February 2008 Archives

Leaders from the National Orange Show and Lewis Investment Corp. are nearing a long-awaited agreement on a development plan to revitalize the historic fairgrounds, an NOS official told me today.

NOS spokesman Bruce Varner said the board of directors has approved in concept some building plans from the major regional developer and that now only “fine-tuning” remains.

Talks between the two entities have been ongoing since last year. Varner said a major announcement should be forthcoming in a matter of weeks and that a mix of new hospitality, office and commercial development is planned at the site.

Varner wasn't too keen on revealing details, but did let on that core buildings will be maintained and refurbished while significant amounts of demolition and rebuilding will be part of the overall plan.

"We're going to go from more carnival to more community centered," Varner said. "Think of the grounds as being less carnival and more community."

The NOS will continue to serve as a state fairgrounds, Varner said.

in a story set for Saturday, a state senator and two county heavyweights throw their support behind a new act aimed at crime statewide.

The measure, which needs more than 400,000 signatures by April 21 to reach the November ballot, is particularly interesting given the state's fiscal crisis. Nearly $400 million in new spending, and locking in $600 million in existing spending, could make this basket of enhanced sentencing and local law enforcement dollars a tough sell in 2008.

Click below for story:

Ever wonder how the city's parks devolved from picturesque family havens to unkempt hives of drug sales and homelessness?

In short, it's the money, which is compelled by the politics.

Over the past few days I've spent some time talking to Parks Director Kevin Hawkins and other local leaders about this issue.

A clear historical narrative emerges: Soon after Prop. 13 in 1978, localities started getting pressed for money. By the early 1980s, diminishing revenues and increasing costs for public safety put other programs on the chopping block.

As a result, park spending plunged in proportion to other expenses. Over the same period, with new development and popular projects, total park acreage expanded, increasing the workload for a shrinking and defunded staff.

In 1991, the department's budget was the same in unadjusted dollars as it was last year. With inflation factored in, the budget has plunged by a third.

Today, 35 maintenance staff are responsible for more than 30 parks totalling around 550 acres.

In the early 1980s, there were more than 60 staff, according to department records.

Per industry standard practices, an adequate ratio is one staff per 10 acres. In Inglewood, Hawkins' former employer, the ratio is about one staff per three acres.

In San Bernardino, the ratio is stretched to one per 16, or 60 percent higher than accepted standards.

The prospects for boosting staffing - and funding - are grim. With an economic downturn and rising costs of public safety, this year’s budget will be tight.

That said, progress is being made in cleaning up the parks, mostly due to some innovative tactics Hawkins brought from Inglewood. They are clearly better than they were two years ago. I should have a detailed article on that progress next week.

But next time you wonder about why the parks aren't the sunny places of your youth, think about the economics - the dollar decline and widening staff to acreage ratio.

It's not often enough that we get the opportunity to see a slice of a life of service.

Spend an hour with Linda WIlson-Carter and you'll get a visceral demonstration in the yoeman efforts that dozens like her in city government perform every day.

Wilson-Carter, who got her start with the city at the Delmann Heights Center in 1989, manages two area senior centers. She is universally loved among the hundreds of seniors who frequent the centers daily.

There are others like Wilson-Carter in the city's recreation department, folks who earn salaries at the lower end of the public pay spectrum and work against constant budgetary limits. The Delmann Heights Center, for instance, is now managed by the Boys & Girls Club in part to save the city staffing costs. Wilson-Carter, who got her start there when it was a vibrant center, bemoans the diminution of a community resource. The Delmann Heights Center is in such dire straits that Police Chief Michael Billdt declined to launch a council-approved Police Activities League there last year.

Click below for Wilson-Carter's story.

Going to have an interesting piece in the paper tomorrow. Colleague George Watson and I looked into the budgetary considerations of wildland firefighting in light of President George Bush's proposed budget, which would reduce fire prevention spending.

While the budget proposal is just that - a proposal that must go through Congress - the news gave us an opportunity for a careful look at the tremendous operation that has been going on in our local San Bernardino National Forest for about the last six years.

The work is fire prevention, and it consists of thinning forests, gathering and controlled-burning of tinder brush and dead foilage, and creating rings of thinned, well-manicured forests around towns, facilities and roadways.

Click below for an excerpt of tomorrow's story ...

Below is a story I wrote in 2007.

The basic premise is that in San Bernardino, the city with the highest public safety spending in the county (more than $90 million), an incredibly low proportion of the personnel live in the city.

That, say some, may adversely affect the city's economy, government revenue and development prospects because such a tremendous portion of the city's budget is bled away to nearby cities. Obviously, the millions that leave with the public safety officials who live elsewhere don't come back, not through property, sales taxes or consumer spending.

At the same time, it is important to note that public safety employees, and any city employees for that matter, live elsewhere not out of malice or lacking civic duty, but because of personal decisions about families, finances and living comfort. San Bernardino isn't on any best-places-to-live lists.

Obviously, the lack of public safety and other government workers in the city (public safety workers from other cities don't live here, either) has a social cost as well, depriving communities of stable, educated families who would contribute in myriad ways.

So, click below to read full article ...

What if I told you the San Bernardino Police Department budget has risen about 600% over the past 25 years? Wow?

Yes, most reasonable people would reflexively think that sounds like an accelerated pace.

But reasonable people would also need more information, namely contextual data about such matters as crime rates, tax rates, local revenues and other program expenditures, before they could really judge whether 600% is a rate consistent with city's wants and needs.

Well, many of those numbers are readily available, and the basic picture they paint shows police and fire (ie. public safety) spending drastically outpacing both city revenues and other program expenditures. At the same time, crime has ebbed and flowed over the years, peaking in the early 1990s and falling moderately on a per capita basis over the past decade.

In short, the data, including an expenditure table since 1982 that I've posted below, is not particularly heartening. Clearly, police and fire spending have ballooned by a far higher rate than the one at which crime and fires have been reduced, meaning we get less bang for each additional buck than we'd like (economists call this diminishing marginal returns, a theory that says that beyond some point, each additional unit of investment, ie money, yields less additional output, ie crime reduction).

At the same time, because the expenditures in public safety increase at a rate far exceeding that of city revenue growth, other services have fewer available resources (economists call this opportunity cost, or the cost of choosing one option as opposed to another, ie. every dollar spent on a police helicopter or a bulletproof vest is a dollar not used on something else, say youth recreation or library computers).

Click below and you'll see a table of spending patterns in four major departments since 1982. Data is provided by the City Manager's office.

For Steve Shaw history is more than hobby or study, it’s heritage.

And now he's written a history book titled San Bernardino, released Jan. 14.

The eight chapter book focuses on institutional and natural aspects of the city’s history, including the railroads, festivals and fairs, water and public buildings. Among the gems are include photos of since demolished structures like a downtown library built in 1904 with a grant from industrialist Andrew Carnegie and a towering, red mentone sandstone county courthouse that stood at Court and E Streets.

A native son of the city, Shaw has lived his love for history since he was a young San Bernardino firefighter, collecting mounds of local historical data and thousands of trinkets, pictures and other mementos of the area’s history.

The son of a decorated San Bernardino firefighter and now himself a retired fire captain, Shaw has turned to authorship.

Shaw, pictured below:

shaw.bmp

San Bernardino is his second history book, a collection of 223 post-card photos and detailed captions.

Shaw, who serves as President of the city’s Historical and Pioneer Society, said he produced the book not for money, but the love of history.

And as for the work, he maintained a breakneck pace that may have impressed Beat scribe Jack Kerouac: Three months starting last June, with some days stretching into the predawn hours.

“It wasn’t really as grueling as it sounds,” said the 55-year-old Shaw. “You just … get on a roll.”

Shaw’s roll produced a book with images of the city from the 1850s to 1990s. Shaw wrote information-dense captions averaging 40 to 50 words per photo, with most of his research coming from his own materials and troves of historical writings stored at the historical society’s D Street headquarters.

The eight chapter book focuses on institutional and natural aspects of the city’s history, including the railroads, festivals and fairs, water and public buildings.

For the introduction, Shaw enlisted Mayor Pat Morris.

Morris’ two-page introduction tells a brief history of the city, beginning with Father Francisco Dumetz’ building of the St. Bernadine chapel in 1810.

“Mayor Morris has been a big advocate for the historical society,” Shaw said. “He’s the first San Bernardino mayor I’ve known in a long time who knows and appreciates this city’s history, and its importance to its culture.”

Shaw, whose Highland home is a virtual museum of city history with vintage firefighter hats and National Orange Show Fair posters dating to 1917, hopes his book’s format and content give people a richer understanding of local heritage.

Initial prints of the book total 1,200, and it is available in local bookstores, on www.Amazon.com and at the Historical Society at 796 North D St.

“The heavy use of pictures and the short captions make the book a fast read,” Shaw said. “It’s a perfect format for today.”

SAN BERNARDINO — The first installment of a voter-approved public safety tax went exclusively to funding law enforcement, an audit prepared for a citizen’s oversight committee revealed Tuesday.

Interesting story in tomorrow's paper. A police/youth partnership looks like it's finally here, but from an unlikely source: The police union.

Apparently, union leadership has partnered with a local nonprofit to meet with youths from the Waterman Gardens and Westside project for sports and other activities. Union President Rich Lawhead said he will have at least 10 volunteer officers as part of this PAL-like program.

That's an astonishing number considering Lawhead said last year he wasn't sure if any cops would volunteer for the department's Police Activities League.

Meanwhile, the PAL that the council gave the department $75,000 for in Feb. 2007 is still in development.

Below is an early version of the story :

SAN BERNARDINO — When top police union officials came to a Westside community center for the first time last Christmas with gifts for impoverished kids, a thought struck Terrance Stone.
“What is really important, and has been missing, is strengthened relationships between our kids and the police,” said Stone, a youth advocate and co-founder of Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy. “Then at this event, (Police union President) Rich Lawhead said he wanted to help, and I said okay, let’s figure something out.”
A newly forged three-way partnership between the Police Officer’s Association, Stone’s nonprofit youth program and downtown’s American Sports University is set to draw teens from two of the city’s toughest neighborhoods together for weekend sports.
The program, starting Feb. 9 and slated for the second and fourth Saturday of each month, will give teens T-shirts, lunch, and a few hours in a university gym.
More crucial, Stone said, may be positive interaction with police officers, something that may be foreign to kids in county project housing.
“Officers working with these kids as mentors will make a huge difference,” Stone said.
Each Saturday, about two hours of sports and training in the gym will conclude with lunch and a motivational speaker, Stone said. Saturday’s debut speaker will be 6th Ward Councilman Rikke Van Johnson.
The partnership also may be a positive step for police/community relations, Lawhead said, particularly in the Westside Projects, where distrust of police has run high. Also enrolled are teens from Waterman Gardens, another subsidized housing tract.
“We are doing this on neutral, safe turf where hopefully we can come together and build relationships,” Lawhead said.
The program will debut before the formation of a Police Activities League, which the council gave Police Chief Michael Billdt $75,000 to launch at the Delmann Heights Community Center in February 2007.
Numerous setbacks and a new location have delayed the program’s launch, but department brass say they’re pleased with the union’s move.
“We welcome any effort to get more involved in the community,” said Lt. Scott Paterson. “This will compliment the PAL.”
Lawhead said he expects at least 10 officers to volunteer Saturday to work out and interact with the teens.
“I totally support the PAL,” said Lawhead, who in the past had questioned it’s ability to draw volunteers. “I just wanted to get something started now, and Terrance and I were able to just hammer this out.”
robert.rogers@sbsun.com (909) 386-3855.

Below are some great anecdotes of young people and others who are really fired up about Election 2008.

It's hard to see how every state won't have record turnouts on Super Tuesday. There is a buzz in the air that may exceed any I've seen (granted, I've come of age in a historically apathetic time).

Anyway, below are excerpts from rich stuff that happened over the weekend and should make its way into tomorrow's paper.
*******

By Robert Rogers

San Bernardino High School student Mirr Ramirez in many ways typifies two of the driving themes of this year's election: youth and change.
“We can make a difference,” said Ramirez, 18, who spent last weekend canvassing impoverished Westside communities and encouraging people to vote. “Together, as a generational movement, I think we feel we can have a major impact on our nation's future.”
But Ramirez, like many young people treading onto a fertile political landscape where change is en vogue and turnouts have been heavy, retains an almost starry individualism.
Asked whether he, a high schooler, can make a difference, Ramirez recites a parable. An old man finds a boy on a beach throwing drying starfish back into the water, Ramirez said. The old man tells the boy he can't make a difference, the beach is to long, the starfish too many.
“It made a difference to that one,” Ramirez said, neatly linking the principle to the dozens of people in the Westside he contacted.

Ramirez is not alone. Another 18-year-old and first time voter, Blanca Ortega, is poised to make her presence felt in a presidential election for the first time. Like many area youths, the Cal State San Bernardino freshman has already gained experience impacting local political issues before even being old enough to cast a ballot.
In February 2007, Ortega, then an Arroyo Valley High School student, publicly confronted a San Bernardino City coucilman who had questioned the decision making ability of youthful residents during a showdown over how to spend city funds.
Ortega, who argued that some tax proceeds should go to youth programming, spoke her mind.
“I will be 18 soon and I can assure you that you won't have my vote,” a then 17 year-old Ortega said to applause that Febrary evening.
Today, Ortega said that pledge still drives her, along with the momentous historical shape 2008 has taken.
“I feel like I took a stand that night when someone told us we didn't matter,” Ortega said. “I feel like I'm taking that same kind of stand by doing outreach and voting myself.”

Tom Dolan, a community organizer for Inland Congregations United For Change, said this year is one of not only greater turnout, but greater understanding, especially locally. Dolan's youth-led groups worked over the weekend as part of a statewide network, People Improving Communities through Organizing, or PICO.
They deliberately targeted West side voters who had voted at least once in the last five years – but not on every opportunity they had.
He estimated that about 70 teens and organizers reached more than 2,000.
“What we're doing is teaching and learning with young people about how to drive greater voting, more participation,” Dolan said.
Dolan said he marveled at the idealistic youths traipsing through one of the city's most impoverished areas. The whole episode played out with a verve and hope that harkened an earlier era, Dolan said.
“We broke down a lot of stereotypes just by getting into the community and speaking with people,” Dolan said.