Red Words

Redlands has a new department head in place at City Hall.

The Redlands Daily Facts, The Sun's sister paper, has reported that Oscar Orci has started work this week as director of the city's Community Development Department.

Orci most recently worked in Banning, where he held the same position for three years. Community Development is where plans for new homes and businesses get processed, so the business that goes on there is important to all the Redlanders who want to see more economic development occur and/or concerned about the possibility that some parts of town (like San Timoteo Canyon) may be the scene for too much construction.

Orci's arrival at City Hall follows the Rosemary Hoerning's entry into Redlands government. This blog reported last week that Hoerning started work as Redlands' Municipal Utilities & Engineering chief after serving as Upland's assistant public works director.

Here's the entire article as published on the Daily Facts' Web page:

City welcomes Orci
By JESSE B. GILL, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 03/26/2008 12:20:22 PM PDT

New Community Development Director Oscar Orci. REDLANDS - The city has filled one of its holes at the department head level.
New Community Development Director Oscar Orci spent part of his second day on the job in a Planning Commission meeting, where he was formally introduced by Assistant Community Development Director Robert Dalquest.

Dalquest served as the interim community development director following the January retirement of Jeff Shaw, who held the position for 21 years.

"It's been three months since Jeff retired," Dalquest said. "We'll be using Oscar's experience to deal with the land-use issues we deal with."

Orci joins the Redlands city staff after a three-year stint as community development director for the city of Banning, where he approved plans for thousands of houses.

"I counted projects for over 4,000 homes," Orci said.

Before working in Banning, Orci has worked in La Quinta, Rolling Hills Estates and the city of Torrance. He said he has worked almost exclusively in a supervisory capacity in his 20 years of working in urban planning after graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a degree in city planning. According to Dalquest, Orci's experience will prove to be an invaluable resource to Redlands' Planning Department.

"Oscar will bring his experience in working with other cities to help us with the way we do business," he said.

When Orci described his decision to come to Redlands, he said he wanted to be a part of the deliberate

plan of development of one of the most historically rich communities in Southern California.
"All I had heard is that Redlands was a tough city but it was also a beautiful city," Orci said. "I can only imagine that the two things are related. I've heard that the city's careful about their development here. They want controlled, orderly development with a nice aesthetic."

Orci said he is glad to join the Redlands city staff and get to work on moving projects through the Planning Department.

"It's a welcome challenge. There's a great professional organization and staff here," Orci said.

Orci said it might be too early to start thinking about his specific goals for Redlands as he is still getting acquainted with his surroundings, but he said he has some ideas about the direction he'd like to see Redlands take. He said Redlands' commitment to being environmentally friendly is an attitude he will be able to bring over from his time in Banning. He also wants to help the planning department to continue to preserve the unique look of Redlands.

City Manager N. Enrique Martinez also welcomed Orci and his experience to the Redlands city staff.

"We're very happy to have him on board," Martinez said. "He's worked for four cities in the past and he will definitely be an asset to our organization."

Tuesday's Planning Commission meeting was a short one, wrapping up in just under an hour, and Orci said he liked what he saw.

"So far so good," he said. "But this is only my second day."

E-mail Staff Writer Jesse B. Gill at jgill@redlandsdailyfacts.com

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Inland Empire Cops & Clergy Network's forum on prisoner reentry is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning.

Prison overcrowding and the Sacramento's ongoing budget deficits raise the possibility that several prisoners will be granted early release.

That's not a certainty, however. Word from the California prison guards' union is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's announced plan to shunt more than 22,000 nonviolent prisoners from their cells as a cost-saving measure is merely a scare tactic to make other unpleasant budget choices (e.g. taxes) a more palatable.

Only time will tell whether thousands of inmates will be released ahead of schedule. But unless California wants to start handing out life sentences to car thieves and stick-up artists, criminals will eventually be back on the streets regardless of what happens.

Thursday's forum is intended to spur discussion on what can be done to transform ex-cons to productive individuals. The Cops & Clergy Network wants to establish an environment where churches and law enforcers create a system to make rehabiliation actually happen.

Members of the public can attend, but there is a $25 fee at the door. The event is scheduled to be held from 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Day Harvest City Church, 1125 B Research Drive in Redlands.

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received an anonymous phone call from a reader who asked why a story that ran in Monday's edition of The Sun headlined "A boon to police" did not mention an earlier problem involving a Wackenhut employee who served time for sexual assualt.

It's a fair question. Florida-based Wackenhut provides custody services for Redlands (and Rialto) Police and Monday's article followed up a previous report that Redlands and Wackenhut each agreed to pay a local woman a $22,500 settlement after she alleged she was sexually assaulted by another inmate when a Wackenhut employee was supposed to be watching her.

The answer to the reader's question is simple. I didn't catch the previous case (the defendent was Darrell Jeffers) when I did an archive search for any local problems involving custody officers. In the article, police offered a case that Wackenhut and other contractors give departments the ability to keep officers on the street while contract emplouees deal with arrestees.

Although I did not ask Redlands Police about the Jeffers case when I wrote my article, police Capt. Tom Fitzmaurice said the downside to contracting for custody officers is that police doesn't have as much control over staffing issues as they would if custody officers were hired directly by the city. San Bernardino Police Lt. Scott Paterson, who also had positive things to say about outsourcing, similarly said last week that if his city hired its own custody officers, San Bernardino officials could conduct their own background checks on jailers.

It would be also fair to mention that Paterson said some contract officers have gone on to become city police officers. It's not this blogger's place to say whether cities should or should not outsource their jail operations. However, the reader who left the phone call was correct that the article could have provided a more complete picture on the history of the issue.

Here's an article from eight years ago on the Jeffers case:

Police say incarcerated jailer

sexually attacked second woman

PALM SPRINGS A former jailer serving a one-year sentence for having sex with a female prisoner at the Redlands jail now faces allegations that he sexually attacked a woman at the Palm Springs jail.

Darrell Jeffers, 41, of Beaumont remained in West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga on Wednesday, where he is serving the one-year sentence for sexual battery.

But police recommended this week that the Riverside County district attorney’s office charge Jeffers with 25 counts of oral copulation and one count of rape with a foreign object in connection with the allegations of a 30-year-old female inmate of the Palm Springs jail.

The woman alleges Jeffers sexually abused her multiple times at the Palm Springs jail from January 1998 to April 1999, police said.

Jeffers was transferred to the Redlands jail in November and was arrested April 6 on the sex charges there.

Moreno Valley resident Ranette Sanchez told police that Jeffers groped her, forced her to expose her breasts and subjected her to an unreasonable search while she was in custody at the Redlands jail in October on an outstanding warrant.

She said Jeffers called her at home and sexually harassed her even after she was released.

At the time Jeffers was a contract employee hired as a custody specialist through Wackenhut Corp. He was fired after the allegations were filed.
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Posted by Andrew Edwards at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The City Council decided Tuesday to move forward with an effort to craft a new law that would increase regulations for rental properties.

The proposal is not yet completed, but the council voted 4 to 1 to continue work on a law that would require landlords to purchase a rental license, register contact information with the city and allow inspections of apartments and rental homes.

Council members also favored a provision in the law that would allow landlords to reduce licensing fees by participating in the Crime Free Multi-Housing program, which this blogger understands to be an educational effort to teach landlords how to keep unsavory people away.

The plan boils down to a proposal to give code enforcement more resources and more authority to go after irresponsible landlords. Jerry Bean, who cast the sole vote against the proposal, voiced his concern that overly-aggressive inspections could result upstanding landlords getting caught up in a bureaucratic tangle.

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The possibility of new taxes has returned to Redlands. City Council members and high-level staffers gathered during the evening for a goal-setting workshop, during which City Manager N. Enrique Martinez lamented that his colleagues were more interested in naming things they wanted to do (like build a new police station) than looking for new ways to pay for city business.

"I didn't see anything about going to the public. We need to raise fees," Martinez said. "We can't do this all by balancing the budget."

After some discussion, Councilman Jerry Bean suggested that City Hall explore the possibility of collecting more revenue by raising Redlands' paramedic tax. Bean's remark seemed wasn't so much a specific proposal to increase that levy than an indication of his willingness to increase taxes if citizens would agree that City Hall needs more cash.

"That should be a major objective, to look for revenue streams that would be palatable to the public," he said.

The City Council recently nixed an unpopular proposal that would have collected new revenues through a water rate hike (possibly as high as 15 percent). The complicated reasoning behind that proposal centered around Martinez's contention that a decades-old accounting error meant that the city's water utility owed money to the general fund; thus new water revenues could have been transferred to the general fund.

Bean, a fiscal conservative, strongly opposed that idea on the basis of his view that Martinez had essentially proposed a stealth tax. However, during that controversy, Bean never said he was adamantly opposed to new taxes. His insistence was that City Hall should be more straightforward in asking Redlanders for money. New taxes require a public vote, something that would not have been required if the above-mentioned water rate proposal went forward.

Councilmembers Mick Gallagher and Pat Gilbreath sounded reluctant to go forward with new taxes. Both stressed the idea that City Hall has some work to do before Redlanders would be willing to open their pocketbooks.

"We've got to build the trust margin," Gilbreath said. "One year is not going to do it. They're still watching us."

Martinez became City Manager in April. Since then, he convinced the council to pass a balanced budget law and shepherded through a balanced budget after a five-year period during which the council used savings to pay for city business while allowing planned expenses to exceed revenues.

In a similar workshop held about 11 months ago, Martinez publicly broached the possibility of new taxes. Redlanders debated proposals to hike sales and bed taxes over the summer while also discussing a proposal create a new business license tax for distribution centers.

Of those three proposals, only the distribution center tax made it onto the ballot. City voters ratified the tax in November.

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Morgan, a doctor of public health with the California Cancer Registry, said on the phone today that a proposed cell tower wouldn't elevate cancer risks around a south Redlands neighborhood.

The California Cancer Registry collects statewide data on cancer. Morgan said he wouldn't be able to justify diverting resources from a known cancer risk like tobacco use to focus on public worries about cell towers.

He noted that people opposed to cell towers for various reasons often zero in on fears that the technology will increase cancer risks.

"People will use cancer as an argument for things they want or don't want," he said.

Cell company T-Mobile has proposed a new tower that would be built in the 1900 block of Country Club Drive. The 60-foot tower would be disguised as a cypress tree and surrounded by homes.

Several residents went to City Hall at 9a.m. Monday to speak against the proposed tower at Monday's Environmental Review Committee meeting. Objections to the tower included a possibly negative affect on area aesthetics, property values and concerns about increased risks of cancer.

The speakers included Javier Sanchez, who identified himself to the panel as a doctor working for Kaiser Permanente. Cell phone towers transmit radio frequencies (RF), and Sanchez told panel members that he has read studies showing that exposure to RF energies can increase risk of lymphoma, endocrine cancer, brain cancer and melanoma.

However, the Federal Drug Administration and World Health Organization report that cell towers are not likely to pose serious cancer risks. Although Monday's hearing was conducted under the understanding that federal law prohibits local governments from blocking cell towers on the basis of health concerns, tower opponents argued that there is enough medical uncertainty to insist that city officials be as cautious as possible.

T-Mobile wants to build the tower on city-owned land, and Redlands would get $25,000 annually if the City Council ultimately approves a lease with the cell phone company. Tower opponent Scott Reading contended that since the proposal centers on city property, Redlands officials are not bound to approve T-Mobile's plan.

"The city, in its capacity as owner of the property, can lease to whomever it wants," Reading said.

If Morgan, the FDA and WHO are correct that the cell towers are not dangerous, that still wouldn't answer the question of how close cell phone companies should be allowed to build homes to residences. Many people could still object to towers on the basis of not wanting to look at them when they look out their backyards.

But a T-Mobile representative said Monday that the proposed tower is needed to solve some customers' complaints of poor cell service around southern Redlands. Take away cancer concerns and there's still enough of an issue to motivate residents to attend something as dry as a public hearing.

The environmental panel ended the meeting by deciding to hold future discussions in late April.

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Redlands has a new face in town.

Rosemary Hoerning, most recently Upland's assistant public works director, is now head of Redlands' Municipal Utilities and Engineering Department.

The department was formed by recent merger of the Public Works and Municipal Utilities departments. The hybrid agency is in charge of water delivery, wastewater and streets.

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a nod to David James Heiss of the Redlands Daily Facts for covering the Redlands Unified School District's board meeting on Tuesday night.

This blogger spent Tuesday night covering a gay marriage debate at University of Redlands that avoided controversy on the touchy topic since neither of the speakers actually opposed legal recognition for same-sex couples. The debate was little more than a friendly argument on whether the government should use the word "marriage" or phrases like "civil union" and "domestic partnership" to describe same-sex couples.

I'm expecting my story on the debate to appear in Thursday's issue of The Sun. In the meantime, here's The Fact's rundown of the school board meeting.

School district avoids layoffs
David James Heiss, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 03/12/2008 02:08:20 PM PDT

The Redlands Unified School District anticipates having a balanced budget through the next couple of years, despite a $16 billion state budget shortfall that will reduce district revenues.
Vince Christakos, assistant superintendent of business services, explained at Tuesday evening's school board meeting how the district can expect to meet budget demands without layoffs.

Christakos presented the district's second interim financial report during the meeting.

Multi-year assumptions for the district include a 4.94 percent cost of living adjustment for next year, and a cost of living adjustment reduction to 3 percent for 2009-10; a flat 6.99 percent deficit; no growth; 3 percent annual rise in utility expenses; half of Citrus Valley High School's start-up costs next year and start-up costs for Citrus Valley in 2009-10; and anticipated additional budget reductions in 2009-10.

The district expects an $8.9 million deficit for this year and an additional $5.5 million loss next year.

Due to higher interest rates on cash reserves and higher rents from district-owned citrus groves near Redlands East Valley High School, and an unexpected rise by 75 in the average daily attendance for this fiscal year, revenues increased.

Revenues for the first interim of 2007-08 were $166,862,309; and for the second interim they were $169,600,882.

Expenditures for the first interim were $175,787,417; and for the second interim expenditures were $175,069,513.

Ending balances were $11,624,428 and $15,080,904, respectively, with beginning balances of $20,549,535 and $20,549,535.

During closed session, the school board approved eliminating general fund contributions for three elementary school assistant principals, effective in June.

The three people, identified only by employee numbers, will be offered teaching positions or other administrative positions, or their respective schools may use categorical funding to maintain their salaries.

Superintendent Lori Rhodes itemized a budget reduction plan for 2008-09, which included a hiring freeze that will save the district $1.1 million, and consolidating campus kitchens to reduce encroachment and combining them into a newly opened central kitchen, which would save $1,450,000 annually.

The district would also eliminate roving teachers-on-assignment and keep them permanently in singular classrooms, while leaving seven classified positions, two counselor positions and two high school support teaching positions vacant, which would save an additional $800,000.

By reducing administrative and clerical staff through attrition and increasing bus and field trip rates, and relying on state and music art funds to support arts programs, the district could save an additional $1,377,000.

Her cuts included the elimination of maintaining the three assistant principal positions using general funds.

Rhodes expressed regret in having to make program cuts, but told the board, "I believe our criteria to determine which items we put on this list keeps cuts as far away from the classrooms as possible.

She also said the district promised to "continue to maintain accessibility of our programs for our students. We were cognizant of the effects layoffs would have," and assured "RUSD will not be issuing layoff notices" this year, because the human resources department has closely monitored retirements and attrition.

Board member Ron McPeck said, "The district must operate within the parameters the state gives us, and so we get to do the dirty work our state legislatures don't want to do," despite his observations that the Legislature has the capacity to raise funds while the district does not.

In other action, the district adopted a resolution to grant an easement and substructure conveyance to Verizon California Inc. at Citrus Valley High School.

The district also announced the hiring of Scott Bohlender, assistant superintendent of educational services for Rim of the World Unified, as Redlands' next assistant superintendent of educational services, which was the position Rhodes held for several years before being promoted to superintendent at the beginning of February.

E-mail Staff Writer David James Heiss at dheiss@redlandsdailyfacts.com

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Police Department is on pace to increase its use of surveillance cameras in Redlands following the City Council's decision to favor a plan called the "Downtown Security Enhancement Program."

The council voted 4 to 1 in favor of the plan on Tuesday. Councilman Jerry Bean voted no because he objected to the use of redevelopment funds to buy camera technology.

"If we use the RDA (Redevelopment Agency) as a piggy bank, we are going down a very dangerous path," said Bean, who argued that redevelopment money would be better used on infrastructure improvements and brick-and-mortar type projects.

The plan calls for the purchase of 30 new cameras, many of which would be placed Downtown.

"We're almost positive that we'll be able to push the images to officers' cars," Police Chief Jim Bueermann said.

The plan calls for the electronic eyes to be used at intersections, parking areas, pedestrian areas and "ingress and egress points."

The council, acting as the board of directors for the Redlands Redevelopment Agency, approved the use of $252,400 in RDA funds for the cameras. The entire plan could cost $550,000. The difference would be financed through multiple grants.

During Tuesday's meeting, Bean and interim redevelopment director Steve Dukett both seemed to be at least a little ticked off during the debate over whether it would be appropriate to spend RDA funds on a public safety program.

Bean contended that the project should be financed by the general fund, but Dukett offered his view that the cash-strapped city would not be able to allocate general fund dollars to new cameras.

"I would suggest that you would not have funds to do this for the next several years," Dukett said.

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The City Council is likely to approve an $11,000 increase to staffers' salaries during Tuesday's 3 p.m. meeting.

The proposal is listed as a consent calendar item. Those are generally approved as a package without debate.

The estimated cost to increasing the maximum monthly salary for the city's top staffers (including Police Chief Jim Bueermann, Fire Chief Jim Drabinski and Finance Director Tina Kundig) is estimated to cost the city $6,000.

The remaining $5,000 would come from raising pay for four lower level postions that are benchmarked off the minimum wage. The state minimum wage increased to $8 per hour at the start of the year.

The salary increases would be approved as part of a resolution that also reassigns various city positions to different departments to be consistent with recent reorganizations of Redlands bureaucracy. For example, parks and trees positions would be switched from Public Works to the new Quality of Life Department.

One notable change is the near-elimination of the City Treasurer's Office. Seven positions, including Assistant City Treasurer, would be transferred from the Treasurer's Office to a new Revenue Division within the Finance Department.

The Finance Department would absorb Treasurer's Office duties in the wake of criminal charges being filed against Treasurer Mike Reynolds last year. In December, Reynolds pleaded not guilty to the District Attorney's allegation that he misappropriated public funds by transferring about $38,000 from an account under his control to the city's general account.

Reynolds' attorney, Patrick Milligan, said he had no comment on the potential transfer of city employees out of his client's office.

He did offer a comment on Reynolds' case.

"We're just in the process of putting together the case together for trial," Milligan said.

Reynolds next court appearance is a disposition and reset hearing set for April 16, according to the District Attorney's Web site.

Posted by Andrew Edwards at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)