read Salvador Santana's latest diatribe titled "Lady is a Tramp" that he wrote in response to the disclosure of the relationship between his endorsements or castigation of elected officials and whether or not they paid him to advertise for them during their political campaigns. Meaning that mayoral candidates like Michael Gardner who have payments to him showing up in their 460 forms can run for office while others like Rusty Bailey who has no such recorded payments on his 460 form get castigated by Santana in his blog and at the podium for destroying democracy for putting their "unqualified" selves on the ballot. Gardner did criticize Santana's position in writing.

Nonsense, Bailey has as much right to run for political office as Gardner does, the fact that he took his advertising business elsewhere shouldn't be used to penalize him for his choices but was that what happened? Democracy endorses an open competitive process for decisions made to run for election and though it's somewhat tacky for elected officials to file for "higher" office so soon after being reelected to serve as councilmen, both he and Councilman Mike Gardner have the right to do so. Neither one of them is putting the election process in jeopardy unless they are both doing that.

So that's apparently when the "lady" became a "tramp" when I wrote about that and how it gets tricky when political advertisements get mixed up with editorial content, an issue that many other media outlets have struggled over. I got over two dozen emails and comments in response to his cartoon and posting and I sent a link of his posting and myself being a "tramp" which is sexist language to women's sites including one that has asked me to blog about what it's like to be a woman who blogs about politics. I had the privilege of participating in that blog ring last year and my posting here on "blogging while female" received over 45,000 hits in just over a week. Which tells you a little bit about how that issue resonates for women who do blog, so as my theme for my blog posting I will borrow from Santana's "Lady is a Tramp" theme in my own posting.

Ironic that he actually chose to call me a "tramp" which is after all, a softer way of calling a woman a "whore" or a "slut" when on several occasions, I stood at the podium and wrote in my blog when his own free speech rights were violated by the same governmental body that pays him to advertise now. I stood there and spoke about how wrong it was when the city council tried to shut him down in public comment based on his topics and when the police stopped him to search the cart he used to tote around. Yet, I don't regret taking those stands at all, because more people should have defended him...just like people like Adams shouldn't distance themselves or "forget" him during election speeches or claim to people who ask they didn't pay him when documents produced state that they reported to the Secretary of State's office that he did.

When his free speech rights get violated again and they will if he ever takes one wrong step, or one incorrect stand, I'll probably be the first person out there defending his free speech rights. Well okay, maybe not the first person.

But this blog's never been about advertising for City Hall or the police department. It's intended to be about issues that impact both, a type of historical record of Riverside in the 21st century. How bloggers who do stump for City Hall, closing their eyes to what's wrong perhaps because they know if they criticize City Hall, their advertising revenue would dry up like grapes on a vine, well that's part of the historical record, well one view of it among so many out there.

When my blog posting is sent to the blog ring, I'll post it here.

But aside from that, what I have to say about my blog readership is that it's the best. And thank you Mr. Santana, for all the preaching you do about civility, kindness and emulating Jesus Christ, you gave me lemons with your postings.

I took them and made some lemonade. Have a glass on me.

Photo Album

Downtown Fire Station or Bond Collateral?

Too Early to Call so Far

Benjamin Franklin's adage on Free Speech and Expression right near City Hall

Public Meetings

Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The Riverside City Council will be meeting to discuss this agenda. First up is an item that states that it's closed session in this written report yet isn't presented like that on the meeting agenda. It has to do with the appointment of the city manager but does this mean the city council and mayor have picked one or is this just another stage of what up to know has been a rather secretive process?

Then there's this public hearing which though unstated in the report, includes whether the Riverside Downtown Partnership will raise its tax collection from 2% to 3% for its members. Hopefully the process has improved since they raised it from 1% to 2% and wasn't the same joke it was to all of the businesses who attended who aren't housed on the pedestrian mall. Participating as a representative of a downtown business about eight years ago, was truly an eye opening experience in taxation without much in the way of representation.

Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 1 p.m. The Finance Committee will be meeting on the seventh floor of the city council chambers to discuss this agenda. What's interesting about it are the items on the agenda pertaining to the city's annual financial audit and this somewhat incomplete accounting of city manager's discretionary contract fund for the first quarter of the current fiscal year of 2011/2012. On the latter, it just shows the amount spent by the city manager's office, not the contracts themselves.

Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 3pm. The Development Committee meets on the seventh floor to discuss this agenda which includes the discussion of the city council's legislative aides particularly the use of an employee from the city's development department.

Different Tune, Same Dance in River City

2011-10-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Recently Reelected Councilman Steve Adams publicly accuses Councilman Paul Davis outside his presence of misspending public funds associated with legislative aides. He alludes to how it could lead towards using the money as a campaign slush fund, criminal acts and how Davis' actions could lead to a Bell, providing an interesting lesson in passive aggressive behavior. After the election, his gloves come off....and what of Adams' disclosure of his own actions, stay tuned....

UPDATE: Convictions of former Riverside Police Department Officer Anthony Fletcher overturned at Court of Appeals.

UPDATE: Unfolding out in La Sierra is an incident involving a man who allegedly exchanged gunfire with Riverside Police Department officers who were serving an arrest warrant and then barricaded himself inside a house. SWAT/Metro is on scene along with at least 50 police cars backing them up. In the command post, was Police Chief Sergio Diaz aka "Charles1" along with his management team and two sergeants in the department's Personnel and Training Division.

[Chief Sergio Diaz (l.) and cabinet members, Deputy Chief Jeff Greer and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino manned the command post in managing the scene at the La Sierra incident]

Diaz takes an active role in area crime fighting, just last week he nabbed a would-be newspaper thief in the downtown area and he's known for interjecting himself under his call number on the radio to assist officers in addressing their calls.

The man was discovered to be deceased according to the Press Enterprise.

Over 2oo SEIU members march and rally in downtown Riverside

Small earthquake, 3.1 hits Riverside area.

Good thing Measure I passed but does anyone at City Hall know how to spell "library"?

or

$2.1 billion spent on Riverside Renaissance and All I Got was a Misspelled Library Sign

The sign at the pretty much forgotten by the city downtown branch has been broken for months. Now if it were a theater or a hotel...

Ahhh, aren't they cute? One of the best films ever. Thanks to my supporters at the Blogging While Female blog ring for sending this cute picture. The only cartoons you're going to see in here are cute ones.

UPDATE: One of former State Attorney General Bill Lockyer's advisers wrote this thesis about the Riverside Police Department and its stipulated judgment.

"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?'

And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'"

---Jesus (Matthew 25.35-40 ESV)

He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.

----Psalm 24:4 ESV

UPDATE: Early returns in Riverside:

CITY OF RIVERSIDE - CITY COUNCIL, WARD 7

9/9 100.00%

Vote Count Percent

JOHN BRANDRIFF 1,037 44.70%
STEVE ADAMS 1,283 55.30%
Total 2,320 100.00%

One of Adams supporters had these sage words of response to the results of the election. An official response from either camp hasn't been released yet.

The Losers

The Press Enterprise
D. Berstein
The intern, A. Robinson
Lady KA-KA from 5 Before KA-KA
The Never take a shower gang
The filthy five
Poor M. Figueroa and her little community
The plotters at City Hall
etc...etc...etc.

No response from the Brandriff camp including their list of "losers". Hopefully the losers are more gracious in losing than the winners were in winning. But at least the election and its usual madness is finished until next year. We can move onto other topics, some folks can take a serious chill pill and we'll have at least one council member on the dais who was there back in the days of the GASS/BASS quartet to answer the questions that the city residents and city employees will bring next year when the city's financial crisis heats up.

Actually as it turns out according to our polling (and we stuck to issues, not who's divorcing or on workman's comp or whatever), many people who cast votes for Adams actually were casting votes for Steve Arroela his tireless aide who does all the work because Adams doesn't spend too much time in his ward. If Arroela had run against his boss, this blogger says he'd probably would have beat him.

Police Chief Nabs Man Allegedly Attempting to Steal Newspaper

[Police cars responding in downtown Riverside after Police Chief Sergio Diaz nabs the alleged newspaper thief]

UPDATE: Riverside Chief Sergio Diaz Nabs Alleged Newspaper thief downtown with the help of three police cars and one helicopter. The PE which was called to the crime scene in the midst of the investigation declined to press charges for what was allegedly an attempted theft from a newspaper rack for a $.50 newspaper. Diaz walking with Asst. Chief Chris Vicino after a city council meeting back to Orange Street Station witnessed the incident and pulled his badge identifying himself as a police officer to make the detention. Soon after, two police cars responded and the police helicopter flew overhead with a spotlight on the unfolding scene while Diaz and Vicino supervised the investigation of a misdemeanor. Not sure why the officers seemed to have it under control and acted professionally after being called to the scene with sirens.

Other officers who were initially responding were called off. Diaz did his assigned role of diverting traffic across the street so pedestrians and people covering the incident wouldn't interfere with the criminal investigation in progress of the alleged crime. Councilman Mike Gardner on wheels navigated the crime scene skillfully until he reached the other side of the street.

The homeless man wasn't cited or arrested and allowed to leave with his shopping cart from 11th and Main and continue on his way.

Next up, a production of Les Miserables...

[Two members of the 99% with nary a member of the 1% in the vicinity]

"Duane Roberts can make millions of dollars but they're cutting your pensions...."

UPDATE: Riverside Police Department moves in on protesters of Occupy Riverside (You Tube) in the downtown pedestrian mall earlier today. Nine arrests.

Arrests continued in the mall area. (second, longer YouTube video)

Initial video taken before police arrived

More video taken of arrests

More video

More video

CBS Coverage

Loma Linda Patch coverage

We Have to Kick the Thugs out of Riverside

But no Press Enterprise coverage, well not until almost eight hours later. The crackdown came not long after the Occupy Riverside had agreed to meet with Chief Sergio Diaz on Monday, Nov. 7 but apparently that meeting date got moved up a day only without Diaz being present. The department told the Press Enterprise said it acted on complaints that reached City Hall causing them to meet with city officials and one wonders if the two major players that run the downtown, the Greater Chamber of Commerce and the Riverside Downtown Partnership played a role. With a heavily packed mayor's race going on not to mention Festival of Lights later this month, the pressure had been building. But not present at the action were either Chief Sergio Diaz not even in civilian clothes, Mayor Ron Loveridge nor the downtown Councilman Mike Gardner.

What's ironic is that the business practices of City Hall have harmed the downtown businesses driving more of them out of business and off of the street, much more than a group of people "occupying" the pedestrian mall. Including the 3% business tax proposed for members of the Riverside Downtown Partnership, an association where many of its members especially those outside the mall feel that they have scant or no representation. I'm not convinced that occupying a mall where businesses are already suffering is the best strategy for a movement addressing how people feel about the growing gulf between wealthy and the poor not to mention the decimation of the middle class but it's definitely an ironic choice including the city's actions involving the downtown, including some that are highly questionable in recent years.

[At the Orange Street Station]

A quiet first year anniversary in the death of Riverside Police Officer Ryan Bonaminio

[Orange Street Station, the places where promotions are decided and where they are made]

[Chief Sergio Diaz, Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino]

"But I was thinking of a way To multiply by ten, And always, in the answer, get The question back again."

---Lewis Carroll

UPDATE: With one captains' position possibly opening up within the year, let the games begin...

Promotional Lists

Sergeants:

1) Charles Payne

2) Deborah Foy

3) Robert Tipre

4) Peter Elliot

Lieutenants

A Band (alphabetical)

Mark Rossi

Russ Shubert

B Band

Frank Assumma

Steve Bradshaw

John Capen

Christian Dinco

Val Graham

Julian Hutzler

Dwayne May

Skip Showalter

Lisa Williams

C Band

Brian Dailey

The recent round of testing was done involving candidates who hope to get promoted in the Riverside Police Department. Those interested in being promoted to detective, sergeant and lieutenant underwent the testing process. Lieutenants participated in oral interviews and written tests with each receiving half of the scoring points. The written tests are issued and graded by the Chief's office, a change from older procedures which has some asking questions especially given the most recent results which put quite a few of the candidates working at Orange Street Station in the top positions of the new list. The candidates themselves don't learn how they scored on the tests, but are just notified of how they place on the list or what's their band classification. That omission of information is probably enough on its own to generate questions too. But even without it, questions have been generated anyway.

The sergeants' list remained the same as it had been before Chief Sergio Diaz' arrival, listing candidates in the order of their testing scores. However, after Diaz arrived and after his first round of promotions, the lieutenant's list which had operated under the same format as the sergeant's was changed to using the band system of A (90+), B(80-90) and C(80 and below). Within each category, candidates are now listed in alphabetical order and not by their scores perhaps to make it harder for the candidates to really know where they stood in the process and making the list itself murkier in terms of how candidates will be selected off of it. It does make it easier to "mask" high scoring candidates within bands including in the A level whether that was the intention behind the changes or not. If you had five individuals scoring in the top band for example, how would anyone including the candidates know, who really scored the best? It's a way of going back to the rule of two or rule of five or so if you're going strictly off the list from A to C but then considering in 2010, the two chiefs in power were operating off of the "rule of 13" with the lieutenants' list, maybe it does narrow the listing down a bit. The advantage to the band process is just that, it gives more of a selection with in some ways more flexibility if it's done allegedly limited to being within bands.

The testing process itself is somewhat generic and rather strange, given how complex and nuanced it seems that the respective ranks are in reality but that's another blog posting.

These changes all arose not long after controversy had been generated by the promotional process where quite a few top candidates on the sergeants and lieutenants including the number one candidates (both female) were passed over by both Acting Chief John DeLaRosa and in one case, Diaz in their first rounds of promotions last year. Instead, DeLaRosa and Diaz promoted from candidates who placed lower on the list including in Diaz case, one who placed 12th out of 13 candidates on the lieutenants' list. At the time, Diaz and others from his cabinet said as DeLaRosa had implied early that they were all looking for that certain "something" that none of them could really describe in words but clearly three out of the top four candidates on the lieutenants' list who were the two females and one African-American male candidate didn't have it whatever that quality turned out to be.

After years of being told in the Riverside Police Department, they would only have a chance of getting promoted if they topped the lists (as alleged in several lawsuits back into the 1990s), several members of these demographics did just that and found out that the rules of engagement for promotions had apparently changed on them. Whereas being in the top five on the list was the bomb in earlier years, now it simply meant that you were a good "test taker". Actually, similar trends were noted and duly reported through declarations or depositions in connection with racial and/or gender discrimination lawsuits filed against different agencies including the Los Angeles Police Department right before the settlements were paid out. So hearing the same rationale provided by both the temporary chief and the latest permanent chief provided some sense of deja vu if you've followed litigation patterns in the LAPD. So far here, one candidate, Sgt. Val Graham has filed a claim and later a lawsuit charging the promotional process with racial discrimination and coincidentally or not, after that claim was filed, the testing process for lieutenants changed in ways that clearly would make it harder for any high ranking candidate to know they'd been passed over by people placing lower on the scoring list within his or her band.

But watching what unfolded during 2010 and now into 2011 has been very interesting. Part of it is because there was a whole slew of promotions last year to fill long-standing vacancies in the supervisory divisions. That provided ample opportunity to observe how the process worked or didn't under not just one but two police chiefs.

By the numbers, the lieutenant selections (under the original list of 13 candidates before promotions were made) came from #5 and 6 under DeLaRosa and #1, 2, 9, and 12 under Diaz. Not that this practice didn't precede either of these two chiefs, as former Chief Russ Leach promoted a candidate from #11 on the list several years earlier.

It all started in February not long after the infamous Leach DUI incident when the first round of promotions were made. Some believed these promotions had been done in relation to the DUI incident to take attention off of it. Not so, as these promotions were slated to be done anyway after Former City Manager Brad Hudson told union negotiators in January that he had agreed to unfreeze a couple of sergeant positions and when they were unfrozen, a lieutenant's position was added. Andy Flores was promoted to lieutenant off of his #6 position on the list and several sergeants, all white except for one biracial officer were promoted including one that had been terminated several years earlier and then won his job back in arbitration. No women were included in that first promotional round and when the sergeant and lieutenant lists came to light, those omissions raised an even larger eyebrow than perhaps they would have otherwise.

Because as it turned out, women dominated the top five of the lieutenants list and were ranked highly on the sergeants' list as well. And each list contained a highly ranked African-American candidate as well. A bit of an eye opener because of the complaints in the past among upper management about women and men of color being represented in "low numbers" on the lists. Even though women made up about 10% of the department and Black officers about 7%, they comprised between 60% and 80% of the top five candidates on both lists. But none of them made DeLaRosa's first round of promotions.

Passed over was top candidate Det. Linda Byerly who had 20 years plus experience including seven in investigations and no problems who was passed over by less experienced individuals, and apparently that oversight generated some consternation (and it should have generated some questions) and three weeks later, another sergeant position came up and she was promoted. Byerly's promotion broke a five-year drought involving female supervisors as no female officer had been promoted into this level since the expiration of the city's consent decree with the State Attorney General's office. The successful completion of probation by any female supervisor would also break an even longer drought as two female supervisors were demoted within their probational periods.

More promotions followed including #5 on the lieutenant's list, Sgt. Melissa Bartholomew and some sergeants and detectives including the first African-American supervisor to be promoted since 2005, Det. Brian Dodson who'd been on the list at least three years.

After the first round, the department did promote two candidates who had placed in the top five on the lieutenants' list during the first seven months of 2010. However, both of them were promoted after the compositions of the lists became known beyond the select few who make the decisions without having to provide reasoning behind them. Why? Because without a list that's accessible especially by those who are impacted by it, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of accountability in the process. For example, if candidates are promoted consistently from the lowest quarter on the list, that would only be known if people actually knew about the list itself and where different candidates placed. If high ranking candidates were passed over consistently for lower ones, how would that be known if there was no list? If women were overlooked entirely even at the top, no one would ever know. If the management were promoting those who they favored or were on their respective teams regardless of rankings or scores, how would that be known without an accountable listing?

But observing the progression of promotions during the different stages of 2010 in relation to the list was fascinating and it revealed a lot about the department's administration and its operations.

DeLaRosa made the decisions for a few of the rounds and apparently, Diaz relied on his counsel quite heavily when making his own decisions involving his first flurry of promotions upon his arrival in Riverside. But his decisions devalued the lieutenants' list even further, the process that for better and worse had been the one provided for candidates to gauge their performances in that process in a somewhat transparent way, and With the loss of the value of that list, the promotional process slipped back into a more secret practice instead. After all, if you're numbered in the top five, wouldn't you have questions about why #9 and #12 were promoted instead? If you were told that to make the grade, you had to top the list and then management instead deviated from what it told you, it seems that might make it difficult to trust management or its process outlined to participants.

If that outlined process deviated considerably from the promotional process the candidates entered into in good faith, then the only thing left to do is question it. And yes, quite a few people did start to question its progression in 2010.

[Some feel that former Interim Police Chief John DeLaRosa still looms large in the promotional process]

After DeLaRosa took his retirement, Diaz and crew came into the department in the summer of 2011 still working off the older list and they promoted 13 individuals to fill vacancies from detective to captain in one sweep. An apparent housewarming gift from former City Manager Brad Hudson to his new hire. But Diaz' promotions in some respect to quite a few seemed more like a going away present to DeLaRosa who's still tight with the new chief even while serving as the new secretary of the community organization, Latino Network. DeLaRosa had transferred the #1 candidate and the #3 candidate both women out of their assignments in Diaz' office back into patrol citing staffing shortages in supervision of that division. Then he transferred another sergeant out of those same depleted ranks into the #3's spot in Diaz' building before his arrival. That was #2 on the lieutenant's list and he was soon promoted by Diaz .

Interestingly #1 wound up being drawn back into her earlier assignments in the chief's office by Diaz and Asst. Chief Chris Vicino who had taken on the task of dusting off and revisiting the 2010-2015 Strategic Plan. And then when the new test was taken, the process had been changed on the lieutenant's side in the wake of Graham's lawsuit and questions raised about the process of selection off a list that by mid-2010 appeared pretty meaningless. As more candidates were promoted outside of the top five candidates than from inside that top group, again it left the question open. Why even try to undergo the established procedure for promotions if the selection process was left to so much interpretation and allegations of favoritism and those at the top of the list might be wondering if they were simply on the wrong "team" if passed over by those with less experience and lower ranking on the list.

And it's not just this police department, these same issues have been grappled with by agencies all over the country. Just as they have been in other areas of the public sector not to mention inside the business culture.

But under 2010's test, #1 still wound up #1 and after being "tested" by Diaz and the cabinet, was promoted by the end of 2010. Then promotions dwindled down as vacancies had been filled though not completely at those levels but the city's finances were beginning their down slide.

[Chief Sergio Diaz strolls the mall, comments on protesters]

Chief Sergio Diaz showed up recently after the arduous listing process for promotional candidates at the Occupy Riverside protest to converse with some protesters and allegedly called one of them a drug dealer and two others "druggies" but by the end of the recording, they were shaking hands and heading their separate ways. But the testing process was changed when he took office both on the written and oral ends of it. The trends however really didn't change along with the procedure as it turned out. It changed the lists but probably won't ultimately change the promotional patterns of favoring candidates with multiple special assignments under their belts rather than those who spend the majority of their careers in patrol. That's felt by quite a few who believe that if they work in patrol, they have essentially zero chance of ever being a sergeant or lieutenant since despite his earlier attitude that the list isn't all that, Diaz has began promoting straight off of it since the establishment of the latest lists. It's most likely that if lieutenants are promoted, they will be the two current "A" band candidates, both with extensive experience already working under Diaz and his trusted circle including its ex officio member.

For sergeants, quite a few candidates are promoted out of investigations especially during times of fiscal tightness which puts a drain on the patrol division indirectly because of the early 1990s MOU that requires the filling of vacancies in the investigations division. But for lieutenants, candidates who spent their careers in patrol have become more discouraged by the process that may exclude them. Whether that's the case or not, the current trends which are simply the older trends under a different name do bring to the forefront the sticky issue of special assignments and who gets them, not to mention is the system fair to all people.

The lieutenant's listing and promotional choices have followed its own trend, which hasn't changed at all despite the reorganization system.

Earlier in 2010, the lieutenant's list included mostly individuals with experience with field operations especially patrol who tended to be actively involved in community policing at its top though a couple had been placed recently in special assignments. However, most of the selections made by DeLaRosa and Diaz were mainly those who had spent much of their time in what are called "special assignments" including those in the Chief's Office such as personnel and training. Most of them were individuals who had extensively worked under or had allegedly been mentored by DeLaRosa and Deputy Chief Mike Blakely which makes sense given that most of their time was spent in more internal operations. Working intensively under those who make the promotional decisions at the very least offers candidates the opportunity to be evaluated by those decision makers and their names more familiar when promotional opportunities arise. That's how it works in the business culture too.

In contrast, officers and supervisors who work in patrol don't work directly with those who make promotional decisions. After all, how many times does a police chief or his cabinet even attend roll call meetings? In the history of the Riverside Police Department up to its present day, chiefs and their immediate subordinates tend to stay away from the roll calls and other aspects of field operation assignments. The field operations captain apparently has minimal contact with those in his own division even when they are all sharing the same station facility. The deputy chief who's his boss is rarely seen in public circles in comparison to the appearances of the administrative side of the department's leadership.

Some candidates selected came from SWAT/Metro backgrounds, not surprising because DeLaRosa allegedly has said that he preferred to promote those with SWAT backgrounds, which was bad news for female candidates including those who placed highly on the lists. If that happened, then talk about pushing the city's risk of civil liability way up indeed based on the histories of other law enforcement agencies that have seen litigation spring up involving the promotional process.

But his comments and other discussions brought the issue of special assignments into the center arena especially after Diaz' arrival. Blakely who some say mentored DeLaRosa also apparently had experience with SWAT divisions back in his prior haunt in the San Diego Police Department. Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer wrote position papers while in the Los Angeles Police Department that addressed recommendations made by a blue ribbon panel that evaluated the department's SWAT division including the recruitment and training of candidates. SWAT experienced officers fared very well in the promotional process in 2010 especially after Diaz' arrival though not quite as much as officers with experience in Personnel and Training. These trends are interesting to note. SWAT experienced and trained officers including supervisors have a lot to bring to the table in terms of promotion but when a DeLaRosa makes comments about preferences in one assignment (especially one devoid of women) over others, it does generate questions.

Not faring as well as they did in previous years in the promotional process were those were assigned to Internal Affairs at the time of the promotional selections. That division was well represented as several of them tested and made the list, but unlike what happened under former Chief Russ Leach, none were promoted last year. Those with past Internal Affairs experience such as Bartholomew fared better in the process.

The issue about "special assignments" has caused some consternation since Diaz has arrived because of whether or not the policy in place governing them is always adhered to when selecting the officers who fill them. The departmental policy states that an officer can work in a special assignment for two years (with a one-time year extension to total three years) but after they reach the maximum time served, they have to spend a year working a patrol assignment before they can reapply. The other policy governing them that's come under question is whether someone who's on probation (including that involving promotions) can be eligible to apply or be placed in a special assignment. That came into play when one sergeant who had been serving his probation had been assigned to a special assignment, which then led to his assignment while still on probation to a second special assignment. But it doesn't appear that this policy is being enforced uniformly at all. Some candidates apply for special assignments out of patrol and lose out to people who have just finished a different special assignment. Some people finish a special assignment and have to do their year in patrol before applying for another which is under the policy.

Yet others seem to have two or more consecutive special assignments without taking a break from that by spending the year on patrol duties and this is something that has caused quite a bit of criticism from people left wondering if the stated policy is just a piece of paper somewhere with writing on it. With the increased importance of special assignments first in the promotional process and now in the testing process as well, the consternation with the apparent triple standard of assigning special assignments could increase as it really should because if the policy is being selectively applied or enforced to favor some and limit others, then it seems that it should be scrutinized more closely.

Certainly before it's allowed to play such a major role in the department's promotional system in supervision. It's true that the higher you promote, the more exposure you might have to special assignments because supervision and later management do play roles in their operations so that might make it somewhat likely in some instances for those with special assignments to be more prevalent but it still seems like a very problematic assignment if someone's denied a special assignment to someone who's already had one or two of them in a row or is told they have to wait a year while someone else doesn't. It also devalues the patrol division quite a bit to hold some people accountable for their policy stated times of service in the division that's the backbone of any agency and not others through "rewarding" them for any reason.

The issue of promoting officers who had been demoted came into play last year though candidates faced different "waiting periods".

Three candidates were promoted in 2010 after demotions. Two of them, Lt. Jaybee Brennan and Det. Kim Crutchfield waited about four to five years after their demotions to get promoted (albeit detective instead of sergeant for Crutchfield). The department apparently requires officers who are demoted to have two evaluations of "meet standards" or better before they can be considered for promotions and evaluations are conducted roughly annually. So the two candidates listed here waited four to five years to get promoted which might have been an appropriate time period depending on the circumstances. No doubt the demotions for the women were going to complicate their promotional process but that seemed negated somewhat by the differential treatment given to another officer who had also been demoted who didn't have to wait nearly as long for his second chance.

Contrast the women's experiences with the other candidate, Sgt. Cliff Mason who waited a lesser time period of 18 months after his demotion before being re-promoted to sergeant. A pretty impressive feat considering that the two "meet standards" evaluations had to be completed in that short time span according to the department's policy. It's a bit confusing to an outsider perhaps as to how a person being demoted can achieve two such evaluations in such a brief period of time afterward including one that likely covers the period when the sustained misconduct took place. After all, for example, when Officer Roger Sutton was transferred out of the canine unit, he received a poor evaluation (one of his only ones put on the trial record) after that disciplinary action within the year. Which is what would be expected after a serious incident like he faced, it would be odder if he's received a good or excellent evaluation under the circumstances.

Mason's first "meet standards" evaluation would likely had covered the period of time that included the off-duty incident that led to his demotion in the first place which is a bit puzzling. It's not impossible certainly for Mason to have worked diligently and to have been motivated to improve his performance at all, but it's more puzzling that in 18 months only two evaluations would be possible and it just seems more likely that anything serious enough to get a sergeant demoted would be reflected in that first evaluation afterward. But like the other two candidates, Mason apparently has been very diligent in overcoming the setback and pushing forward towards accomplishing good things which is what is hoped for when offering individuals that second chance. That's important to note as well, but the process in itself apart from those impacted by it generates questions.

Diaz' rationale for promoting Mason was apparently that he already had nine years of experience on the job and during his demotion period had behaved stellar. In all fairness, one of the top officers said about the promotion of one of the females that no one should have to pay their entire careers for a mistake as he had learned from his own career as an officer. The four to five year wait to get a chance to be repromoted doesn't seem to be nearly as questionable as putting that time to good use can in the long run be advantageous and may be very reasonable in contrast with waiting 18 months which seems way too short a time for a demoted candidate to sit on the sidelines to learn or undo the behaviors or problems that contributed to the demotion. In a four or five year period, you can undergo growth, work on your weaknesses, improve on your strengths and become better for it. It's a little more difficult to believe that journey can be accomplished in only 18 months.

But the promotional process and now the issue of special assignments has been very interesting to follow and will be explored even further. Including how the more they appeared to change the process, the more it actually remained the same and what that says for picking teams within the department.

Given the LAPD influx at the top of the department, here are some LAPD links:

LAPD Career Ladder

Nunez etal vs City of Los Angeles is a lawsuit that challenged the LAPD's promotional process involving "bands".

Rampart Independent Review Panel Report discusses the promotional process and also problems with "top down management". This report will be the subject of a future blog posting given the wealth of interesting information in it.

Steve Adams Campaign Flyers Pitched at City Hall

[Councilman Steve Adams (central) recently was in the middle of a controversy regarding his campaign flyers being put on display at City Hall]

For a couple of weeks, people reported seeing campaign flyers representing Councilman Steve Adams placed on the table alongside the agendas inside the city council chambers. The flyers were published by The Truth Publication and detailed information about Adams and his run for city council. Whether or not it was legal to place them on the table in the chambers according to the Fair Political Practices Act, was an issue that was raised by some parties. That's fair enough in any election process, which is run according to a complex and detailed set of laws and rules including those coming out of both the County Registrar of Voters as well as the Secretary of State office.

Salvator Santana who published the flyers addressed the issue in an open letter defending his placing of the flyers on the back table of the city council chambers. Allegedly when City Attorney Greg Priamos was notified about them, he removed them and handed them back to Santana. So that appeared to answer that question at least from the city's own perspective. Priamos is there to protect the city council and mayor so if he removed the fliers, then likely from his perspective he was trying to protect Adams.

While endorsing Adams and the other incumbents in the city council election, Santana had been critical of Councilman Rusty Bailey's decision to run for mayor next year alongside two other council members Mike Gardner and Andrew Melendrez.

He blasted Bailey's decision to run as among other things, anti-patriotic" and some people including other elected officials criticized him for that. It's fair enough for him to criticize Bailey's decision to run (and there is reason to criticize it) but Bailey had the right to make that decision for himself to run for office as well. Just like Gardner and Melendrez have that right as well. even It was technically Gardner who likely doomed next year's mayoral race into a runoff with his own declaration of candidacy after both Melendrez and former Councilman Ed Adkison had declared their intentions to run. Bailey's been castigated by Santana for doing what Gardner had done when both of them had the right to do it whether you agree with their decision to run or not.

It'd be nice if they could have waited to do so until after they completed their second terms that the voters in their ward gave them.

But if you look at the campaign disclosure statements for both candidates in the past election, you'll see that there's a difference between the two of them in relation to how some of their campaign money was spent.

Bailey was represented as a do nothing councilman who hasn't accomplished anything yet most of the accomplishments that Santana lists on his advertisement/endorsement including the added police positions, crime reduction and the various projects were carried out through joint action of the city's legislative body, its city council. Not to mention that individual city departments were involved in those achievements as well, including those who put a lot of effort into writing two grants for the COPS office's stimulus program before winning those 15 officer positions the second time around. Like any council member he had his own accomplishments but much of what he does is through his participation in a legislative body. That and the fact that he has one of the hardest working legislative aides in Frank Arreola speak well to all that.

But Santana besides his blog prints political advertisements for candidates, mostly for incumbents for $250 on his Web site or in print according to 460 forms submitted by several city council members who used his advertising or printing services. On these forms, candidates disclose financial contributions and payments as well as fill out a conflict of economic interest statement. On several forms including those of Councilman Chris MacArthur and Gardner, it shows that their campaigns made at least one payment of $250 for printing advertisement costs.

This is interesting in the case of Gardner because one individual said when he asked Gardner whether or not he had paid Santana any money, Gardner had said no. But if you check out the campaign statements at City Hall, look at the one dated May 10, 2011 for Gardner and on page 28/31, you'll find the contribution under "payments".

[Mike Gardner's campaign disclosure statement containing his payment to Salvador Santana. Click the photo for enlargement and clarity]

Given all the print advertising that Adams has gotten, he likely made payments to Santana for that business. But one candidate who has no payments showing up on his 460 form to Santana or his publication for print advertising is Bailey, the one who's being blasted by Santana for running for mayor. Some candidates had said that when they were told by Santana the price of his ads, they told him they wouldn't pay. None of these candidates received endorsements from him or his publication. On the other hand, those who did pay for his advertising including at least three incumbents did get his endorsement.

The placement of his ads and the news that he received payment from incumbents to advertise in his blog or in print ads has caused consternation among some including at least one elected official. But what he does for the most part is up to him and it's his decision.

However, it just goes to show how tangled news reporting including on politics can get when publications receive money for political advertising. Is the candidate paying only for the ad or for the endorsement as well? It's not clear in this case and Santana's being a businessman which is his right to do but the uncertainty that it might generate is why many publications draw the line between covering politics and endorsements and accepting paid advertising. Some media outlets do both but have posted guidelines for their engagement to make sure that the boundary between advertising and editorial content isn't crossed. But again it's his publication, his advertising business and his right to do what he wants with both as long as the Fair Political Practices laws are adhered to in the process. Still, the questions generated are fair enough too and are often asked of other medial outlets not just his own.

As far as the Adams (whose consultant Brian Floyd has been busy on YouTube lately) versus John Brandriff campaign contest, it's winding down to its last week. Whoever gets the most votes, wins and deserves to win the position. I'm not endorsing either one because most often, I just ask Brandriff the question of whether or not he's absolutely sure he wants to be a councilman in the eve of one of the greatest financial crises in the city's history. He seems to want the job anyway go figure.

As for Adams, there's advantages to having remnants of the old guard on the city council when the city residents really start asking questions about the city's finances, questions that really should be answered by those who made the decisions that led us down this shaky path while they are still on the dais. So maybe when that happens, Adams is the best person to be sitting there explaining what he and his cohorts did to city residents and why they remained silent when scandals broke in 2010. That would be enough to keep him busy and in his seat at meetings and would keep two of his dais-mates too busy to have much time to campaign for higher office. If there's any leadership on the dais that's capable of dealing with any serious financial crises, it's yet to show itself.

And it's not envy or sour grapes speaking because there's not much to envy when the city's facing massive bond payments due and a dwindling general fund revenues especially after the housing market triple dips in June. Riverside is the third highest market for the triple dip and after that hits, property values in Riverside will have declined a total of 60%. Just think about what that decline can do for property taxes at city and county. Often after housing dips, consumer confidence and spending decreases which could hit the sales tax again. With the latest round of fine hikes and fee increases, that just leaves less money for people to spend on the local businesses and add to that sales tax revenue.

The economy is so unstable at this point, it's hard to predict when it will rise and fall but 2012 and the fiscal year of 2012/2013, not looking too pretty right now. So no, I don't envy those who have to make decisions at all and you don't have to have an inferiority complex to feel that way.

So if either of them gets elected, it works for me as a political gadfly. But for those in Ward Seven, your job is to VOTE. It's your voice. The only time an election is really lost is when people don't participate in the vote.

Santana Responds (well sort of) in his blog

[His rendition of one of his critics, which I think is kind of cute, so cute I'm thinking of using it as the signature photo of my blog...as a reminder that if people resort to personal attacks about you rather than simply criticize your points, you must be doing something right in River City.]

Mr. Santana has responded to this posting with a posting in kind that makes it clear he's not happy with those who posted criticisms or asked questions about his postings with documentations and is engaging in personal attacks, the very last tool or weapon in any arsenal for a debate. Rather than counter the points with a clear and salient argument, he makes personal attacks calling people anti-establishment and anti-police, saying so and so's lost respect with the community. Rather than protest against hate, he provides a perfect demonstration of it in one of its purer forms.

And then he complains about how people dress which really has nothing to do with the topic at hand which is a political campaign and a city in increasingly bad financial shape.

If I'm the target in his blog posting and the latest public enemy #1 and not other individuals like Rusty Bailey this week, I can live with that because you don't go into blogging to be popular or make friends. That's what social newsletters are for after all.

At least he didn't call me a slut or a whore and I do appreciate that. And I can live with the fact that he doesn't like the way I dress or gasp, am not quite like the photos of the scantily clad beauties he frequently posts on his site.

Still, Salvador's time would be better spent asking Adams how he plans to address the financial situation that the city will be facing when the bond payments come due next year and how city departments including public safety will be adequately funded so they can provide their vital services. His pledges that the city council will cut its own pension funds the same day that the police department starts its two-tier pension program if it ultimately goes that route. Why the fire department's so worried about losing funding already guaranteed in its contract that it refuses to publicly admit that its employees have major concerns about the current monopoly on Basic Life Support Ambulance services. Why two of its fire stations and two libraries (at the same time Measure C revisits the ballot) are put up as collateral for some business developer's hotel. Why the police department hasn't hired a non-dispatch civilian employee in over four years if the city's flush with enough money to buy theaters and make bond payments on projects which should be paid by those developing them instead. Not to mention paying a developer's demolition fees for him on his own property.

I'm of the opinion and maybe it's anti-community to say this but I believe the city's basic services including libraries, museums, fire, public works and yes, police matter more than investing in questionable ventures like hotels, apartment management and theaters which haven't made the city a dime so far, put it further in the red and yes, may have even cost jobs at one downtown hotel. And if it's an "anti-community" and "anti-police" person pointing out the obvious rather than those who are in the more favorable camps for these entities like Salvador, what does that say about this city's support of either?

Fair enough to do that on your blog but it does reflect badly on Councilman Steve Adams to hire people like this as part of his campaign as shown on his campaign 460 statement which is what he did with Salvador. He hired him to perform a service which Salvador did, his right as a businessman. A right I actually defended which he would have known if he'd been able to think past this irrational anger that's grabbed hold of someone who's usually quite interesting and informative to read.

After blogging six years and hearing everything, any type of personal attacks just make shrug at this point. People are going to like you or hate you and there's not much you can do about that except to keep plugging away at it. But usually around election time is when the tactics fire up as perhaps the poll numbers of those waging them aren't as good as hoped or predicted.

I've survived death threats. And I've survived contentious city council elections and so far, every one that's disintegrated into personal attacks hasn't worked out well for the candidates either engaging in them or sitting it out while having their syncopates do it for them. And this is why this blog is all for shortening the election cycle so it reduces the time each year when people generally go nuts. Having to take measures to protect my own safety during elections in particular just has been part of the lesson plan of living and writing about River City.

To engage in tactics like that is in itself a form of desperation and definitely indicate someone either filled with vinegar or venom. I've survived personal attacks by supporters of incumbent candidates like Dom Betro (who also said I had no credibility with whoever after I defended the police union's right to negotiate its contract) and Frank Schiavone (who once said at a meeting I had no ethics). People claiming to support both candidates wrote some pretty cruel things about those who have been critical of those two candidates whether the candidates themselves were aware of it or not...even posting personal information about where people lived. Unfortunately, that's just part and parcel of election campaigns in Riverside these days but so far those candidates surrounded with this type of negative furor haven't been reelected. Because ultimately the people who vote just haven't been into these types of attacks.

Adams has actually conducted himself quite civilly during the election compared to someone like Betro who stomped out of candidate forums but then he doesn't have to be any different because some of the people around him engage in that behavior on his behalf.

Councilman Steve Adams hasn't ever attacked me personally but if he wants to have one of his hired contractors do it, that's okay too. I wish him luck on election night, may the one who gets the most votes win. I definitely wish him luck if he wins as the city faces its fiscally toughest year in decades and it'll be fiscally the toughest until the year that follows it.

And perhaps because I'm so anti-police and Salvador is not, maybe that's why Chief Sergio Diaz is considerably more fond of Salvador and his blog than he is of people like me who just ask too many questions. Which is fair enough because I'm more interested in how the chief's going to lead and manage his department in these increasingly challenging times than his dancing skills.

After all, it's not like I've ever hit the poor chief up for a ride rather than "wander" all day dressed like a "tramp with a "fanatical agenda". But then Diaz has his own difficult path to navigate through the intricate politics of River City. As stated, his greater concerns than bloggers or Occupy Riverside is the upcoming budgets and the impact it's going to have in his department including the staffing levels of the employees who work there. All of who have worked on expired contracts for the past several years.

Speaking of all which there will be a future blog posting of why pushing for increased financial oversight (including by the city council members elected to fill that role) is viewed by the "community" as a "fanatical agenda".

So thank you Salvador for sharing some of your thoughts including your wardrobe critique on your site and providing some pretty stimulating ideas for future blog postings.

UPDATE: After it was revealed that the blogger who published that pretty awesome cartoon of me apparently as part of a campaign ad was tied financially to the campaign of recently elected city council member Steve Adams through a 460 form, the blog posting that including the cartoon mysteriously vanished from public view.

No worries, I still get to keep the artistic rendition done of me by one of Santana's reporter/artists who thoughtfully signed the cartoon he drew of me. This cartoon was apparently paid for by election money contributed by Adams for his services because the cartoon was used in a posting that did advertise Mr. Adams campaign which was what Santana was apparently paid to do through his advertising services.

It might also been paid for by monies received by him from two other individuals on the dais so hopefully Mr. Santana sent all of them thank you notices thanking them for their contributions. Except for Councilman Rusty Bailey who of course didn't pay him money and not long afterward was castigated for his decision in a democratic republic to run for city council. The two of course not being related clearly.

So thanks Mr. Santana and the artist for your nice cartoon. I will give both of you byline credit every time I use it as a reminder that there's some individuals that don't want questions asked about the expenditure of money by City Hall in ways that could endanger our city's ability to provide the basic services. That to ask questions about how the city residents' money is spent is anti-establishment or anti-police.

I would also like to thank Mr. Adams and Salvador's other clients on the dais for providing Mr. Santana with the payments which enabled him to create such a nice cartoon of someone while at the same time living through example the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ as he mentioned in his speech the other day. It's too bad election season is so short.....but there's always the mayor's race.

Maybe it needs another candidate....

Pasadena Discovers Its New Public Works Manager is Being Sued

What's old news in Riverside hits the pages in Pasadena

[Public Works Manager Siobhan Foster's moving on to new digs in Pasadena]

"(The city of Riverside) had me do a lot of things that were unethical and illegal,"

---former city employee Sean Gill to Pasadena Star-News

"If this gets out, I'm out."

----Former Public Works Manager Siobhan Foster allegedly to a former employee

Some newspaper in Pasadena caught wind that one of its newest employees is facing a civil lawsuit against her filed by a former employee in her department. Former Public Works Manager Siobhan Foster who moved on to join her former boss, City Manager Michael Beck in Pasadena is being sued for among other things alleged improprieties involving the city's bidding contract and retaliation against those who complained about it.

Former employee Sean Gill filed his lawsuit which is currently being litigated.

(excerpt Pasadena Star-News)

Gill also claims that top Riverside officials instructed him to "falsify" documents to fast track a project funded by federal Community Development Block Grants.

"The engineers at Riverside couldn't get the plans out in time to meet the CDBG requirements," Gill said. "They put the project out to bid, fast-tracked the process. I had to falsify documents that the work was done, have a check for the contractor cut, and put the check in my desk until the work started more than a month later."

Gill said Foster had intimate knowledge of everything related to the use of CDBG money.

"Everything had to be approved through the director," Gill said. "She knew all about it."

Supervising Deputy City Attorney Jeb Brown had this to say about the lawsuit, reciting text from the city's unofficial manual on how to respond to litigation filed against it.

(excerpt)

Jeb Brown, supervising deputy city attorney for the city of Riverside, said "Mr. Gill's case is without merit and (the city) looks forward to vigorously defending the city's interest.

Foster's new (and old) boss had this to say about it.

(excerpt)

Pasadena City Manager Michael Beck also came to Pasadena from Riverside where he was an assistant city manager. Beck is not named in the suit, but defended his choice of Foster to replace Martin Pastucha as Pasadena's public works director.

"There was nothing in the litigation that was of concern," Beck said. "It's really a lawsuit against the city in which (Foster) is named."

But what was going on should have caught Beck's attention most notably that the bidding process was apparently so legit that the two individuals Gill and former Deputy City Attorney Raychele Sterling (who kicked major butt at the Mission Ambulance kangaroo court hearing several weeks ago) who asked questions and expressed concerns about it were duly fired not long after they did so.

But now that Foster's left the building for Pasadena and not Moreno Valley as some predicted (because her husband allegedly works there), who will be next among the disciples of former City Manager Brad Hudson to leave the building before its walls come crumbling down? And who will be left holding the bag in the upcoming months especially when the bond collectors start demanding their payments for Riverside Renaissance and Redevelopment?

A Spanking for Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach?

He received a spanking from the Commission on Judicial Performance

The Commission on Judicial Performance admonished former judge and current Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach for actions he took while on the bench in connection to the election between him and former District Attorney Rod Pacheco.

Pacheco was quoted in the Press Enterprise news brief:

(excerpt)

“I am not surprised,” Pacheco said by telephone this morning “His lack of ethics is not a surprise to me, and it was clearly recognized by the commission on at least two occasions.”

Zellerbach and his office haven't yet responded.

Public Meetings

Tuesday, Nov. 1 at 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. the Riverside City Council met at City Hall to discuss this agenda.

Per usual, the most important item on the agenda is of course on the consent calendar and it's this item.

Monday, Nov. 7 at 5:30 p.m. The Charter Review Committee as stacked as it is (just check out how many members made campaign contributions to city council members) will meet to solicit public input from people at Orange Terrace Community Center. Be there or be square.

Public Service Announcement

[City Attorney Gregory Priamos aka "Legal" sitting on the right here next to some of the people he allegedly believes it's his number one job to "protect" may have tinkered with the city's CRPA procedure]

It has come to the attention of this blog that the City of Riverside through "Legal" is tweaking with how it carries out the CPRA request in terms of providing public documents to people in this city. Apparently quite a few people media outlets and others are asking for many, many documents. So what the city's done is instead of providing the documents and then receiving payment for them. It's asking for payment before running off copies. It's not a violation of the California Public Records Act to charge for copies but the new policy doesn't allow people to "examine" the records first which in terms of hard copies at least are free.

If you make a CPRA request and the city's making you pay for copies before you can even examine them first, then contact one or both of the following organizations below for legal clarification outside the city. More organizations that push for government accountability and transparency through protecting the right for everyone to use CPRA will be posted here and responses from the organizations to the city's latest policy to make it harder (yes, because that's what it's about) through the city attorney's office will be posted here.

Cal Aware

California First Amendment Coalition

This is the best kind of political campaigning that exists in River City

" I am on workers comp "
" I can't go back to UPS "
" I have no income "
" My wife's son killed my son in an automobile accident "
" I flip flop on the issues cause I want your vote "
" My wife will divorce me if I lose "

I am a LOSER
John Bandit
Ward 7
Vote 4 Me!

Seriously if this is the best that Adams supporters can come up with, then maybe his poll numbers aren't so hot. It's his election to lose though it's been hotly contested for months it seems now.

Coming Soon:

Contracts, Lies and Revisionist History

"No one is to ever know about this...."

Who said this and why, and what did City Hall do when it found out about it?

It's All One Big Family in River City

2011-10-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

RPOA Election this month.....who will be running? For president, nominees at the general meeting were Sgt. Brian Smith and Det. Ken Tutwiler which if they both run, should be a very good election as both bring a lot to the plate including a wealth of experience in the union's leadership. This contest if it shapes up would be too close to call and the president would be left the arduous task of facing the city's financial crisis which could begin in earnest by next June. Also on tap, are contract negotiations and the two-tier pension plan which divided the union and the RPOA is one of the only ones which hasn't signed onto it. Both men are capable of handling these issues and more and hopefully it'll be a good and vigorous election process with good voter turnout.

Vice president nominees (in case Smith wins as he's the current vice-president)James Riedeman and Juan Munoz were put on the ticket.

UPDATE: Riverside to charge $1,500 vendor fees for horse-pulled carriages which means fewer of them during the annual festival of lights. Sorry folks, but given the city's financial situation, it needs every single penny it can charge businesses.

IN related news, the Riverside Downtown Partnership plans a triple business tax for its members downtown. With all the talk from city officials about how flush the city's coffers are, there sure are a lot of new taxes and increase in taxes being pushed by the city and its arms including the RDP about now.

And Riverside is one of the housing markets expected to be hit hardest by the triple dip in home prices.

Update: Raincross Cafe in City Hall to change its menu? It appears that some or many of the menu items have become cost-prohibitive to make so allegedly they will be eliminated from the dining menu. Given that this restaurant has been alleged by former and current city employees to be subsidized by monies from the Park and Recreation Department, maybe there's a financial squeeze in profits, which the restaurant allegedly hasn't realized since it's opened.

Chief Sergio Diaz showed up at the Occupy Riverside protest to converse with some protesters. (You Tube)

It's not really clear what he said to them because the cameraman is providing commentary, though a couple individuals said that an officer called them "druggies" and they weren't aware he was the police chief until later.

UPDATE: The Riverside Police Department compiles new promotional lists. Is there a new way of doing business at Orange Street or is it as the song says, "still the same"?

Hint: One important "buzz" term? Special Assignments

Sergeants:

1) Charles Payne

2) Deborah Foy

3) Robert Tipre

4) Peter Elliot

Lieutenants

A Band (alphabetical)

Mark Rossi

Russ Shubert

B Band

Frank Assumma

Steve Bradshaw

John Capen

Christian Dinco

Val Graham

Julian Hutzler

Dwayne May

Skip Showalter

Lisa Williams

C Band

Brian Dailey

UPDATE: Riverside Police Officers' Association holds general membership meeting this month to solicit candidates to run for the president's spot next month. The current president, the current vice-president and at least one past president have been mentioned in the past few months as potential candidates for the top spot in the bargaining unit. Also included on that list had been a past president of a union from another law enforcement agency, who had been mentioned frequently earlier on. So who will be those put up as candidates for the presidency, that remains to be seen. Current president, Sgt. Cliff Mason had opted out of running for a second term.

Under the Gun?

[Riverside Fire Chief Steve Earley faces threats of losing paramedic funding if he ever recommends the granting of a license to another ambulance franchise besides AMR]

In what had to be one of the least shocking events in recent Riverside history, the city council voted 6-1 to deny granting a Basic Life Support franchise license to Mission Ambulance at a public hearing conveniently scheduled in the afternoon of Oct. 11. The room was filled with city staff, representatives from at least four ambulance companies and concerned people. Mayor Ron Loveridge left the gavel to Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem for Life Chris MacArthur and didn't even have to defend the 1989 ordinance that he had been instrumental in creating and passing when he'd been on the city council way back then. MacArthur who also chaired the Public Safety Committee that recommended the denial vote is one of many people at City Hall that's quite tight with American Medical Response's manager Peter Hubbard (who's after all, been appointed to two city boards and commissions) which appeared to play heavily in the contentious hearings to the very end. It just appeared as if the "good old boy" network which is what created that original city ordinance over 20 years ago is just as much in place today. Riverside after all is a city of 350,000 with small town politics. Some of the folks on the dais and some in the audience party together after all.

Mission Ambulance representatives gave a very powerful presentation to the disinterested city council but what can you do when the decision's already been made? The answer is, go through the motions. What Mission Ambulance and the other ambulance carriers need to do know since the denial against Mission is really a blanket denial against all of them is to form a class action and file a lawsuit in federal court arguing that the ordinance violates anti-trust laws as well as the federal anti-kickback statute because of the involvement of federal funding like Medicare that doesn't apply to other entities like refuse collection and cable companies that were used as comparisons. The economic conflict of interest involving the fire chief's role in the investigative process for the licensing puts the whole situation into serious question. After all, one city council member was allegedly told by an irate fire department management employee to "butt out" and not get involved in the issue. Never a dull moment in this city.

It's clear that the fire department at least which is in charge of the investigation of franchise applications acted as if it had the proverbial gun to its head and who can blame it? It's operating under the threats of losing funding for paramedics training including paramedic classes. The moment Earley says yes, I recommend granting [franchise name]a license, they're toast, courtesy of AMR. That company has said, gee we can't afford to provide the funding if we don't get the "retail" side of it, even though they managed to "win" on that point without providing an iota of hard evidence detailing how they would be negatively impacted financially. Just the fear factor was enough for the investigation, first and the city council, second.

Of course, what's not being said by them is that the $1.4 million in funding is tied in with the ALS/911 contract with AMR that comes up for renewal next June. But the fire department's acting scared anyway partly because AMR's been "donating" other funding for fire department programs including dispatch and academy classes for paramedics. The fire department said about 75 paramedics needed those classes which cost about a several hundred dollars apiece otherwise.

The firefighters' union would probably not like to know that the city's apparently too financially destitute to pay for paramedics classes when there's theaters, hotels and parking garages for private entities to stick on the city residents instead. I vote for the classes, because that's important training for very important public safety employees in our city who've had to give up too much already but then again, helping out a developer by essentially financing his project for him is just more important. But the fire department shouldn't be forced in a corner when it's encharged with investigating ambulance franchise applications by threats of losing this funding, that's just offensive but it's part and parcel of River City to do just that.

The city council agenda report for the Oct. 11 meeting includes the investigation details, the application with exhibits submitted by Mission Ambulance, counter responses by the city and also updated responses from health care facilities who felt their complaint about AMR's services weren't taken seriously by Early or the Public Safety Committee. This is the latest chapter in an drama that's been ongoing for decades but is now the focus of questions being asked by at least one city official. Councilman Paul Davis told the city council he had questions about the process and the Riverside Firefighters' Association is opposed to granting Mission Ambulance or apparently any other company a license, saying that while AMR might not go broke over competition, it'll be less inclined to spend money on the fire department including the $1.4 million that goes to paramedic training. This money is actually already committed under the contract between the ambulance company and the city regarding the handling of ALS or 911 calls and was paid out so that AMR could increase its 90% response times from 9:59 to 11:59. The delay would be countered by training and staffing fire department paramedics to handle the ALS until AMR arrived onscene to take over and provide transport. But even though this money is guaranteed under the ALS contract, AMR and its manager Peter Hubbard allegedly have said that if they don't get BLS exclusivity, they'll stop supplying the funds. The company makes about $95-100 million from its business dealings in Riverside, or as it's nicknamed by AMR, "Ft. Knox". Its parent company, Emergency Medical Services generates earnings in the billions.

AMR's used economic suffering as the main thrust of its argument for pushing for BLS exclusivity yet it hasn't provided any written documentation that it would be financially harmed by the introduction of another ambulance company within the city. It's not clear if it's provided a copy to Earley as part of his investigation but you would think since the economic viability of AMR is part of that investigative process, that this information would have been provided. If not, you would think that Earley would ask for it or push for it to be included as documented evidence in his investigation into that component of the process.

Here is the 1990 ordinance passed by City Council for the contract services Goodhew Ambulance Services which later merged with American Medical Response. It's signed by then Mayor Terry Frizzel. Goodhew Ambulance had a franchise contract with Riverside going back to at least 1980 according to contractual documents. The deal which gave Goodhew Ambulance made its owners quite wealthy. That's the only purpose it appeared to serve.

Goodhew Ambulance was bought out and through a process became American Medical Response. In fact, this address for Goodhew Ambulance at 879 Marborough Avenue in Riverside became the address for American Medical Response Riverside. The city council recognized the changes in ownership and name of Goodhew Ambulance to American Medical Response in this contract renewal ordinance in 1997.

The breaking up of Goodhew Ambulance left some of its stock with Laidlaw Medical Transportation in 1995 and one of its subsidiaries MedTrans managed it and then later bought American Medical Response and used that name for its operations.

Care Ambulance Services applied for a franchise in the summer of 1990 and it was set for a public hearing on Aug. 7 that year according to this minute order. That's what triggered the ordinance's initial enforcement to protect the economic interests of Goodhew which had friends on the city council.

That good old boy ordinance is now law in this city 20 years later.

Peter Hubbard, whose father, Dr. Joseph G. Hubbard had allegedly been heavily involved in Goodhew Ambulance in Riverside worked for AMR and also wound up being appointed by the City Council to serve eight years on the Board of Public Utilities and four years on the Community Police Review Commission. He along with other AMR employees served in a county committee on emergency services. Hubbard is also tight friends with other elected officials like Public Safety Committee Chair Chris MacArthur and non-elected officials like City Attorney Gregory Priamos who attended Hubbard's big annual fourth of july party last summer. Both men did their part to help facilitate the decision against Mission Ambulance that would best help AMR and Priamos in particular put on a great show. Remember in River City, it's all about who you know.

Riverside Fire Fighters' Association Timothy Strack's said in several venues that his union opposes the granting of the license to Mission Ambulance but it's not quite that simple as it turns out. The union is probably more divided than it appears. Why? Because while Strack told the city council at the hearing and the media that they have a great working relationship with AMR, somebody's going around and telling others that the same fire department is having "major problems" with AMR but no one can talk about it. At least not in a public venue.

This is what the union leadership said to the local publication.

(excerpt, Press Enterprise)

“We work hand-in-hand with them to provide the highest level of emergency services possible in the city,” Strack said.

But that's not the only thing the union's apparently been saying.

So why is it then that the union's then allegedly going around and talking about having major problems with AMR? It seems to most people that if this is the case, then the union leadership would be getting its information from the members of that bargaining unit about their experience with the ambulance franchise. So if that's the case, how does going up and talking about all this great teamwork instead help deal with any serious problems faced by union employees with the company if they indeed exist? That makes it seem a lot less about patient care and more about the money that the fire department has been threatened with losing if AMR doesn't get BLS exclusivity in Riverside. After all, that's allegedly what AMR representatives told the fire department, we need that or sorry, say bye bye to the funding. If there's "major problems" with AMR (and the fire department deals with them mainly on the ALS/911 side) then who's going to address them but the fire department's union?

Davis who cast the no-vote against the denial had been trying to raise that issue in the hearing that as far as the rationale went, it deteriorated from concerns about patient care (when even Earley admitted Mission Ambulance was a very good company with no real history of complaints) and more about the money that AMR pays out to the city for the fire department. He clashed with Priamos who tried to shut down his questions about the payouts by AMR to the fire department's funding. Priamos saying it was outside the scope of the agenda item but since it's being held over the head of the fire department including Earley's whose investigation of Mission Ambulance was the agenda item, it just appears that once again Priamos stepped outside of his scope as city attorney. Maybe he was reminiscing about the last time he attended one of Hubbard's parties.

.
[Riverside City Attorney Greg Priamos (r.) clashed with Councilman Paul Davis when questions of payouts by AMR arose during the application review process for Mission Ambulance. Priamos is allegedly very tight with AMR manager, Peter Hubbard]

As far as campaign donations, everyone on the dais receives contributions not from AMR which is mainly a shell company (as all of them are divided up that way to reduce civil liability to the parent company) although Davis receives donations from both AMR and Mission Ambulance. In past years, entities showing up giving donations to elected officials have been Goodhew Riverside, Hubbard and AMR before EMS's name started appearing on campaign disclosure forms.

The starting salary of an EMT at AMR Riverside wasn't posted at this site for confidentiality reasons. But there is a salary discussion here where someone says you can take its salary or go into the fast food industry where you can make real money and another here during a strike by AMR employees in one Southern California city in 2010 over contracts. Since the vast millions including the $95-100 million that AMR receives from Riverside, one of its top 10 markets go to Emergency Medical Services in Colorado, not much left for the paramedics. Some of which went into other professions to support their families because an AMR salary couldn't quite do that.

The Press Enterprise covered the Ward Seven Debates between Councilman Steve Adams and challenger John Brandriff and the writer Alisa Robinson provided some analysis on the accuracy of various statements made by both of them in the heat of debate. The Press Enterprise allegedly refused to write on one story involving a city employee but has been candid in its views on political debates.

(excerpt)

Adams, a retired police officer who is seeking a third term, touted his record of getting sidewalks built in the ward, bringing a new senior center and helping reduce the crime rate.

But he also made perhaps the most blatant misstatement of the evening when questioned about the council's decision Tuesday to stick with ambulance service from American Medical Response and not allow newcomer Mission Ambulance to operate in Riverside.

“They (Mission Ambulance) refuse to respond to people who can't pay,” Adams said.

Although Fire Chief Steve Earley has said he is concerned about indigent patients potentially being refused service, Riverside County Emergency Medical Services Director Bruce Barton has said he has never heard any such complaints about Mission.

But anyway, the one thing about the fire department is that it does do very important work in this city at risk and yes, like Strack said, we should thank them and be grateful but is the best way to do that going along with a situation where the threat of financial loss is apparently being held over its head to the point where it's not clear whether or not any "major problems" are being addressed in ways that benefit both department employees and the public? If "major problems" exist between AMR and the fire department's employees, then why is the opposite image being projected instead that they're one big happy family? How does that support the fire department and its ability to operate free of those "major problems"? It might be anti-fire department to say this but any "major problems" need to be addressed in an environment where if they exist they can be addressed without any repercussions to anyone including fire department employees. The fire department's employees should be allowed to do their difficult jobs without these "major problems" and having to worry about losing funding from a company that's highly profitable and not struggling if it doesn't get what it wants but still would likely make out quite well amid competition if it's indeed providing the best BLS service in the county. Why would a city government not only allow a fire department to be held hostage like this let alone participate in that with its own decision making?

Not to mention some other actions the city has taken involving fire department facilities most notably Fire Stations #13 and 14, which for a while where actually not owned by the city but by the Redevelopment Agency. Why? Because along with two city libraries, they served as collateral for $20 million in federal bonds issued for the Hyatt Hotel. The bonds needed to be financed by collateral with lease revenue streams so the city leased the four facilities to satisfy that criteria. You would think that if a developer wanted to build a hotel, he would pay the costs to build it or his investors but you have to remember the only reason Riverside's paying for it is that the developer couldn't get any bank or lending institution to loan him money to do this given that the foreclosure rates for hotels are the highest here than any place else in the state.

So the fire stations came in handy indeed.

COLLATERAL

Fire Station #14 on Central Avenue near the 91 Freeway (not a Redevelopment Agency zone)

COLLATERAL

Fire Station #13 in Sycamore Canyon (a Redevelopment Agency zone)

At least one of the individuals in the fire department says that there's no concern about this business deal, that who would want to buy a fire station put on the block to be paid off for defaulted bond payments? The answer to that is that if the city defaults on the $1.5 million or so bond payments (currently now just on interest) then there's no choice. Bond holders have to be paid out and selling the collateral is the way to do that if there's no money in the coffers. The land would be sold and the fire stations probably leveled since the fire department's correct in that they have limited use otherwise. This isn't about whether or not someone wants to purchase a fire station, this is about fulfilling an obligation to bond holders that their investment will be returned.

It seems shocking in a sense that the city would even place one of its fire stations in a situation with even minimal danger to it, let alone two of them. Two of the newer stations in fact as all four facilities under collateral were either recently built or extensively renovated as a matter of fact. I find it offensive and immoral to put up public buildings as collateral including public safety buildings which house people who save lives and help them when they're in trouble. The irony is that the $1.5 million that the city pays out on the bonds' interest annually is enough to cover the paramedic training because the hotel probably won't pay for it. These stations are also temporary homes for city employees while they work their shifts.

Some have insinuated I'm anti-fire department because I challenged the process for the ambulance franchise license and okay, if the dialogue is to be reduced to that, then I guess that's the purview of those who use that label. But protecting our fire department isn't about always agreeing with its leadership especially when their hands are tied by insinuations or threats of funding loss. It's about keeping an eye on what's going on, and speaking up when threats of any kind are being made and investigations can't be done that are free of those threats of financial loss. It's also to ensure that the fire station facilities which house the men and women of the fire department are safe and secure including from serving as collateral in risky business ventures. Our city's fire stations should be used to house fire department employees and equipment, period. Not as collateral on hotels that the developer's completely off the hook for financially for at least five years or longer if he defaults. Hotels are risky especially in this region, and the Hyatt may have brought construction jobs (and unfortunately, construction workers don't tend to shop locally even a few blocks away) but it cost jobs too.

Not long after its construction started, over 40 employees were laid off from the neighboring Marriott Hotel including a long-time chef. Why would a hotel lay off 4o employees and why would other employees working at the Marriott be scared of losing their jobs if the economy supporting the current hotels let alone newer ones was so healthy?

But the city council told the city residents in both a subcommittee and as a governing body that the city residents wouldn't be financially responsible whatsoever for the Hyatt Hotel...oh if that were true. It's not unless the city council has complete divorced the city residents from the city's coffers filled with tax dollars from properties, sales and utilities.

And as long as two fire stations and two libraries are put at risk to serve as collateral (which by nature is a position of risk), the hotel certainly isn't free to city residents.

Finance Committee Meets, Takes Questions

Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen: The city won't provide a link to the monthly statements because only one citizen is interested in reading them

[The Finance Committee which now meets regularly was as usual, a hoot]

[Riverside Asst. City Manager/CFO/Treasurer Paul Sundeen didn't want to facilitate access to the city's financial monthly reports online for "only one person".]

The Finance Committee met to discuss business license and how to enforce the rules for businesses who provide services in this city's limits. But perusual, some of the most interesting action takes place during the public comment on non-agendized items. Questions were asked about the independence of the internal auditor reporting to the city manager and also about some puzzling monthly financial reports released by the city's finance department headed by Asst. City Manager Paul Sundeen. Some were missing from online including March 2011 which as it turns out is a very important watermark time period in the city's financial history and the city co-mingled the city's general fund with RDA debt service and capital project funds during several months this year. This mixing and matching of city funds appears to be a more recent development in some rather creative financing and reporting.

The reports were hard to find especially for this year and Sundeen got a bit huffy when he said that since only one person had sought out the city's financial records, there's no point in going through the effort of creating a direct hyperlink to the reports. Davis asked why and Sundeen and company didn't seem all that concerned or interested in doing so. The co-mingling (which is hyphenated to separate the action from those engaging in it as both deserve equal credit) of these funds appeared to begin in earnest in 2011 and doesn't appear to be the "unusual circumstance" as explained by Sundeen. What does co-mingling do? Well, if you dump RDA funds in the general fund temporarily how is a city resident supposed to know exactly how much money is in the general fund, the funding source for all city departments?

The general fund also showed a deficit in 2010 around February and Sundeen said that's because property taxes hadn't been added and that's noted in the report covering that time period. Yet if the city had a deficit in that fund, how did it pay its bills that month and why didn't it do what other municipalities do which is tap into its reserve fund which it states is $43 million? Instead it's mingling in RDA money which isn't supposed to be in the general fund at all. It just appears too much like all those months RDA money was co-mingled into the general fund that it was to hide a deficit in the general fund, why else put it where it's not supposed to be?

How much money does the general fund really have in it? That should be the easiest and most readily answered question for city residents of all the financially related inquiries but no it's not....it's turned into the most difficult. But if the general fund's really in the red after you subtract all the RDA funds out, then it lends more concern to situations like the above where the city's to make annual bond payments (beginning with interest) on the Hyatt Hotel hopefully without defaulting.

Public Meetings

Tuesday, Oct. 11 at 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The City Council will meet and discuss this agenda. As usual, most of the important stuff will be on the consent calendar. The city council/RDA runs amok with more property dealings in the downtown...what part of the Supreme Court's stay on RDAs does the city not understand?

Public Service Announcement

As part of the commitment to public service, the following announcement will be posted for the currently vacant city manager position. If you haven't applied and are seriously thinking about doing it, you still have until Oct. 14. The whole document is just so...insightful and will be analyzed in a future blog posting but the following paragraph under "management style and personality traits" was just priceless.

(excerpt)

The ideal candidate will value shared governance, have respect for elected officials, and be responsive and treat the Mayor and all Council members equally. It is expected that he/she will keep the Mayor and Council informed in a timely and accurate manner (no surprises).

The salary for the new city manager isn't included as part of the compensation section but in lieu of that, here is a salary chart for all the city's department heads including the interim city manager. What's fascinating indeed is how the salary of Interim City Manager of 2011, Scott Barber earns about $200,000 while one assistant city manager (Belinda Graham) earn about $212,000 meaning they are paid more than their temporary boss. Another assistant city manager, Deanna Lorson makes about $190,000 because she only became an assistant city manager because it was a move by City Hall to move her salary as Development director from being funded by the Redevelopment Agency to the general fund before the RDA could be shut down by Gov. Brown.

Missing is the salary for the other assistant city manager of finance/Chief Financial Officer/Treasurer Paul Sundeen. Three departmental heads would have to take pay cuts if they served in the interim city manager position, those being Public Utilities Manager Dave Wright, Fire Chief Steve Early and Police Chief Sergio Diaz.

The city clerk clocks in at considerable less pay than most department heads including Human Resources Director Rhonda Strout even though she's the one employee at City Hall who's internationally renowned.

For everyone else, there are the salary schedules though some of the salaries are quite old because of no contract renewals.

Riverside seeking recruitment firm to hire a public works director after the resignation of Siobhan Foster to go work for Pasadena's City Manager Michael Beck who had once supervised her when he worked as an assistant city manager in Riverside. Tom Boyd will fill in for her until a replacement is found. Her departure comes in the wake of allegations under investigation involving how the city awarded public works contracts. If you have any suggestions on a recruiting firm, contact City Hall.

MISSING:

A cappuccino machine was purchased from Schaererusa by the city for $10,000 through use of Measure C funds which are earmarked for library programs and for the extension of operational hours. To date, this machine has never been located anywhere, let alone in any library facility
If you find it, please refer it to River City's Lost and Found

How Councilman Steve Adams Wrote the Ethics Code

2011-09-16T13:03:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz promotes Det. Charlie Payne to sergeant and Officers Trinidad Lomeli and Brian Jones to detective....

The Real Crisis Involving the Riverside Fire Department isn't about Ambulance Contracts

It's about two fire stations but who's looking into that?

[Fire Station #13 in Sycamore Canyon is also collateral that the city's using so it can make bond payments on the Hyatt Hotel to help out a developer but what happens to it and another fire station if the city defaults? What usually happens to collateral in those cases?]

UPDATE: Some reaction to this editorial written condemning Riverside Councilman Rusty Bailey's decision to run for mayor next year as being unpatriotic by forcing the mayoral race into a runoff. Before he submitted his papers, three candidates all current or former council members had announced their intentions to compete for the clearly highly coveted office. So with three candidates running so far with ample time for more to declare their intentions to run, the contest was already almost guaranteed to need to be decided in the November election finals. Runoff elections don't screw up electoral processes, they just extend an election a few months longer. Having runoffs is an important step in a democratic process of elections because declaring a candidate a winner who has less than 50% of the public vote is undemocratic and unpatriotic.

Bailey has as much right to run for mayor as anyone else, certainly anyone else on the dais. While it's disturbing to see sitting elected officials announce their intentions to run so quickly after their reelections to city council, it's not against any law, policy or procedure to do so. He's no less or more qualified than anyone on the dais because all of the candidates who are running (with some exciting latecomers waiting in the wings) will be equally responsible for any financial problems that Riverside faces with coming up with money to pay off over $100 million in bond payments due next year including interest on some downtown projects and ensuring that the general fund remains adequate for paying for the operations and personnel of all the city departments. Issues regarding the city's financial state including financial accountability have dominated the discussions and community input at the city charter review committee meetings as they will continue to do. These issues will also likely dominate the discourse and debates of the mayoral election next year. The number one question of the mayoral debates should be, who running will push for a five year forensic audit of all the city's finances, both expenditures and revenues including bonds, loans and property transfers between entities.

Last week, it came to light that the city had co-mingled redevelopment money agency with money in the general fund, even noting it on financial documents. Naughty naughty. One serious problem with co-mingling RDA funds with the general fund is it leaves the public unable to determine exactly how many dollars exists in either funding source.

Which is kind of the point. Just like when City Hall takes police asset forfeiture funds for a 15% allowable use (which was questionable at best) and drops it in the general fund (even though co-mingling or supplanting a funding source for law enforcement, i.e. the general fund is prohibited) with no paper trail made public of what happened after it was placed in that fund meaning where it was actually spent. Unless it's on post-its.

The odds aren't really strong on any of the three candidates taking this bold step. The true disgrace isn't that Bailey's running for mayor because that's his right to do so. It's the fact that the city will not conduct a five year outside forensic audit of its financial records going back to about 2005 and the operations and transactions of its Redevelopment Agency. It will not call in the State Controller's office to do so. It doesn't take much from City Hall, just a phone call. Any one of the three council members running for office could make that phone call.

So even if this blog did endorse and accept money from political candidates like other publications do for any reason, so far it would have to say no endorsement.

UPDATE: Riverside City Council Votes 7-0 to postpone the coronation of Mayor Ron Loveridge's name on the City Hall building until Oct. 25 after Councilman Paul Davis offered up a substitute motion. Davis and Councilwoman Nancy Hart who seconded that motion said they had received emails with complaints about the process.

UPDATE: Riverside Police Officers' Association President Cliff Mason is up for reelection later this year but is someone else in the union leadership thinking of running against him? Issues arising including contract negotiations and the two-tier pension system as the RPOA is the last employee association to be negotiating with the city management on this issue. There's several candidates considering runs for the top office and the process should sort itself out by the time of the union's general meeting this autumn.

In the meantime, Chief Sergio Diaz allegedly shows up at the law enforcement fights in Corona sharing a table with former Interim Police Chief John DeLaRosa...

UPDATE: There's a proposal to continue the public hearing on the franchise application for Mission Ambulance that was scheduled for 3pm on Oct. 4 by the city council. The three members of the Public Safety Committee recommended it be denied and the chair of that committee, Councilman Chris MacArthur allegedly has close ties to a high level employee of American Medical Response who spoke at that meeting.

But then this is a story that began over 20 years ago about an ambulance company, three individuals including one still on the dais and an ordinance that might not be constitutional that was passed so this company could make a fortune.

Now amid alleged threats of pulling funding away from the Riverside Fire Department by AMR's manager, Peter Hubbard, another ambulance franchise is trying to get a contract in Riverside.

To be continued....

Here is the 1990 ordinance passed by City Council for the contract services Goodhew Ambulance Services which later merged with American Medical Response. It's signed by then Mayor Terry Frizzel.

[Graffiti left adjacent to the Citrus Tower Project. The symbol is a well known Neo-Nazi symbol.]

UPDATE: Councilman Rusty Bailey joins the Riverside mayoral race set for next year. He'd taken papers a while ago but now he's finally filed them, joining other candidates, Councilmen Andrew Melendrez and Mike Gardner and former Councilman Ed Adksion.

The application by Mission Ambulance Services to provide Basic Life Support care and transport comes to the city council on Tuesday. Rumor is that it's been scheduled for 3pm. which is of course when few people can attend city council meetings. When the ambulance company tried to change it to the evening session, that was vetoed by those who set the meeting agendas.

Many questions have risen about the city's refusal to grant a second franchise a Basic Life Support contract and the ordinance that prohibits any competition that might hinder American Medical Response's ability to make a profit in what the company calls, its "Fort Knox" Riverside which puts $10o million in the coffers of the parent company, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Company in Colorado.

[While still on the dais, Mayor Ron Loveridge is the subject of a proposed item on the discussion calendar to name the City Hall building after him.]

Why can't they discuss this item at the night session? Because on the discussion calendar, they actually have a proposal to rename City Hall, the Ronald O. Loveridge Building.

[Riverside Councilwoman Nancy Hart heads the Finance Committee but apparently had no idea where the allocated funding for her legislative field representative was being spent until just recently. ]

Another issue heating up involves the city council legislative field representatives who after being made by the city council into city employees earn $80,000 a year including benefits. Not bad for positions that don't go through the open and competitive hiring process and there's no process at all in terms of what happens when the council members who hire them have left office. Also, Councilwoman Nancy Hart at a recent meeting claimed she had no knowledge that her allocated money for a representative was along with Melendrez' being spent to pay the salary of a Development Department employee to serve in that capacity for both of them. Now Melendrez is saying he had no knowledge of that either. So where's the money?

Update: Riverside City Council and Mayor Ron Loveridge Appoint Claudia Smith to fill the Ward Four Vacancy on the Community Police Review Commission

Public Safety Committee Recommends that Ambulance Franchise Application be Denied

[The Public Safety Committee Meeting played to a packed house of elected officials, department heads, city staff and several ambulance companies including applicant, Mission.]

[Standing room only inside the Mayor Ceremonial Chamber during the Public Safety Committee meeting]

Was Fire Chief Steve Earley Given an ultimatum by AMR?

Was he told by AMR that paramedic training funds that were tied into the $1.2 million AMR paid City Hall to add two minutes to its ALS response times would be lost if AMR lost its BLS monopoly even though they are already contractually guaranteed?

Who told an elected official not to "interfere"?

Were applicants told not to bother submitting complaint or rebuttal letters for the city's "investigation"?

What's really behind this city monopoly to the point that the city would lose money to keep it?

FIVE BEFORE...KA-KA.....

Pure CACA....... I guess she got an abortion........BUT STILL IS PURE KA-KA... CA-CA.....

Five Before Ka-Ka

-----fan letter at Inland Empire Craigslist that's really not anonymous....thanks to tips and seriously, Adams needs to find better friends...or fans. This one anonymous poster alone has seen three of his candidates of choice, all heavily favored in their bids, leave office after the votes were counted and they lost.

[Councilman Steve Adams (center) allegedly claimed to have drafted the city's ethics code on some campaign literature]

This year is still very much an election year in Riverside even though most of the elections had been decided. Still in contention is the city council seat in Ward Seven which is held by Steve Adams. He's faced with Community Police Review Commissioner John Brandriff in a runoff election to be held in November and it's already proven to be quite contentious. Here are their campaign Web sites including where they stand on local issues.

Re-elect Steve Adams for City Council

John Brandriff for Ward 7

Of course there's lots of campaign flyers and mailers going around in that ward too including one where Adams and Brandriff resound again on these issues. Adams is at an advantage as the incumbent because he can talk about what he's done as a city council member. Of course he's at a disadvantage because he can also be found wanting for what he's done or not done in that same position he's held since 2003. But what's interesting about talking about accomplishments is that invariably incumbents on the city council always act as if they single-handedly did everything even though they are members of a legislative body on equal standing with everyone else on the dais.

Adams does that a bit in his list of accomplishments here. He's right about the parks being renovated and about the railroad crossings and community center though those projects along with others in the Riverside Renaissance along with Redevelopment came at the price of a $4.4 billion debt. Because when you spend more money than you have and borrow the rest, that's what happens, you incur debt which has to be paid starting with this autumn and really hitting the ground between January and June of 2012. Because over 60% of Renaissance's expenses were paid for by bonds or other borrowed money. And isn't it interesting that former City Manager Brad Hudson found another job up north just six months before the payment due notices start hitting the city in earnest?

[Did Former City Manager and Redevelopment "guru" Brad Hudson check out of Riverside just in time?]

All this mention of incurred debt brings up the next issue where Adams along with others have claimed that they "balanced" the city's budget winding up with $43 million in reserve (which is broken down into different assorted funds) and a million or so "surplus". They boasted how they avoided the massive budgetary losses of other major cities. Well, that's only sort of true, because Riverside didn't actually balance its budget at all, it simply transferred about $33 million from the Riverside Public Utilities to "balance" the budget. The other cities that had budgets in the "red" either didn't have their own utility companies or they opted out of using their monies to balance their budgets. It wasn't shocking reading city documentation that this transfer had been made to help balance the general fund because the city can take up to 11% of the money made by utilities for the general fund but that it was woven into some major feat by Hudson and the city government.

Riverside Public Utilities is the city's cash cow after all. But it's got some protection from being totally reamed by the city because the city's charter has placed a cap on the amount of money that can be used by the city but watch out folks, because the city's charter is under "review" this year for any amendments to be brought to the voters next year. One of the rumored amendments is to increase that percentage from 11% to 15% and that makes it seem more like design and less like an exercise that the former head of utilities, Tom Evans (who donates to several city officials' election campaigns) was the unilateral choice to head the committee over a former city council member, Maureen Kane.

But it's critical for the city to start getting more money out of its cash cow and the city residents' company to start paying off the debt incurred by the Renaissance and there's two ways to do that. The first would be to increase the percentage from the current 11% to 15% or even higher to increase the monies received by the city that way. The other is to increase the rates and fees of the utilities including electricity and water. And guess what, the figures being banted around the past several years on the electrical side, you wouldn't believe, up to 60 percent increases once the current "freeze" on rates ends. The water side might be a bit more complicated and currently is a bone of contention in several different venues now. Also, city residents are likely to face increased fees for sewer use (which are included in the utility bills though sewers are under Public Works) because the city's got to replenish that fund with more monies because essentially the city uses the utility and sewer funds like this ATM machine below. Even though the city's sewer ordinance prohibits the use of sewer funds for non-sewer purposes even as interfund loans. Let alone as inter-agency loans which is what happens when the Redevelopment Agency borrows money from the city's coffers or vice versa because the RDA is not part of the city, but is or was a state agency.

Still the city does it anyway presumably on advice from its legal counsel.

[The city's utility and sewer funds are very much like this ATM machine also at City Hall]

Adams states that he refused to take a pay raise but the issue of a pay raise was never introduced because everyone on the dais knew it would be political suicide to do that while things like step pay were frozen, positions were left frozen and vacant and everyone else it seemed but the city council was undergoing "pension reform". And while several unions led by the Riverside Firefighters' Association underwent a two-tier pension restructuring, no one on the city council including Adams offered to undergo similar or any reform of the city council's own pension plan. Some of us aren't even sure why elected officials get pensions simply for serving five years or longer on the dais. But nobody "led by example", the truth was no one on the dais was stupid enough to try to push for a pay raise in the midst of a recession of which Riverside and the Inland Empire were ground zero.

And no one pushed for salary cuts like elected officials have done in other cities either including Adams. Something to think about considering that the police department for example hasn't hired a civilian employee outside of dispatch in over four years because it can't afford to do so. Yet, the city council members get legislative aides that make nearly $50,000 a year. Tells residents a lot through action or inaction which employees matter more than others.

He might be an "advocate" for jobs but the truth is, Riverside's seen very few jobs and has an official unemployment rate over 14%. There's fewer jobless overall because the pool's getting smaller from people leaving the area not because there's more jobs. And despite what the city government tells you, the Redevelopment Agencies have brought no net jobs to Riverside and this is according to the statistics that the city itself sends to Sacramento so is that the truth or is Riverside's City Hall simply not passing along accurate information in these reports. In fact, some of the projects might have cost jobs, one example being the construction of the Hyatt Hotel (which will probably be owned by the city in several years) has begun and not long after that, at least 30-40 employees including a long-time chef were laid off from the Marriott Hotel across the street. Over a dozen businesses have left or been forced out of the downtown area with the causes being the recession, upheaval caused by the renovation of the pedestrian mall and likely also the city's attempts to manage or mismanage its own buildings in the downtown mall.

The latest casualty will likely be the Phood restaurant which is rumored to be heading on out before the end of the year on the heels of Toad in the Hole which didn't last in that same spot despite receiving free rent from the city. But then small businesses have been a huge casuality in Riverside, including the Scuba shop owned by Mark and Doreen Johnson that's located near the Magnolia Avenue Grade Separation. The lawsuit filed against this couple by the city's on the city council meeting agenda this week. They were successful until the city sought an easement on their property line near the entrance to their business which is now closed. They had a water pipe put on their property by the city which violated the requirements being too close to the concrete placed on top of it by several inches, meaning that the pipe could fracture easily if cars drove into their parking lot on top of it. They are one of many frustrated businesses in that area of the city, whose dreams became nightmares due to the way the grade separation was handled. No bailout for them unlike the Lucky Greek restaurant which at least had some powerful players and campaign donors (for Councilman Rusty Bailey's coffers, all important if he runs for either city mayor or county supervisor next year).

The grade separations are really necessary but people including business owners wonder why the city didn't have a better, more organized plan going into the process especially given the head time. That and the fact that the Eastside was denied the grade separation on Third Street in its own area (but then their projects often get sidelines or canceled often at the blessing of their elected representative) have generated concerns and questions. But then not everybody outside of the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce believes that Riverside is all that friendly to small businesses which when allowed to exist and thrive provide the bulk of the sales tax revenue in any city's economy not to mention jobs.

Not to mention what the bottle necked traffic has done for emergency vehicles. The property inspector Mark Wolf told me that the impacted area is only about 800 feet but it took a police car with a code three siren about a minute to get through that section and then the police car narrowly avoided a collision with another vehicle because it was forced to navigate a left turn from the right lane and the other car in the middle going straight couldn't see it. An ambulance that drove by not long after that was also stuck and the cars nearby were forced onto a closed shoulder to try to give it room to pass, nearly knocking over a sign. This situation with the grade separation is set in place until at least Thanksgiving.

Then there's this section on Adams' campaign promises:

Steve Adams made City Hall listen to the needs of the community and worked to hold our local government accountable to the people it serves.

No offense but it's not safe to drink liquids near a computer when reading this statement. How did Adams do this? By seconding a motion sponsored by Dom Betro several years ago to ban anyone but elected officials and city staff from pulling items from the consent calendar for discussion? That action facilitated many questionable actions taken by the city council including the March 8 ordinance passed by that body which allowed the city to transfer 189 of its properties from the RDA to the city not long after hearing that Governor Jerry Brown planned to shut down those agencies. None of them received a public hearing or any process accountable or transparent to the city's residents and how did Adams vote on that ordinance as part of a laundry list of items on the consent calendar that day?

How did Adams fight for an accountable government when he said that elected officials shouldn't be held accountable under the 24/7 provision but only during certain hours of service? He finally changed his mind about that probably after testing the public opinion in his ward.

Adams has his strengths mainly in the work he's done with transportation issues (even though the city and county's bus system doesn't stay open and running any later than does the downtown area) and for some of the stands he's taken on important issues. But accountability and transparency, just aren't his strong suits. His negative treatment of two police associations when they refused to endorse him in his last election are duly noted as well, and how much of a role did his treatment involving two former lieutenants from the leadership of the Riverside Police Administrators' Association factor into the financial settlements paid behind closed doors for lawsuits filed by them? How does union intimidation if that's what he engaged in including allegedly influencing promotions recommended by former Chief Russ Leach actually foster accountability and transparency?

But the statement's still interesting because City Hall has yet to even admit that it needs to "work" at making itself more accountable to city residents. Yet many residents of this city knows that it needs to do exactly that including many residents in Ward Seven which far from being the "gateway" of the city (which everyone else knows is supposed to be downtown), is having difficulties bridging the distance including physical between it and City Hall.

To protect homeowners, Steve Adams made it illegal for the City to take a person’s home by the power of eminent domain to give the land to a developer.

This provision's not clear either because it's still legal for the city to do this, in fact the city did that to help the Press Enterprise secure its new mostly empty building. But then wait a minute because he's using different language here. The original action was to pass a statement of the city council's commitment to not use residents' homes for private development of enterprises and now he's saying that they won't hand over people's homes to developers. He didn't change the law let alone single handedly because laws are much more difficult to change or revoke than it would be for the city council to simply vote to no longer refuse to take people's homes under Eminent Domain for private interests including those of developers. It was done partly to protect the rights of homeowners but mostly because a controversial decision by a higher court on the issue several years ago fostered a dialogue on whether or not Eminent Domain should be used in this way with most people saying no, it shouldn't.

But before you start handing out accolades to Adams or any single elected official for making it "illegal" to do this, remember this episode of Riverside history involving an artist named Ken Stansbury and a group he belonged to called Riversiders for Property Rights. Remember how they tried to participate in the democratic process by circulating a petition to city residents to put an initiative on the ballot involving this very same issue? They wanted Riversiders to vote and decide for ourselves whether or not seizing property including homes for private developers should be illegal. But we never got the chance because the city council including Adams voted to have their legal eagles including from Best, Best and Krieger file what amounted to a SLAPP suit against him and his organization to stop them from collecting signatures. The "or else" part of not stopping would be that they'd be forced to pay the city's own legal fees, which is the heart of a SLAPP suit's threats and then they told these folks they were only using financial and legal intimidation against them for their own good.

The case was fought, the city didn't wind up charging the organization or Stansbury with the fees because it didn't have to do that. It achieved its purpose of shutting that whole initiative process down. Probably because it saw what happened in other cities when similar initiatives hit the ballot including in Anaheim. The voters passed them overwhelmingly, thus truly making it illegal for eminent domain to be used for private interests. The initiative applied both to private homes and businesses because as many business owners know, the two are intimately connected. You lose your business due to eminent domain including because relocation hurts you much more than it helps you, your house will soon follow due to foreclosure or other reasons.

But if Adams had been truly the champion he claimed to be, he would have fought for the fundamental democratic right for Stansbury and his organization to undergo the petitioning process rather than vote to shut it down. Then again Adams like other elected officials had campaign donors who most definitely would have been unhappy if such an initiative ever made it on the ballot and passed as it probably would have. The city council apparently believed that they couldn't even take that risk so it used city monies on the eve of a recession to try to shut it down.

Steve also made City officials more accountable. He voted to create Riverside’s Code of Ethics for the City Council and the City’s Commissions. For greater transparency, Steve supported putting City Councilmembers campaign and personal finance disclosures on the City’s website for public examination.

It's true that Adams voted for the Code of Ethics but its creation and implementation had already been overwhelmingly mandated by the voters as part of a charter amendment process in November 2004 so it's not like the city council had a choice. They did have a choice with what kind of Code of Ethics would be created and the city council went for the weakest, most toothless process they could possibly create and still call it an ethics code without being sued for misuse of language. Look at what happened to the process including with the complaint system. Did you know that Adams himself was the first person to be charged with an alleged ethical violation not long after the process was implemented for calling people who spoke at a city council meeting liars and that they were lying. That complaint was also the first to circumvent the process by City Attorney Gregory Priamos (who's employed by Adams and the rest of the city council) by being labeled a "second party" complaint even though at the time there was no such language whatsoever in the Code's ordinance and resolution prohibiting such complaints from being filed.

Why did Priamos initiate such an avoidance tactic in what would be practice later on, but first became precedent in this case?

Because his employers including Adams likely told him so. But what's interesting is that on a campaign flyer, Adams allegedly went further than that by claiming that he wrote the ethics code. No, he didn't do that. He voted along with the rest of the city council to approve a diluted version of what it originally was envisioned as being. But after watching the follies of 2010, 2011 and especially next year, it's not difficult to understand why strengthening the ethics code is not exactly a priority for the sitting city council. They did take measures led by a minority which turned majority out of political necessity for several people to make sure it operated as it had already been written but not much to enhance it. So no, no one on the city council actually wrote it.

He's endorsed by many politicians including the majority of the city council and Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach.

Here are Adams' promises and they all sound good but some of them were made eight years ago including bringing more jobs to Riverside and the city's lost jobs and not just because of what's happened at the state and federal governmental levels.

Control City Spending and Fight New Taxes

Instead of raising taxes on residents, Steve Adams has always believed it is important to control the City’s spending. He has never raised taxes on his constituents and he never will.

Steve will only vote for balanced budgets and will insist that the City continue to follow the financially smart policies that have protected vital city services and funded the Riverside Renaissance without raising taxes.

A great idea but not going to be true because some projects like the downtown library were originally Riverside Renaissance projects but are going to be primarily funded through local taxes including Measure C which is being placed on the ballot in November for continuation of what was intended to be a short-term tax for new buildings. And Riverside Renaissance wasn't funded as much on taxes but on funding sources which will still cost the city's residents money including repayment of the 60% of the funding of Renaissance that was done on borrowed money including the purchase of bonds. This money will be ultimately paid for by city residents, not through taxes perhaps but through increases in the rates and fees set for the Public Utilities services including water and electricity as well as the addition of new sewer fees. These discussions have already been taking place at City Hall on raising utility rates including one that took place two days after the city council voted to cement that four way land swap involving an office tower, a law firm and two city divisions at its meeting. So what will happen when those on fixed incomes including many elderly and/or disabled folks including those in Adams' wards pay the price for Renaissance through higher utility costs? Will it impact how they can keep themselves cool during Riverside's hottest months when utility bills traditionally increase for customers? Will Adams be sponsoring transportation for the shutins to the city's "cooling centers"?

There's creating and raising taxes and there is increasing utility rates including electrical up to 60% (and yes, this was discussed in inhouse meetings within the past year or so)and increasing sewer fees even as the sewer systems continue to deteriorate further. But what's an ancient sewer line when you've got properties to buy for a developer in the downtown area and need money?

Ensure City Hall is Accountable to the People

Steve Adams has always believed that public service is a public trust. Steve will fight for the people to be heard by the City Council and oppose any effort to limit any residents Freedom of Speech in city matters.

Steve has never taken a pay raise while serving as our representative on the City Council. He also is leading by example by cutting his own compensation by 10% during these challenging economic times

That's interesting coming from an elected representative who 1) seconded a motion by former councilman Dom Betro (another elected official with a short memory on this action) to limit the pulling of items from the consent calendar (where the bulk of the monies are spent) to city officials and staff and 2) helped Priamos set the precedent with the very first ethics complaint ever filed to divert it away from the established process.

But if Adams is really serious about this, ahem pledge, he could boldly take it one step further and say that he's leading the charge to rescind the motion that he seconded back then and restore the consent calendar back to the people who finance the expenditures crammed on it. That of course won't happen with some excuse attached because of all the campaign promises ever made by successful candidates, the one to "re-examine that vote" is probably the one most forgotten after election. Not one single candidate who ever included that in their platform or promises ever actually followed through with it. And that's not likely to ever change until it becomes clear to the city residents that the decisions which led to the "financial ruin" that Adams said Riverside avoided (without saying it was through a handy bailout by Public Utilities) were firmly made on the backs of the consent calendars.

Sorry but Adams receives a "needs improvement" score in this category but perhaps if he wins reelection, he can put some more effort into this critical area (which he rightly points out as such) next term.

The above has been a review of the incumbent Adams's platform, promises and other interesting factoids in his campaign. Coming up will be a blog posting addressing those of his challenger, Brandriff's. Rest assured, they will be looked at with the same cynical, pragmatic eye because it's really hard to even look at the newcomers to the process in any different way because it's all the same party once they reach the dais anyway.

But Brandriff's position and stance will be different because he's not an incumbent, he didn't "do" anything positive or negative on the city council because he didn't serve on it. But even as a newcomer, he's faced with the burden of okay, so what will you do when you get elected that is all that much different or will make a difference especially when the city dives headlong into its financial crisis in June 2012? Will you truly be a different voice or more of the same, go along, to get along crowd whose decision making will come to a head next year?

Adams has been endorsed by other publications including the Truth Publication. This blog doesn't despite what some think endorse political candidates because it really doesn't matter what I think about politicians, it's up to individual voters to research those running in their wards, to go to forums and yes, to read campaign literature provided online but with a healthy grain of salt. Most important, register to vote and VOTE! But indeed the "facts" do speak for themselves, as does Adams' portfolio including actions he actively chose to take to limit public participation and to restrict language in the same ethics code he "wrote". Just like it states that he had issues where he was stronger and more effective as an elected representative like transportation and graffiti abatement for example. But the restrictions are all on the public record, all accessible to the public and the "truth" that no one wants to cover, be it the Press Enterprise or anyone else. Candidate and former Councilman Dom Betro even claimed he was against the move to pull items off the consent calendar during his campaign when he in fact proposed the motion to do just that while in office. The minute record proving that was posted on this site during the election.

On the other hand, I can also say that I'm not taking any campaign money through expenditures to the tune of over $1,000 (according to campaign statements) statements either to advertise for incumbents. Adams didn't pay me a dime for anything. Neither did Brandriff. It's much more useful to focus on their actions as elected leaders or whether they're even up to the task than to pick one over the other and this blog wouldn't take or accept money for any purpose from candidates incumbents or otherwise because there's a fine line between advertising for candidates and endorsing them especially when it's mostly the endorsed candidates who get the advertising.

I don't hang around politicians and pal around with them or socialize with them. In fact most of them probably think I'm a nuisance which they're entitled to think particularly since some of them don't like criticism or even a close look being taken of their voting actions at all. It's good because when you write about politics and those who practice it, it's good to maintain that distance from them. There's enough publications and media out there that don't look more closely at these "portfolios".

I'll leave it to other publications including the Press Enterprise (which implemented changes on its site to restrict comments on mainly Riverside-based articles) and The Truth which does paid advertising mainly for incumbents to involve themselves in the election process because they're better at it. The articles on the incumbent candidates published were very well written and impressively laid out but it would have been nice to see the challengers afforded similar care and treatment because they were well done. But endorsements are a sticky affair especially when finances are involved in the media. I'd rather just focus on the issues.

As far as city employees, the city has a very professional and talented workforce at most every level and the work that's done on less and less impresses me greatly. They're concerned and courteous when you have concerns and questions and they often work even when many people are asleep or in bad weather. Personally I think they deserve a monument because many of them have to fill in for positions vacated years ago, most are working on expired contracts and reporting problems in City Hall exacts a very high cost on them.

I don't get the red carpet treatment by City Hall when looking into issues but having worked in alternative media for over 10 years, you learn to try your best anyway and I don't expect it certainly not on the more difficult issues covered. City Hall isn't going to hand you the golden key on the "truth that everyone else hides". But these issues impact city residents too as well as the city's workforce. A Raychelle Sterling, Sean Gill, Darryl Hurt, Tim Bacon and others for example affects us all in many different ways as surely as it impacts those who find out that the "truth" can have a very high cost indeed.

And the biggest test is in the next few months when the bigger promissory notes on Riverside Renaissance come due for payment.

I will just advertise that people in Ward Seven need to go out and exercise their hard-won right in a democratic republic to vote for their elected representative. Don't sit this one or stay at home. VOTE!

The Forgotten Step Child of the Renaissance

(hint: there's two, a certain park near the downtown area is the other)

[Alas, amid the hustle and bustle of hotel construction and theater ownership downtown, the public library continues to languish]

The city owns a theater that's questionably managed and clearly operating in the red and in a few years, it will likely own its very own hotel if it has to take it as collateral on the massive loans it's giving its developers on the "Obama" bonds taken out on it.

But what about the downtown library? It used to be micromanaged by the "little man in the blue shirt" to the point of shelving books but while the city stumps for the continuation of Measure C funding (by the voters) even though that initiative was meant as a temporary measure (and sorely needs a forensic audit of its expenditures the past five years), Hudson left town before expounding on how his promises to ensure its renovation or reconstruction or whatever weren't to be.

As you can see, even the sign's missing letters and the inside, was spruced up a bit during the spring which happened to coincide with an election cycle but what of its future? The city residents weren't asked if we wanted our cities' monies to be spent getting into the theater ownership business, the soon to be hotel ownership business or the property management business. The city residents weren't asked if they wanted to buy a theater or assume ownership of a hotel if it fails or even to micromanage property leased by businesses downtown. But they have expressed concerns about the library that won't be paid for by a theater that's in the red or a hotel that is entering into a high-risk market.

Tequesquite Park which was the key campaign issue in the summer of 2007 for the two finalists in that election process has had most of its resident-generated plans for improvements sidelined because the city lacks the funds to do them. In the wake of the city government crowing about how it's not facing financial deficits like other cities, but the parks and libraries come in a distant second or third to the city buying theaters and doing land switcheroos so that one developer can satisfy his lease revenue generated payments on $37.5 million of bonds issued on an office building still under construction.

Finance Committee Meets Again

Nancy Hart: Gregory Priamos hired for his "expertise"

[The Finance Committee meets to grapple over issues such as how to deal with delinquent parking tickets and developer fees]

The Finance Committee held another meeting to discuss everything from developer fees (opposed by the Greater Chamber of Commerce) and how to collect several million dollars on delinquent parking tickets. A lot of talk about how to deal with these law breakers and yes, that should be addressed but what about addressing some questionable behavior by themselves including misuse of the city's sewer fund for "interfund loans"? Or alleged misuse of the police department's asset forfeiture fund for expenditures not even involving the police department? Hundreds of thousands paid out in contracts to a former part-time employee who was married to a department head?

The tip of the iceberg, some have said. But what was most interesting about this Finance Committee meeting was when it came to the part where public comment was taken on non-agendized items including the transfer of 189 properties from the RDA to the city. All of this was done en masse using a process that was set up to discourage that practice. Each property fell under the purview of the RDA for different reasons and under different circumstances including the former Swiss Inn on Main and Third Street in the downtown area. That property alone should had its transfer hashed out in a public hearing by itself. But the transfer does what the state warned wasn't to be done, moving property out of the RDA to the city simply to keep assets under the RDA from the state. Even though they were placed there in a different process with full knowledge that they would be state assets, in fact the city now leases space in buildings it had owned including at least two fire stations, two libraries and one downtown public utilities building.

But Chair Councilwoman Nancy Hart got huffy when asked whether it was the right thing to do, was because their legal counsel told them to and she said she'd believe the city attorney over the public which is the council's right but their counsel has made some questionable legal decisions that have too often placed the city's residents on the wrong sides of lawsuits filed against Riverside that have been settled. These include labor lawsuits alleging discrimination and retaliation along with others filed and later settled, so many were "resolved" this way that the city lost its insurance carrier and became "self-insured", a fancy term that simply means the city residents pay for the litigation and payouts.

[Why did City Attorney Gregory Priamos put the city's liability at risk by firing one of his own whistle blowing employees?]

City Attorney Gregory Priamos has advised the city council on what to do with many of these lawsuits as has outside legal counsel which has been contracted (except for Best, Best and Krieger which apparently doesn't use written contracts with the city except...once with its "independent" review of the Russ Leach DUI incident). He also made the decision to fire one of his deputy city attorneys Raychelle Sterling after it became known that she came forward alleging violations of city practices inside at least two city departments. What could be more legally risky for city residents than openly firing a whistle blowing employee, except perhaps keeping Sterling employed given that she had voiced concerns about how the city conducted its business? It must be really annoying to have an employee who actually does that in your office and it's hardly the first time that the city's canned or put on "leave" employees who speak out, raise concerns or even ask questions (and received "vacations" or "beach days" soon after).

Massive civil liability for city residents courtesy of City Hall and Priamos especially if Sterling sues. The city including Priamos will of course call it frivolous and trivial and will claim to fight it vigorously and they will pencil whip her and her attorney for a while with a forest of trees worth of paperwork but in the end, the same legal counsel will be advising the city council and mayor behind closed doors to settle the case because....it's needed to save money incurred by litigation costs. This really isn't an issue at all unless the city believes it would lose the case of trial because if the city wins or if the plaintiff wins a jury award lower than any settlement offer, the city can then turn around and have all its litigation expenses paid for by that plaintiff. It certainly threatens via writing to do this to those who sue it often enough and it wouldn't mislead them right?

Anyway, it's pay now for the lawsuit but since the city's in the right, it'd get all that money and then some back later on. But that's not likely what's happening, the city's more likely settling all these labor lawsuits because it knows it would lose at trial.

And there are two words that probably govern these decisions more than any other.

Roger Sutton.

You know the police officer whose racism lawsuit went to trial and resulted in a $1.64 million jury's verdict not including attorney costs.

So no, city residents, you're not paying these settlements because the city's so sure it'd win and just doesn't want to go there. You're likely paying out because the city knows almost from day one that it'd most likely lose. Otherwise, there'd be no real compelling reason to settle these lawsuits. Diaz, if you are reading this, this is the answer to your very good question you raised earlier on in your tenure about why the city doesn't fight more inhouse lawsuits. And it was a question that did need to be raised but the real answer to it, is one you're not going to like. The solution, is to run your city department without making it a "team" sport. That would be an important step to take to reduce inhouse civil litigation or at least the financial costs incurred by the city.

But it's perplexing after the Sterling matter came to light that the city council once again appears in lockstep in terms of saying there's no problem with that when they mention anything at all.

Where's Greer?

[A rare public sighting of Riverside Deputy Chief Jeffrey Greer, the subject of comments and emails from readers about why he's so rarely seen in public during the past six months.]

One of the unsolved mysteries that I'm receiving inquiries about is what's happened to the police department's deputy chief of field operations and investigations Jeffrey Greer who was seen in public a lot during his first six months but not so much lately. Apparently he's not seen much internally either. The first African-American deputy chief in the city's history and he's invisible.

In contrast to his predecessor, Pete Esquivel who was seen much more than the former or even Acting Chief John DeLaRosa for example. Some say he's lying low amid some pyrotechnics involving two other members of Chief Sergio Diaz' cabinet while serving out his three-year "at will" contract.

Greer did well at public meetings, listening attentively to what people including community members had to say and offering his input. But people haven't seen him lately. They have seen Asst. Chief Chris Vicino at meetings often with Diaz who does almost all the talking. Those two men were at a recent awards ceremony involving Officer Gregory Matthews at City Hall which was well attended including by the traffic officers.

But things have been quieter with him than with Vicino and Deputy Chief Mike Blakely which apparently resulted in Vicino having the locks changed on his office door which is in close proximity to that of Blakely's. Vicino's role in implementing changes in the area of administration including that of the Internal Affairs Division investigation and review process including for disciplinary measures had allegedly caused friction with Blakely. Apparently, the chain of command for that process went through Vicino and Greer via the divisional captains and not Blakely as in the past. But if Vicino and Blakely are at a public meeting and they'll usually be on opposite sides of the room from each other.

[Riverside Police Officer Gregory Matthews receives an award at a recent city council meeting]

Officer Gregory Matthews received his award from the City Council and posed for pictures with the traffic division outside afterward. They do a lot of work in one of the most challenging areas of the city's operations but what will happen next June when the city's facing mandatory payments on bonds issued which will mostly be interest payments? How will that impact the city's largest expenditure in its general fund which is public safety including the police departments?

The unions of both departments should be researching the budget now if they aren't already. Otherwise they are in for some rude surprises at the end of the fiscal year.

Public Meetings

Monday, Sept. 19 at 10am, The Public Safety Committee will be meeting to discuss this packed agenda including whether or not to grant another ambulance company a contract to do Basic Life Support services in Riverside.

It's not going to happen. The city actually wrote an ordiance/resolution to ensure that American Medical Response (which donates money into most of their campaigns from its parent corporation in Colorado) has a monopoly on BLS services.

Tuesday, Sept. 20 at 1:30pm, the city council will be meeting to interview candidates for the Ward Four position on the Community Police Review Commission.

Tuesday, Sept. 20 at 3pm and 6:30pm, the Riverside City Council will be meeting to discuss this agenda at its meeting.

At 7pm, a public hearing will be held on the annual review of the code of ethics and complaint process which didn't arouse much discussion when it was first looked at in Governmental Affairs the previous week.

And of course more Redevelopment Agency shuffling.

What is soil liquification?

Vocabulary Term of the Day:

Tortious Interference

Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of tort, occurs when a person intentionally damages the plaintiff's contractual or other business relationships.

Say when Party A and Party B are in a legal contractual agreement like a lease and Party C persuades Party A to say, breach or violate the contractual lease with a property owner and management?

Did the city move Public Utilities to some high-priced real estate office space to avoid a costly lawsuit?

And if the city runs out of money to pay for the high-priced lease space (like they did with other city divisions that were in leased space), where will Utilities go?