[Contra Costa County] Opinion: East Contra Costa’s public safety crisis persists

Blog note: this article mentions several grand jury reports addressing public safety issues in the eastern part of the county. 

The roadside sign announcing East Contra Costa County’s public safety emergency, erected along busy Vasco Road south of Brentwood, was taken down recently at the end of its contract term.

The billboard was put up six months ago by a group of concerned area residents, and it announced to 22,000 passing motorists each day that the area they were entering had been called a “public safety emergency” region.

East County Voters for Equal Protection, a nonpartisan citizens action committee founded to improve funding for public safety in East County, coordinated the grassroots public education effort, along with the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association.

On Feb. 13 emergency services took 16 minutes to respond to a two-car accident in Oakley, a city of more than 40,000 residents, the second largest within the service area of the East Contra Costa Fire Protection District (ECCFPD). The response came from Contra Costa Fire Prevention District (ConFire) stations in Antioch, more than 10 miles away from the accident, because all ECCFPD assets were already deployed.

While emergency medical and fire services are funded at a rate of $449 and $370 per resident in central parts of the county, ECCFPD gets just $94 per resident to provide the same services to the East County population.

This uneven structural underfunding was established by the California Legislature and continues to get worse as the area grows. East County has experienced 1,500 percent growth since the funding methodology was put in place four decades ago.

ECCFPD closed its fourth fire station last June due to fiscal constraints. Each month since then the district has been unable to respond to emergency calls for significant periods of time. In March, the district was unable to respond for three hours and twenty-nine minutes. The average time that the district is unable to respond is more than seven hours per month. When ECCFPD is unable to respond, fire and emergency medical services come from other agencies.

It should be noted that during March ECCFPD responded to six residential structure fires and one commercial structure fire. For each structure fire a minimum of five fire units are required, and with only three units available, ECCFPD is forced to rely on support from neighboring fire districts, in these cases, ConFire.

Statistical industry research by the National Fire Prevention Association predicts that in just three minutes a fire can grow 16 times larger than when it started. The additional travel time of firefighters from neighboring districts can cause catastrophic loss for East County property owners.

State Sen. Steve Glazer and Assembly Member Jim Frazier, East County’s elected representatives, have known about the unsafe situation for years. It has been the subject of numerous county Grand Jury reports, Local Agency Formation Commission reports, a government task force and has been reported the media.

The district requested that the state Legislature change the funding methodology back in July 2016, when the ECCFPD board passed Resolution 2016-21, “Supporting State Legislative Action to Facilitate Re-Allocation of Property Tax Revenues”.

Since January the ECCFPD has taken steps to change the state-mandated funding mechanism by engaging Townsend Public Affairs to assist the district in getting its story told. Once legislators become more familiar with the area’s crisis, a funding solution will emerge, it is hoped.

Until a solution is implemented, the 115,000 residents of 249 square miles of eastern Contra Costa County will have to do their best to live with life-threatening medical emergency response times and the assurance that if a structure catches fire, the resources necessary to put it out will have to come from neighboring fire districts, many miles and minutes away.

April 15, 2018

East Bay Times

By Bryan Scott, co-chair of East County Voters for Equal Protection

[Calaveras County] No grand jury report is good news, La Quinta attorney tells council

Blog note: this article cites two grand jury reports as contributing factors to a person running for office.

A man who played an active role in Butte Fire recovery work as a representative of the Calaveras Association of Realtors charity will run for the county assessor’s office.

Tim Muetterties, who started a local charity supported by local real estate agents in 2002, said it is time for new leadership at the Calaveras County Assessor’s Office. He is challenging incumbent Leslie Davis, who is seeking to be re-elected to the office she has held since she was appointed acting assessor in 2009 when her predecessor retired.

Muetterties started the Calaveras County Association of Realtors housing affordability fund in 2002 as the local arm of a statewide program initiated by the California Association of Realtors. Through that fund, the Calaveras Association of Realtors played a role in fixing septic systems and providing trailers to victims of the Butte Fire.

Muetterties said recently that local Realtors have been busy allocating a $50,000 stipend from state Realtors for permit fees required by Butte Fire victims for rebuilding.

Muetterties has been a county resident, primarily in District 3, for the past 47 years. He went to Hazel Fischer Elementary School when it was located at Independence Hall in Arnold, before he attended Bret Harte High School. He spent four years in the Central Valley before returning to the county.

He has been a Realtor since he was 19, working mostly six-day weeks with the occasional Sunday off when time allows. He owns Realty World Tim Muetterties & Associates in Arnold.

Muetterties is married to Calaveras County Planning Commissioner Lisa Muetterties, whose term on the Calaveras County Planning Commission expires at the end of this year.

¬Muetterties cited investigations of complaints involving the Assessor’s Office by the 2011-12 and 2016-17 grand juries as contributing factors leading to his decision to run for the elected position. An investigation of the Assessor’s Office was undertaken as part of the 2011-12 grand jury’s work in response to a citizen complaint of a possible violation of the Revenue and Taxation Code. The 2011-12 grand jury report made two findings: First, that the county lost as much as $500,000 because the assessor waived or did not apply tax penalties properly. The tax code calls for assessment of a 10 percent penalty for late payments. Second, the grand jury found that the assessor “decided not to support the Unsecured Personal Property Tax Roll” because of budget reductions, and that decision put county schools at risk of losing $600,000 in a year and the county at risk of losing $178,000. Among its recommendations, the 2011-12 grand jury also recommended that the “Board of Supervisors provide funding to the Assessor’s Office to staff the revenue-generating functions.

As is customary, the grand jury report for 2011-12 also asked the Board of Supervisors, the county administrator and the assessor to respond to its findings in the next year’s report for the period 2012-13. The 2012-13 report noted in in responses that the Assessor’s Office staff had been cut nearly by half in 2011, from 19 positions and two extra hires to 11 total staffers, without any reduction in the workload of the office.

The county administrator and Board of Supervisors responded that the threat of lost tax revenues had been avoided under an arrangement whereby other county personnel were assigned to assist the remaining staff of the Assessor’s Office in completing the necessary tasks to support the tax rolls. The response of the Board of Supervisors also stated that the grand jury estimate that the loss of tax penalties may have been as much as $500,000 per year for 2010 and 2011 “is grossly overstated and inaccurate.” The assessor responded that tax penalties were, in fact, assessed in 533 cases for 2010, although no penalties were assessed with respect to the unsecured roll in 2011. That response also stated that all penalties were “applied for the 2012 assessment roll, including the unsecured roll” after the grand jury recommendations were implemented.

The response from the County Administrative Office stated that “Despite serious fiscal and budgetary constraints in fiscal year 2011-12, the Board of Supervisors took action to increase funding in the Assessor’s Office, thereby implementing the grand jury’s recommendation.”

In 2016-17, the grand jury again considered a citizen complaint that the Assessor’s Office had failed to diligently assess property taxes. In response to that complaint, the report asked the same parties to respond as they had in 2011-12.

The 2016-17 grand jury report did not find any wrongdoing or negligence by the Assessor’s Office with respect to the specific property assessment identified in the citizen complaint, but it did report a “significant backlog” of assessment work and identified a number of factors that may have contributed to that backlog. Those factors included the aftermath of the Butte Fire that required reassessments for all properties within its boundaries, the difficulty of identifying property owners, the learning curve for new hires, out-of-date computer systems and software that constrained the efficiency of the office, and a “silo mentality” that prevented county departments from sharing information with each other that could improve overall efficiency. Among its recommendations, the grand jury urged the county to “develop a comprehensive staffing and work methods analysis … consider greater use of modernized and integrated computer solutions … and establish a formal taskforce … to address technological needs … and develop a formal short-term and multiyear plan … .”

Formal written responses to the 2016-17 grand jury report will not be disclosed until the 2017-18 grand jury publishes its report later this spring. But Davis has responded to inquiries from the Enterprise by describing the impact of the Butte Fire as the culmination of a “perfect storm” of adverse impacts upon her office that began with the dramatic personnel cuts in 2011, an increase in workload as a result of reassessments required to keep up with the changes in all property values as the county recovered from the 2008 recession, then the Butte Fire in 2015.

April 13. 2018

Calaveras Enterprise

[Butte County] Grand jury report says City of Oroville could be insolvent within four years

OROVILLE, Calif. — The Butte County Grand Jury, 2017-2018, has released its interim report detailing a litany of issues present in the City of Oroville, ranging from under staffing to hard to reach city council members. The full report can be found at the bottom of this article.

At the end of their investigation, the grand jury reported that the Oroville City Council "urgently needs to identify and pursue additional sources of revenue" as well as "reconsider how they and the City staff operate".

According to the interim report, the Grand Jury selected to focus on Oroville because of lengthy and numerous vacancies in the city staff, as well as the concentration of city management into the hands of a select few employees. This included one instance where a single employee was tasked with heading four of the city's six departments, as well as serving as the acting city administrator.

According to the grand jury, a history of events outside of Oroville’s control created budget imbalances that continue to plague the city. These events include the 2008 recession, the 2012 statewide dissolution of the Redevelopment Agencies and, most significantly, the precipitous rise in costs of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS).

The jury noted that problems detailed in three previous grand jury reports were compounded over the past five years with "drastic" staffing cuts leaving the city with a skeleton crew. In addition, the higher cost of doing business continues to outpace the modest increase in the city's income. City employees had already accepted a 10 percent cut to their pay and/or benefits, which led to further degradation in staff morale.

To carry out this investigation, the grand jury interviewed the acting city administrator, the public safety and human resources director, the finance director, all members of the city council including the mayor, and several mid-level city employees. The grand jury attended a number of city council meetings in person and viewed others online

Staffing

In 2013 and 2014, the city reportedly carried out a series of layoffs to help balance its budget. All positions that were vacated were then "frozen" and left unfilled. In 2018, 32 percent of city positions were left empty because of this freezing.

The jury noted that the lack of staffing affected residents in all areas. For example, fewer police officers could result in higher crime rates. When someone was sick or took time off, no one was available to fill their role, and even if everyone was at work, when the public sought city services they faced longer wait times.

Several city employees told the Grand Jury that they found the lack of backup to be extremely stressful.

The reality of people covering multiple jobs led to interesting staffing choices. The report states that when three department director positions became vacant the roles were handed over to the planning director. In 2015, when the previous city administrator was terminated, the planning director was also given the role of acting city administrator.

Jurors said that the stress of managing four out of six departments while serving as Acting City Administrator, and trying to keep seven City Council members happy, contributed to his decision to seek a position elsewhere.

In another instance, the public safety director was given the additional job of director of human resources, even though they did not have any prior experience in that field.

Revenues

The grand jury says that Oroville's revenues have seen a "modest increase" over the past few years, but note that it hasn't kept pace with increases in mandatory CalPERS contributions.

The city council hoped that Measure R, which would've temporarily increased sales tax by 1 percent, would bridge this budget gap, but it failed.

The city did report that they were researching new sources of income from cannabis taxes and proposing another sales tax increase measure.

The council reported that they are studying all aspects of the cannabis industry, even visiting the City of Shasta Lake to learn about their experience. But, the city would have to get a voter approved measure to place an additional tax on cannabis (and its products) if they decided to legalize it.

City Council Operations

The grand jury noted that during their investigation, the city council was hard to reach and had a "profound sense of distrust" among its members.

Accusations of collusion and unethical or illegal behavior were leveled against each other.

The report said that when the jury tried to speak to the council, it was difficult to reach the elected members.

Multiple e-mails and phone calls to publicly available email address and phone numbers went unanswered. When jurors reached out to city hall on how to best contact the council members they were mostly given numbers and emails already tried without success.

Only after the Butte County Counsel got involved did the city council members interview with the grand jury. The jury noted that they believe any citizen trying to reach out to city council members would have a difficult time doing so.

One problem that led to this issue was two council members reported problems using the city-issued laptops.

Grand Jury Conclusion

The grand jury recommended nine suggestions on how to fix the problems that the city is currently facing with its staffing and budget issues.

Some of the key recommendations are as follow:

1. The City of Oroville should contract with a consultant prior to the end of 2018 to perform comprehensive analysis of the current city staff to ensure that the city has the appropriate number and types of positions needed.
2. The City should amend the city charter prior to the end of 2019 to provide for a City Manager position in place of the City Administrator position. A city manager would have more power to change and enact policy for the city.
3. The city council should explore all possible sources of additional revenue and implement those that will allow the City to fill all of its high priority positions.
4. The city council should work towards better collaboration by participating in periodic social and team-building activities.
5. The city council needs to be more accessible and responsive to the citizens of Oroville through operational and valid emails and phone numbers.
6. The City of Oroville should provide basic technology training for the City Council members.
7. The Oroville website should be checked and updated frequently for accuracy and maintained for the benefit of its constituents.

April 13, 2018

KRCR News

By Joshua Copitch

[Plumas County] More hits than misses this week – Hit: Positive grand jury comments

This week we also received a portion of the 2018 Plumas County Civil Grand Jury report. You can read it on page 2A of this newspaper. It’s the first time in years, actually decades, that the report is fairly optimistic. While the current facility is still riddled with deficiencies, the jury report acknowledges that the $25 million state grant secured to build a new facility would eliminate those woes. We echo the grand jury’s praise for the staff who have worked in the outdated structure and its leadership for securing the funding and location.

April 13, 2018

Plumas County News

[San Diego County] The Learning Curve: The School Board Is Studying — But Doesn't Have to Accept — Election Reforms

Blog note: this article references a 2017 grand jury rerport recommending term limits.

Frustrated with a school board election process they felt disenfranchised voters, citizens in January brought to the San Diego City Council four separate proposals that would revamp San Diego Unified’s election process.

Despite the fact the City Council has no authority over the school district, the school board election process falls under the purview of the city charter. So any change to the process would require a vote of the people — either through a ballot measure or a vote put up by the city.

The City Council, however, was reluctant to get involved and shot down all four proposals. They punted the issue back to the school district and advised them to come up with recommendations for how to proceed.

Since then, San Diego Unified school board established a 24-member committee made up of parents, students and union representatives to recommendations on election reforms.

Here’s how I described the school district’s elections process in January:

Unlike the way City Council elections work — where only the people who live in a certain district vote for that district’s representative — school board candidates first run in a districtwide election, then go on to a citywide runoff. Reformers argue that district-only elections would make it easier to see fresh faces on the school board, as city-wide elections are costly and tilt toward candidates with endorsements and financial backing from labor unions and other special interests.

Last May, the San Diego County Grand Jury recommended school board candidates be elected only from within their home sub-district, the same way City Council members, state Assembly and Senate members and congressional representatives are elected.

The district is now hosting a series of townhall meetings so the public can weigh in on some of the changes under consideration. The first of those meetings happened Wednesday at Mira Mesa High School.

Among the possible changes is whether to remove the school board elections from the city charter all together. San Diego Unified is one of only seven school districts in the state whose elections are governed by a city charter. The elections for every other K-12 district in the county fall under the jurisdiction of the county superintendent of schools.

It’s not entirely clear how the new election process would look should the election process be removed from the city charter, but at a City Council rules committee meeting this week, City Attorney Mara Elliott said she’s working on a memo that would clarify the process.

Here are changes under consideration, along with some context and some of the pros and cons discussed during Wednesday’s town hall:

Term Limits

Currently there are no term limits for San Diego Unified board members. Trustees Richard Barrera and John Lee Evans are both serving their third terms, and Kevin Beiser is running unopposed for his third term. The longest-serving school board member, though, was John de Beck, who served five terms over 20 years.

Those who want to keep the current system argue that serving as school board member involves a steep learning curve, so long-serving board members bring stability and institutional knowledge.

The other side argues that imposing term limits would allow for fresh ideas and improve the democratic process, because incumbents usually have a significant advantage during elections.

According to the school board committee, incumbents in San Diego Unified won five times more elections than their challengers over the past 30 years.

District-Only Elections

Most of the largest school districts in California, and the vast majority in San Diego County, use district-only elections to elect trustees.

The Grand Jury and those who want to see this change in San Diego Unified say district-only elections would allow for trustees who are selected by, and accountable to, the voters they represent. In a joint op-ed last year, Barrera and Beiser argued the opposite and said under the current system, trustees have an electoral incentive to represent all neighborhoods.

Some parents on Wednesday pointed to the 2016 election. LaShae Collins beat current trustee Sharon Whitehurst-Payne by a sizable margin during the district-only primary but lost the general election.

More Sub-Districts

The district is more than twice the size it was in 1935, when it established five trustees. Back then, there were about 4,100 students per trustee, according to the committee. Today there are 26,000 students per trustee.

Increasing the number of trustees by two might allow each to spend more time on constituents and schools in their areas. Six of the 10 largest school districts in California have seven trustees.

Adding trustees could also allow for deeper discussion and more debate on the school board, which could be a good thing, depending on how you look at it.

About seven years ago, a group of community members and business leaders brought forward a plan to remake the school board and add members, but the group didn’t gather enough signatures to get the plan on the ballot.

Who’s Eligible to Vote

Sixteen-year-olds are of course impacted by school board policies, so on one hand, it makes sense to give them a voice in elections. But more than a few adults last night questioned whether teenagers would simply be manipulated by their teachers or whether they’d know enough about issues to make an informed decision. (You could probably make the latter argument for adults, though, too).

As a matter of law, according to the committee, 16-year-olds and undocumented residents can vote in some local elections (but not federal or state elections) across the country.

Full-Time Salaries for School Board Members

One common argument for why it’s so difficult to find willing school board candidates is the low pay it offers. At $18,000 a year plus health benefits, being on the San Diego Unified school board doesn’t exactly provide a living wage, so the candidate pool is narrowed to retirees or those whose jobs have tremendous flexibility.

Increasing the school board salary could be one way to increase the candidate pool. In many cities, school board trustees earn no salary at all. School board trustees in Los Angeles Unified, however, earn an annual salary of $125,000 and are allocated paid staffers.

It’s important to remember the 24-member committee looking into election reforms is only an advisory group. That means the school board is under no obligation to accept whatever recommendations it comes up with.

Suzy Reid, a writer and researcher on the committee, said she’s served on a number of advisory committees over the years and it’s always “defeating” when recommendations are disregarded, but some of that is par for the course.

She said she’s serving on the current committee because she’s tired of seeing the school board seat in her area, currently represented by Mike McQuary, go unopposed.

“If anything comes of this, even if there are no changes to the school board, at least the public will be better informed about the process,” she said.

Jeff Bennett, a National Guardsman who’s also on the committee, said he’s not too worried the recommendations will be dismissed, because the committee will produce a report that will be available for public consumption.

“Even if they don’t follow our recommendations,” Bennett said, “at least they can take that report and go to the City Council with it.”

The school board is expected to return to the City Council with its recommendations by June.

April 12, 2018

Voice of San Diego

By Mario Koran

[Santa Cruz County] Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury calls on schools to rehearse campus-violence response tactics

SANTA CRUZ >> A new threat-assessment plan for Santa Cruz County schools lacks guidelines for rehearsing campus-safety tactics during threats of violence, the Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury reported Thursday.

The grand jury has legal authority to examine special districts, and city and county governments; its findings are meant to improve government operations.

“The threat of violence in our schools is a tragic modern reality,” according to the report, “Threat Assessment in Our Public Schools.” “We can no longer assume that our schools are safe havens for the most innocent members of our society.”

Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office has increased patrols at more than 20 schools in the unincorporated Santa Cruz County after a Feb. 14 shooting killed 17 people at a Parkland, Florida, high school. The shooting also invigorated dialogue among education administrators and law enforcement officials for active shooter and crisis response at schools across the U.S.

Thursday’s findings follow last year’s grand jury recommendations for county education leaders to impose consistent response and communication methods to address a threat of violence.

In response, Santa Cruz County Office of Education and the Sheriff’s Office formed the School Safety Partnership Team and drafted a Countywide Threat Assessment Plan . The interagency team will meet quarterly to monitor the plan’s implementation and evolution. The threat-assessment plan charts the flow of information in an emergency, starting with a report to a school principal. School leaders must evaluate whether the threat is or isn’t substantive. A threat is an expression of intent to harm someone, according to the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP).

Thursday’s report followed up claims last year that “although all local school districts have the comprehensive school safety plans mandated by law, there is a lack of consistency in those plans and little focus on the type of comprehensive and sophisticated threat assessment that today’s world requires.”

The grand jury called on schools and law enforcement to develop a unified plan that prepares all school districts to assess targeted violence.

The Sheriff’s Office and Office of Education did not immediately respond to comment Thursday.

Local schools have had threats, some that were not credible, the last 12 months.

In February, an investigation found no credible threat to Soquel High School after a Snapchat social media post warned of an “SHS” student planning to bring a gun to school.

Santa Cruz City Schools also have responded to threats, going on alert or being locked down, the last 12 months after a student ransacked a classroom and, in another case, school officials found a rifle on campus.

Branciforte Middle School was locked down by Santa Cruz police in October after a rifle was found in a bag on campus.

The disassembled gun was left in a trash bag, Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent Kris Munro previously said. No one was hurt and no other weapons were found at the school.

In February, a Bay View Elementary School fifth-grader had an outburst, throwing papers, books and displays across a classroom, where he barricaded himself after the class was evacuated, police said. The disruption did not require the school to be locked down and was settled in 15 minutes, Santa Cruz Police Chief Andy Mills has said.

Thursday’s report urges school and law enforcement leaders to ensure both agencies have “up-to-date resources and training in threat response, assessment and management.”

“The (Office of Education) should mandate rehearsals of the threat-assessment process in every school district,” according to the report.

April 12, 2018

Santa Cruz Sentinel

By Michael Todd

[San Diego County] Opinion: Don't Buy the School Board's Latest Attempt to Thwart Election Reform

City Council members refuse to reform the school board election system so that it mirrors their own. A series of town halls that begin Wednesday is poised to muddy the real issue and redirect attention.

Blog note: this opinion piece references a grand jury’s call for in-district elections and term limits.

In 1988, voters in San Diego approved a change to the city charter that required all City Council members to be elected from within their home districts during the primary, rather than compete citywide. It was not a partisan issue. It was not an equity issue. It was a simple acknowledgement of one of the fundamental principles of American democracy: The right of communities to choose their own representatives.

That’s why it is so confusing that the City Council has refused to place a similar charter change on the ballot allowing for San Diego Unified School District board members to be elected the same way. It has been called a partisan issue. It has been called a “solution in search of a problem.” Apparently, a system that routinely disenfranchises voters, preventing them from electing representatives who best serve their interests — a system that violates fundamental democratic principles — is not seen by City Council members as “a problem.” I think it is.

Rather than fight a Voting Rights Act lawsuit, San Marcos is moving to district elections. In fact, I don’t know of any city that has prevailed against such a lawsuit. It’s not just common sense that says voters should be able to choose their own representatives; it’s routinely upheld by the courts, which have been requiring district elections in jurisdiction after jurisdiction.

Imagine if this same system applied to Congress. Imagine if candidates had to run statewide in a runoff. So, in that scenario, San Diego voters would vote for the person they think would best represent their community in the primary — and then the entire state of California would vote for who eventually represented that district. Voters in San Francisco or Eureka or Bakersfield or Los Angeles would be voting on which members of Congress were right for San Diego.

Sounds absurd, right? But that’s exactly what we’re doing when we elect SDUSD board members — letting voters who live far away from any given community choose who will represent a community that isn’t theirs. Even if that system produces a result you like, that doesn’t make it right. The ends do not justify the means.

A recent Union-Tribune column lamented that so few incumbents face meaningful opposition in their re-elections. At least when it comes to the school board, it’s easy to see why — the system is set up to protect incumbents. Someone with significant grassroots support who might be able to prevail in their home community still finds it prohibitively expensive to take on an incumbent in a citywide election. No wonder the incumbents protect the current system.

The San Diego County Grand Jury has recognized all this. These are people selected by Superior Court judges — hardly a partisan bunch. They called for in-district elections, and they called for term limits. Simple. Yet, the City Council and the school board still wouldn’t act on it.

Instead, because they couldn’t simply ignore the Grand Jury, the school board set up a series of town halls to advise them on what the community wants. However, they didn’t simply ask the community’s opinion on the issues raised by the Grand Jury. They added issues that seem to serve no other purpose than to confuse people and muddy the waters, like asking whether 16-year-olds or undocumented immigrants should be allowed to vote. These are distractions, plain and simple, meant to redirect our attention.

The first of five town halls is this Wednesday. I wish I could say I was confident that officials will produce meaningful results, but I fear that their ploy will work. I fear that the results will be vague and contradictory enough that the people holding on to power will have the excuse they need to maintain the status quo or, perhaps, to suggest a convoluted ballot measure with so many competing issues that people vote it down, which maintains the status quo — i.e., it maintains their hold on power.

Residents shouldn’t let them get away with it. This is a simple issue. Voters should have the right to choose their own representatives. SDUSD board members should be subject to term limits, just like every other state and local elected official in San Diego County. San Diego voters should get to vote on those two issues, and those two issues alone. Anything else is a vote for the status quo.

April 10, 2018

Voice of San Diego

By Bret Caslavka, director of Youth to the Core, a non-profit bringing standardized physical education programs into schools, and president of Community Voices for Education, a advocacy group seeking reform

[San Mateo County] New county building in draft stage

Officials hope for community gathering space with county center construction

Blog note: this article references grand jury reports.

Honoring the county’s role in shaping technological innovation and rich natural history are among the goals officials have discussed in scoping a design for the five- to seven-story building expected to provide space for more than 600 employees on the downtown Redwood City block around which county government buildings are clustered.

Noting the project’s location in the heart of Redwood City and the county’s role in the region’s growth in technology and business, Supervisor David Canepa emphasized its potential to shape what Silicon Valley will look like in the decades to come. Canepa said actions to improve the setting where residents go for government services are long overdue as the county campus buildings like the Hall of Justice, which was built in 1954 and houses the Board of Supervisors’ meeting chambers, county employee offices and courtrooms, have aged.

“The residents of the county, the workers who work in the building deserve a place that represents what San Mateo County is all about,” he said. “When you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a world-class building, if the county does not seize on this opportunity or if we do something that’s subpar, it does not serve the residents nor does it serve the workers.”

Across Marshall Street on the back side of the San Mateo County History Museum, the project site makes it ripe to become a destination for San Mateo County residents, said Canepa, who added the building’s innovative design could go a long way toward sending a message that residents can receive county services in a friendly environment.

Having served on a committee to review the plans alongside Canepa, Supervisor Don Horsley is also looking to an architectural design featuring natural sunlight and wood elements to represent the county’s rich natural history.

The project is one of several included in a $700 million, five-year capital plan the Board of Supervisors approved last year, including IT improvements, new facilities and projects in the county’s Parks and Public Works departments. Horsley noted plans for the new building have long been in the works, in part to absorb the relocation of several hundred administrative employees working at the county’s Health System Campus in San Mateo as a project to seismically retrofit structures there unfolds. The $100 million project will require the demolition of two buildings as part of state-mandated seismic retrofits.

Combined with pressure from the San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury to reduce the number of properties the county is renting, Horsley found the decision to build a new building to be as much aspirational as it is practical. According to 2017 report on the capital improvement plan, consolidating and relocating county workers could save the county up to $42 million in rent over the next 10 years.

“We’re finally in a good position to be able to do it and … we’re also pressed to do it at the same time,” said Horsley.

By taking up half of the block bounded by Hamilton Street, Marshall Street and Middlefield Road, the project will require the relocation of the historic Lathrop House to a lot adjacent to the back of the history museum across the street. Bazan said relocation of the county’s traffic and small claims building adjacent to the Lathrop House is also being considered in the plans, though officials are still in discussions of how the county’s services can best be arranged in the new facilities.

A new 800- to 1,200-space parking garage built on top of the current surface jury parking lot is expected to provide parking for the new building. Bazan said the increasing cost of construction and a new policy to ensure the facilities are energy efficient may increase cost estimates, which stood at $86.8 million for the new building, $36.5 million for the parking structure and $900,000 for the relocation of the Lathrop House in a Feb. 27 version of the five-year capital improvement plan.

The plan also estimated the Lathrop House relocation to take place in the summer of 2018 as well as completion dates of spring of 2021 for the new building and fall of 2020 for the parking structure.

Bazan and Horsley looked to feedback from an upcoming April 24 study session with the Board of Supervisors and upcoming discussions with Redwood City officials and residents to further shape the plans. Acknowledging some may have concerns about the size of the budget for the projects, Canepa said the last thing he would want to do with an opportunity to redefine the county center for years to come is cut corners.

“This is going to take an investment,” he said. “It’s going to take resources and if we make the right decision in how we appropriate the resources, we can surely have a world-class building that reflects technology, that reflects innovation, that reflects transparency in government.”

April 9, 2018

The Daily Journal

By Anna Schuessler

[Marin County] Marin’s senator pushes bill for special district transparency

Blog note: this article references grand jury reports.

Marin’s state senator has cleared a key hurdle on legislation to increase online transparency at California’s more than 2,000 independent special districts.

Sen. Mike McGuire, who represents northern coastal counties in District 2, saw his Senate Bill 929 approved 6-0 by the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance on Wednesday. The bill goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee next.

“There are millions of Californians who receive a vital service from a special district, yet they have no idea how their hard earned tax dollars are being spent because financial reports aren’t online,” McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said in a released statement. “They don’t know what the district’s board is doing because the agenda isn’t posted online or how to contact their district on a call for service.”

In addition to requiring independent special districts to maintain a website, the bill would require that each website include meeting agendas, clear information on the district’s budget and expenditures, compensation reports, information on how to contact representatives of the district and more.

Last year, the Little Hoover Commission, which serves as the state’s independent oversight agency, released a report recommending that the Legislature pass just such a law.

The state’s special districts operate a variety of essential local services including fire protection, transit, parks, utilities and many others. The special districts come in two forms: independent and dependent.

Dependent special districts are overseen by an existing legislative body, such as a board of supervisors or a city council. Independent special districts have their own board of directors who are either elected or appointed by a local jurisdiction to fixed terms.

McGuire’s bill would only apply to independent districts. There are 63 special districts in Marin, but at least a third of these are dependent districts.

The Marin County Civil Grand Jury has twice weighed in on the need for special districts to have well-designed websites. The grand jury, however, has not drawn a distinction between dependent and independent districts. In fact, in a March 2016 report that evaluated web transparency, the grand jury included Marin’s 20 school districts and 34 joint powers authorities along with special districts.

In that report, the grand jury found that 27 Marin local agencies lacked public websites and that 65 of the existing 99 websites needed to be improved.

The Brown Act requires all local agencies to post the agenda for any regular meeting 72 hours in advance in a location accessible to the public. And a state law was passed in 2011 requiring local agencies that have a website to post meeting agendas on the website. However, there is no requirement that special districts maintain a website.

In its March 2016 report, the Marin civil grand jury criticized the county for not maintaining separate websites for all 28 special districts and four joint powers authorities that it oversees.

“The county just does not agree that is the most straightforward way of communicating to the public what would often be duplicative information,” said Dan Eilerman, assistant county administrator.

Seventeen of the special districts Marin County oversees are community service areas, or CSAs. In its response to the grand jury, the county said CSAs are better described as financing mechanisms than municipal agencies.

California law allows residents in unincorporated areas to form CSAs so they can tax themselves to provide a service such as including water, garbage collection, wastewater management, security and fire protection.

The law provides a way for residents living in the unincorporated area to get a higher level of service than they might otherwise. For example, in November 2016 Kent Woodlands residents in Community Service Area #17 approved an annual $360 per living unit special tax to pay for additional patrol services by the county sheriff’s department.

Eilerman said Marin County did respond to the grand jury’s concerns.

“As a result of the grand jury investigation, our Department of Finance created a comprehensive listing website that includes a summary of all of our special districts and a link to a budget document which includes a lot more information,” Eilerman said.

No estimate has been prepared yet on the cost of implementing McGuire’s bill should it be enacted into law. The bill would exempt districts if their governing body adopts a resolution declaring that complying with the law would be a hardship. Acceptable hardships would include a lack of funding, insufficient staffing or inadequate access to broadband communications. Even though the law would impose new duties on local agencies, the state would not reimburse local governments’ compliance costs.

Ron Brown, who worked on the Marin civil grand jury’s 2017 update on web transparency in Marin, said, “I think anything that encourages public agencies to be more transparent is a good thing.”

April 8, 2018

Marin Independent Journal

By Richard Halstead

[Orange County] Irvine could blow a gaping hole in O.C.’s emergency response system

Irvine soon might pull out of the Orange County Fire Authority, a move that could force an expensive and litigious re-working of the county’s emergency response network, according to a grand jury report issued Tuesday.

At its heart, the issue is this: Because of rapid growth, increasing property values, and a locked-in property tax formula, Irvine pays far more to the OCFA — which provides fire and emergency services to 22 other cities and the county — than it gets back in services.

Titled “Orange County Fire Authority – Financial Flames on the Horizon?” the Orange County grand jury’s first watchdog report of its 2017-18 term urges the city, the fire agency and other parties squabbling over who pays what to sit down together and figure it out.

Irvine is to decide by June 30 – “a rapidly approaching deadline” – whether it will stay or go. While Irvine and OCFA have been talking, a major player in the fight, the County of Orange, has been excluded, according to the grand jury.

“The grand jury report was quite interesting, and I think it gives a lot of reasons why we might want to exit (OCFA), but it remains to be seen,” Irvine Mayor Don Wagner said by phone Wednesday, March 21. “Exiting, to me, is a realistic option.”

Depending on how you factor it, Irvine’s over-payment to the OCFA could be as much as $23 million a year, or as little as $5 million a year. Either way, it kicks in far more than other cities and the county to fund OCFA. Various attempts to fix the issue have have failed.

If Irvine secedes and starts its own fire department, a giant hole would suddenly yawn not just in the OCFA’s budget, but in Orange County’s emergency response map, the grand jury said.

“Irvine’s withdrawal from OCFA would disrupt the strategic integrity of a uniform service area with regard to placement of fire stations as well as distribution of firefighting equipment and personnel,” it said. “The withdrawal would also have a negative effect on OCFA’s operating budget, financial stability, response times, and overall operations.”

John Wayne Airport, UC Irvine and Emerald Bay might have to renegotiate for emergency services, it said.

Fights would be long and costly. According to OCFA, the 11 fire stations in Irvine belong to OCFA. According to Irvine, those stations belong to the city.

“Possible litigation over this issue could be a very large expenditure for both parties,” the grand jury said.

Although withdrawal may seem like the answer to Irvine’s fairness issues, nothing about this situation is simple, it said.

The property tax funds its residents pay for fire and emergency services do not automatically revert to the city, as some have suggested.

And while city representatives have said that Irvine could leave without being on the hook for OCFA’s huge pension liabilities, “it seems unreasonable to assume that Irvine’s share of those liabilities, however they may be calculated, would not follow them if they withdraw,” the grand jury said. “This open question is another possible litigation issue, costly to both parties.”

Officials from Irvine and OCFA said they’re trying to find a fix. The two are having informal talks aimed at delivering extra services to Irvine.

“We’ve always wanted a solution to this,” said Lori Zeller, assistant chief of business services for OCFA. “We’re going to do everything we can to keep Irvine in.”

Irvine Councilwoman Melissa Fox, who represents the city on OCFA’s board of directors, said the agency is willing to provide more services to Irvine to keep up with the city’s rapid population growth. As part of that, the agency plans to open a second division in Irvine and another station in the developing Irvine Business Complex, a residential and office district near John Wayne Airport.

“I’m not advocating for us to be leaving,” Fox said. “We want to be a good neighbor. If there’s a wildfire in Tustin, it’s going to spread to Irvine eventually.”

If an acceptable compromise can’t be reached, however, OCFA feels that losing Irvine is not an existential threat.

“We can, most likely, function without Irvine,” said Battalion Chief Marc Stone.

Not everyone is so sure.

Without Irvine, said Supervisor Todd Spitzer, there’d be tremendous pressure on the remaining contract cities to make up the nearly $90 million that Irvine provides OCFA’s budget.

That, he said, could force some to form alliances elsewhere – for example, Placentia could contract with Fullerton for emergency services, rather than with OCFA. Enough of that, and OCFA could implode.

“I’m very concerned that the longer this gets delayed, the more it pushes Irvine,” Spitzer said. “These things don’t get done overnight. I’d really like to see this all worked out.”

For Irvine, the issue is fairness – but inequity is a feature of any representative democratic government, the grand jury said. Wealthier communities send more taxes to the government than less wealthy communities, and the money is redistributed for the common good.

Fred Smoller, political science associate professor at Chapman University, believes that regional partnerships are usually most efficient, and the future of local government. “Two steps forward, one step back,” he said.

“Irvine may, indeed pull out, but the long term trend is for cities to divest themselves of fire responsibilities. All the newer south county cities contract with OCFA, as does Santa Ana, a large legacy city. Irvine would have to establish its own fire department, or contract with one or more cities for fire services, which can be problematic,” Smoller said.

The grand jury would agree. “These possible effects make it apparent that it would be in the best interest of OCFA, the City of Irvine, other member cities, and the County to negotiate a mutually agreeable solution,” it said.

Wagner said the Irvine City Council is scheduled to discuss the issue at its first meeting in April.

March 20, 2018

The Orange County Register

By Teri Sforza