PRESS Sunshine Ordinance

Well, the Patterson Irrigator has published two stories regarding the Sunshine ordinance that PRESS recently submitted to the city.  The first was a news article comparing our ordinance to the long-awaited, still-to-be-seen ordinance from Councilwoman Annette Smith.   The second was an editorial from the paper urging the city to move forward with the best elements of both proposed ordinances.

Now is the time to make your opinion known to our city leaders.  In the main news story, City Manager Rod Butler said that he would not agendize the PRESS ordinance unless a council member directed him to do so.   The story also indicated that Councilwoman Smith’s ordinance was still in the works and may take up to two months before we see it.    As you may recall, she first raised the idea of developing a sunshine ordinance nearly eleven months ago (after PRESS was first launched and began discussing the idea of a sunshine ordinance).  Yet we are supposed to wait another two months to see her proposal.

Councilwoman Smith leveled several unwarranted criticisms of the PRESS ordinance.  She objected that the PRESS ordinance incorporated the best practices of ordinances adopted by “big cities in the Bay Area.”  But the city of Benecia, one of the cities we researched, has only 27,000 residents, slightly more than Patterson.  The effectiveness of a sunshine ordinance is more dependent on the willingness of the city and its residents to make it work.  In addition, Councilwoman Smith has proudly cited the fact that she researched many other cities when she developed the ordinance for skate park rules and others.  So apparently it’s ok for her to pull the best practices from other cities but it’s not appropriate for PRESS to do the same.

PRESS urges you to make your opinion known to the city.   Post comments on the Irrigator articles urging the city to move promptly to adopt a comprehensive sunshine ordinance.   Send a letter to the Irrigator urging the same.   Come to the City Council to express your views.   You can also send PRESS a letter expressing your views and we will submit them to the city for you, whether you prefer to remain anonymous or not.  We are also still interested in hearing your ideas for additional elements to the draft sunshine ordinance.  For example, we are currently looking at what was adopted by the city of Gilroy.   So if you have suggestions, please don’t hesitate to let PRESS know.  There is still time to make more changes and submit an amended draft ordinance.

As the Irrigator “Our Voice” article indicated, it will not be easy to get the City Council to approve a true sunshine ordinance when it requires approval from members who “have been criticized for a lack of openness in the past.”  So it will require the community to stand up and hold our leaders’ feet to the fire to make this happen.

Patterson Irrigator Articles (March 29, 2012)

Dueling Ordinances Aim For Open Government

Patterson Residents Deserve the Best of Both Proposals

 

Sunshine ordinance draft language

Sunshine Week

Fellow Patterson residents,

As you may know, March 11-17 is Sunshine Week, a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include news media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know.

Given the ongoing issues that our city has regarding the openness and transparency of its decision-making process, Patterson Residents for Ethics Safety and Service has developed a draft Sunshine Ordinance that it plans to formally submit to the city for its consideration.  It is PRESS’s hope that the City Council will give this draft ordinance very serious consideration.  We also believe that such an ordinance will go a long way toward restoring the public’s trust in both the city and its elected leaders.

We encourage members of the public to review the attached draft Sunshine ordinance and provide any additional suggestions before it is submitted to the City for its consideration.

Teen Center

One of PRESS’s goals is to help put a spotlight on various issues happening around town, as well as to help ensure that the city conducts its business in an open and transparent manner.   That means that when the city operates in a less than open fashion when considering a specific issue, PRESS will be there to let residents know what’s happening.   In that vein, we must now look at the way in which the city is handling the issue of the Teen Center.

 

The future of the Teen Center has been a hot topic in town in recent months.   The financial viability of the Teen Center has been in question for a couple of years now, with the Center for Human Services, operators of the Teen Center, making multiple requests for the City to help support the rental costs of the Center.   But until very recently, the City has been quiet on the subject, so the Teen Center has been running in the red to keep it open.  The issue came to a head in May when the Center was facing the end of its lease at its current facility and needed the city’s support to continue operating.

 

In a hasty decision made without seeking input from various constituencies around town, the City Council opted to temporarily house the Teen Center at the Hammon Senior Center.  They also created a Teen Center Task Force, which includes teens, seniors the city and the Center for Human Services, to receive input on the future of the Teen Center.   Councilmember Novelli was originally appointed to the Task Force but was subsequently replaced by Councilmembers Smith and Farinha.

 

After several contentious Task Force meetings and an extension of the Teen Center’s lease at its current facility, the issue went quiet for a brief time.   But then, talk began about the possibility of the city developing a modular building at the Community Complex for use by the teens on a temporary basis.  When the idea was first floated, a  figure of approximately $200,000 was mentioned at a Senior Board meeting.   However, when the item was agendized at a recent City Council meeting (and then subsequently tabled for future consideration), the staff report included an estimate for the building that was nearly one million dollars.   Given the City’s track record on recent construction projects, and the inevitable addition of contingency funding, the project will certainly exceed the one million dollar mark if it continues on the same course.

 

But the issue took an unfortunate turn last week.  The Irrigator reported that on July 26, the Teen Center Task Force “met behind closed doors” to discuss the modular building option.   There was no public announcement of the meeting in advance, and as far as PRESS can tell, no legal reason for holding a closed session meeting.  Councilmember Smith provided an update on the Teen Center issue at the July 19 City Council meeting, but she did not mention anything about the July 26 Task Force meeting.

 

Who made the decision to make hold this meeting behind closed doors?  Who was at the meeting?  Was anyone other than the Task Force members permitted to attend?  How did the Teen Center get the funds to continue paying the lease at the current facility through December? Will the placement of a modular building next to the skate park only worsen the Community Complex’s limited parking and cause more disruptions for the seniors at the Hammon Center? These are just some of the questions that must now be raised given the way in which this latest meeting was handled. There were many seniors, teens, parents and other community members who took part in previous Task Force meetings who were presumably shut out of this meeting.

 

In the interests of openness and transparency, residents should be very concerned about this latest development, regardless of whether they have strong opinions about the subject of the Teen Center.  Given the very large price tag being considered for the proposed building, the City should be going out of its way to ensure that the public has every opportunity to take part in the decision.  PRESS will continue to investigate this issue, and we urge residents to come to the next City Council meeting on August 9 to ask the City why this latest Task Force meeting was held without giving the public a chance to participate.

Grand Jury Report

The long-anticipated Grand Jury report has now come out, and it identified a number of issues involving the activities of the previous City Council.  You can access the complete report by going to the “Stanislaus County Grand Jury” link on the side of this page.   The Modesto Bee wrote a very thorough editorial this weekend about the report and what it means going forward.   You can access that article here.

Many of the report’s findings involved back-room meetings and other violations of the Brown Act, as well as failures by Councilmembers to disclose conflicts of interest.  It was actions like this which led concerned residents to form PRESS in the first place.  PRESS is thoroughly reviewing the Grand Jury report, and we are starting to list the various conflicts of interest identified in the report on our “Government Watch” page.   You can access that information here.

This Tuesday, July 12 at 7:00 p.m., the Council will be holding its first meeting since the report’s release.  While there are no specific agenda items regarding the report or the city’s response to it (the city has up to 90 days to formally respond to the report’s findings), this meeting does provide the public its first opportunity to make its voice heard about the report and what it means for our city.   PRESS urges all residents to attend this meeting and make your opinions about the report’s findings known to our City Council.  This is your first chance to not only make your feelings known to the Council, it is also to help shape how the City responds to the report.   Hope to see you on Tuesday.

Welcome To Patterson Residents for Ethics, Safety and Service (PRESS)

If you are visiting this site, it is likely because you are tired of feeling like your leaders aren’t listening to the voters who elected them to serve.  Or perhaps you have been frustrated when trying to find out more information about various issues, events and happenings in Patterson, only to find that no information is readily available.   You want to understand the issues better, but you find that there’s no one to ask.

The newly formed Patterson Residents for Ethics, Safety and Service (PRESS) is intended to bring together concerned residents who want to see our government conduct its business in a more open and responsive manner.  PRESS will closely monitor the official activities of our leaders and identify instances in which their actions conflict with personal interests or potentially run counter to the communities expressed priorities.   Third, PRESS intends to help residents establish Neighborhood Watch Groups and use other techniques to make our streets safe again.  Finally, it is our hope that PRESS can become a tool to educate and inform Patterson about a number of critical issues facing our community and what residents can do to get involved.

At the top of the site, you will see a page called “Government Watch” where we will regularly catalog and track individual instances in which our leaders are not being as open as they could be.  On the page “Attendance Watch” we intend to post information about various community events happening around Patterson and the extent to which our leaders participate in those events.  The page “Safety Watch” will include information for residents to use to make our community more secure.  We also encourage you to visit the “Suggestion Box” page if you have specific issues or questions that you would like PRESS to consider.  Finally, future posts and links will provide ways in which you can use to directly access various information to which you are entitled from our government.

Everyone who chooses to run for elected office deserves tremendous credit for having the courage to put their names forward for consideration as one of our community’s leaders.  However, once elected, our leaders assume many important responsibilities.  One of the most important responsibilities involves a commitment to serving ALL of the residents who elected him/her to serve.  That service includes a continual effort to make sure that the decisions made on our community’s behalf are done in an environment that emphasizes public disclosure and encourages a true, ongoing dialogue between our leaders and residents.

I encourage you to continue visiting this site on a regular basis so that you can stay involved and learn more about our leaders and the decisions before them.   Shining a bright light on our government is the best and only way to ensure that they are truly representing the best interests of our entire community.

The ability to actively engage our elected leaders is one of the cornerstones upon which our democracy was founded.  But citizens must remain continually involved, asking questions, requesting information, and understanding the rationales of our leaders’ decisions if democracy is to function effectively.

If you want to become a part of PRESS, please hit the “Subscribe” button to the left and join us at future meetings.