Download, print and use the attached vouchers, during the Book Fair this Sunday, December 9, 2012 to make your purchase and a portion of the funds will benefit American Association of University Women scholarships for LMC students.

The Commons at Dallas Ranch will host their 5th Annual Pancake Breakfast with Santa, this Saturday, December 8, from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m..

Join them for a delicious pancake breakfast while the Divine Voices of Deer Valley High School fills our Main Dining Room with songs of the season. Bring a new unwrapped toy the day of the event and receive a Free Photo with Santa and a Raffle Ticket for a chance to win a Holiday Gift Basket. All toy donations benefit Toys for Tots. Toy donations will be accepted through December 16th.

The Commons At Dallas Ranch is an Independent, Assisted Living, and Memory Care facility and located at 4751 Dallas Ranch Road in Antioch.

For more information or to RSVP, please contact Dina Osakue, Community Relations Director at (925) 754-7772 or visit www.commonsatdallasranch.com.

By James Ott

Citing the need to attract more experienced police officers to the city, Antioch city council will decide whether or not to increase retirement benefits for police officers hired from other cities at a special meeting tonight at 6 p.m. The change could also see retirement package increases for all new city hires.

At last week’s regular city council meeting, new Human Resources Director Michelle Fitzer, City Manager Jim Jakel and Antioch Police Chief Allan Cantando suggested changing the city’s PERS retirement package for new police hires from three percent of pay at age 55 to back to three percent at age 50 formula the city had prior. The new benefits package, if passed would allow new hires from other cities to collect pension five years earlier. Council voted unanimously to move the item forward for a decision.

This comes only months after the city worked with the Antioch Police Officer Association to reduce pension benefits for new hires to the current 3 percent at 55 formula in order to combat a poor economy and some $59 million in underfunded retirement benefits debt.

Police Chief Cantando said that the city is having trouble filling the current 15 vacancies in the police department, something he thinks reverting back to the “3 percent at 50” formula would help remedy.

Cantando said that he has not personally had any potential hires tell him that the city’s current retirement plan would prevent them from taking up a police position with Antioch. But he said that there are far more inexperienced officers applying to Antioch instead of experienced officers from other cities, and so he believes offering a better retirement package could change that.

Cantando and the city say they would prefer to hire mostly veteran officers because they have more experience in a variety of situations and don’t need as much training as recent police academy grads. Though Cantando and several city council members such as Wade Harper and Gary Agopian said they would like a “nice mix” or experienced and new officers.

Included in the staff report was a comparison of retirement benefits for 15 surrounding cities – 8 of those 15 used “3 percent at 55” and only 6 used the “3 percent at 50” that Antioch is currently considering switching to. The city of Clayton uses an even lower “2 percent at 50” formula for its safety employees. It’s interesting to note, however that of the 8 nearby cities that use the “3 percent at 55” formula, every one of those cities recently switched to this formula for new hires in either 2011 or 2012.

At last week’s meeting the city had no available data that would show the financial impact that this increase in benefits would cost the city of Antioch, but as Jakel stated during the presentation last week: Antioch has seen a fiscal crisis over the last five years that has seen staffing levels decline nearly forty percent from 401 positions in 2007 to less than 250 employees in 2012.

Antioch has had to restructure all of its employees pay and pension including eliminating all deferred compensation and medical after retirement.

Jakel said of the recent restructuring: “It was painful but action was needed to ensure the financial integrity of the city. We’re off the bottom but we’ll remain in choppy waters for the coming two years.”

But Jakel said that the council has seen it’s time to act and are acting on this new item.

Indeed the council voted unanimously to move forward on the issue of increasing pension for not only new police hires but it also voted to look at increasing the pension of all new city hires from a “2 percent at 55” formula to the “2.7 percent at age 55” pension plan that similar employees hired before 2007 received. There wasn’t very much discussion as to why this move was made but it is assumed it is to be “fair” to all new hires, not just police officers.

Financial impact figures are supposed to be available, at tonight’s meeting, before a decision is made.

Simonsen elected Clerk

By James Ott

Antioch voters have spoken and the new Mayor is current Mayor Pro Tem Wade Harper who makes history as Antioch’s first African-American Mayor.

Harper beat out fellow city council member Gary Agopian for the Mayor position by garnering 12,594 votes for 40.77% of the vote versus Agopian’s second place total of 10,129 for 32.79%. Next up was former Mayor Don Freitas, who took 6,329 votes for 20.49% and Michael Anthony Leon who had just 1,740 votes for 5.63% of the vote. There were 102 write-in votes.

As a Lieutenant for the City of Tracy Police Department, Harper rode his campaign mostly on a “zero tolerance for crime” slogan.

Antioch has had problems with crime in the past but has recently seen huge increases in crime rate with some property and violent crime categories rising 50 percent as police were cut by the city as a result of drastic budget cuts.

Harper said he will look for “out-of-the-box solutions” to hire more police and Harper also voted for new police as a city council member, although every council member voted to hire more police officers, including Agopian.

When told about the historic significance of his election, Harper jokingly said, “That’s what I’ve heard. I’m the first mayor elected who owns an I-Pad.”

Harper also said he will work to clean up blight and decrease truancy for minors in school.

The race for the two vacant council seats was much closer, with the top vote-getters, incumbent Mary Rocha, newcomer and Economic Development Commissioner Monica Wilson and former Mayor Jim Davis all coming within six to seven hundred votes of one another.

When the final ballots were counted, the two vacant council seats were taken by incumbent Rocha who garnered 11,795 votes for 24.75% of the vote and Monica Wilson with 11,190 votes for 23.48%. Davis followed with 10,524 votes for 22.08%. School Board Trustee Walter Ruehlig placed fourth with 8,465 votes for 17.76% and newcomer Noel Pinto coming in last with 5,538 votes for 11.62% of the vote. There were 147 write-in votes.

Rocha, who will be Mayor Pro Tem for the next two years, as the top vote-getter, campaigned on her 30 plus years working with the Antioch Unified School District, the City of Antioch and many other community groups in Antioch and across the East Bay.

She said she plans to fight blight through Code Enforcement, increase public safety programs and increase employment and business opportunities in Antioch.

Rocha admitted that it has been hard to get things done as a city council member with the rough economy.

“With the recession all it’s been is cut, cut, cut. My goal this time is to get things back the way they were. One thing I’d like to do is to look to see how we can work with the other cities for job creation.”

The poor economy might be one reason that voters chose Wilson, as she has a business background which she said has “taught her to not take no for an answer – persistence = results.”

Wilson is also making history as the City of Antioch’s first female African American council member.

 

In her first term Wilson said she plans to “promote business and job growth, find funding to increase the number of officers protecting us, keep our road and transit improvements on track and stand up to protect the Delta from plans to divert water south.”

Wilson’s campaign obviously made an impact on Antioch voters who also seemed to say they wanted change by bringing in Wilson over Mayor Davis – who did not run for re-election and instead just ran for a council seat.

Davis may be in luck however, a third council seat will be filled either an appointment of the council or another election, when Harper steps down from his council seat to become Mayor. Traditionally that position is filled by the next runner up, which would be Davis as he lost to Wilson by a scant 666 votes,  just 1.4% of the vote. But not always.

The council in 2008 voted to pass over then Councilman Arne Simonsen who was the next highest vote-getter in that council election, and instead appointed Martha Parsons to the remaining two years of Davis’ term, when he stepped down to become Mayor. The issue will be decided by the new council of Harper, Rocha, Agopian and Wilson.

Also elected in November was former Antioch Councilman Arne Simonsen, who beat Argentina Davila-Luevano by 3,670 votes or 56.41% to 43.27% for City Clerk. Donna Conley was re-elected as City Treasurer with no one running against her.

The new mayor and council members, as well as City Clerk will take their oaths of office at the City Council meeting on Tuesday, December 4, beginning at 6 p.m. at the Antioch City Council Chambers located at City Hall, 3rd and H Streets in downtown Rivertown.

For detailed election results, visit www.CoCoVote.us.

Publisher Allen Payton contributed to this report.

Measure B passes

By James Ott

Antioch voters elected one new member and chose to keep the status quo and voted back in the two current Antioch Unified School District Board Members who ran for re-election, while approving Measure B to improve Antioch High School.

Newcomer Barbara Cowan took the top spot with 13,933 votes for 19.65% of the vote, followed by school board incumbents Diane Gibson-Gray and Claire Renee Smith with 11,033 votes for 15.57% and 9,167 votes for 12.93% of the vote, respectively.

Those figures are as of today, December 3rd. But, the County Elections Office finalized their vote count, earlier today.

The vote wasn’t all that close. The next highest vote-getters were Debra Vinson with 7,860 votes for 11.08% and Jack Yeager with 10.79% of the vote for a total of 7,654 votes. In sixth place was retired school nurse and former teacher’s union representative Linda Anderson with 7,043 votes for 9.93%; seventh place finisher was Randy Benevides with 5,667 votes for 7.99%; Synitha Walker placed eighth with 5,005 votes for 7.06% and Zandra Raphael who was unable to campaign much due to knee surgery in October, was last with 3,358 votes for 4.74%. There were 188 write-in votes.

Trustees Gibson-Gray and Smith were part of a school board including Walter Ruehlig and Gary Hack, who were faced with large state budget cuts to education. Although they made changes including laying off teachers, renegotiating teacher contracts, and increasing class sizes they also currently have surplus general fund balance of about $30 million, which may have swayed voters to bring them back.

Both Cowan and Gibson-Gray said they believe their educational experience as well as Gibson-Gray’s experience on the school board, helped them gain a majority vote. They were both endorsed by the teacher’s union, known as the Antioch Education Association.

In addition to the financial difficulties the board has faced in recent years they are also facing angry teachers who are upset at the cuts to their pay. Teachers have flooded recent school board meetings demanding some type of raise after they say they made pay sacrifices to get the school district back on track.

Teachers say they have not received a pay raise of any significance in six years and now that the board has a surplus, they are asking that the board pay them back for their willingness to take pay cuts when the district was struggling in the past.

Cowan said that she is looking forward to working with the teachers and the students to improve the district.

“I’m looking forward to continue a fiscally conservative policy in that we need to keep a healthy reserve but we need to allow for teachers and employees to make a living wage,” said Cowan. “I’m looking forward to assisting school teachers and students in making Antioch schools a better institution.”

Gibson-Gray also said that she believes that the district is on the right track because of their surplus and said that negotiations with teachers are underway.

“I don’t see much changing because we are on the path for negotiations and Prop 30 passed which is a windfall,” said Gibson-Gray. “I’ll be a fiscal conservative and continue what I’ve done for the last four years.”

Prop 30 is expected to raise billions for public schools and community colleges over the next seven years by increasing income tax on earnings over $250,000 and by increasing sales tax by a quarter cent over the next four years.Measure B monies cannot be spent on administrative costs and decisions on how the money will be spent must be decided in public meetings and is subject to an annual audit.

The school board members will take their oaths of office at their regular meeting on Wednesday, December 12, which will include reorganization of the leadership, with a new Board President and Vice President, as well as committee assignments.

Also benefiting the school district was the passage of Measure B, the $56.5 million bond for improvements to Antioch High School. It required only a 55% vote to pass and garnered over 62%, with 11,520 votes in favor and 7,008 votes against the measure.

According to the Impartial Analysis from the County Counsel, the bonds will cost “$49.80 per $100,000 of assessed valuation during each year beginning in fiscal year 2013-2014, when the first bonds would be sold, and continuing through fiscal year 2046-2047, which is 30 years after the last bonds would be sold.”

There will be an citizen’s oversight committee formed and appointed by the school board, who will keep an eye on the use of the Measure B bond funds.

NOTE: Claire Smith was unavailable for comment for this article, due to a family emergency.

Publisher Allen Payton contributed to this article.

 

By Allen Payton, Publisher

Congratulations to those who were elected to local office in Antioch. They already know they have much work to do. So, as they roll up their sleeves, here are a few things for them to consider.

First, be gracious in victory. The all too common philosophy of some in politics of “reward your friends and punish your enemies” is no way to show leadership. With that said, the Mayor and Council should appoint the third highest vote-getter to Wade Harper’s council seat when he steps down.

Let’s not have any political game playing, like what happened four years ago when the council sidestepped Arne Simonsen, who was the next highest vote-getter in the 2008 council election and instead appointed Martha Parsons who hadn’t even run for City Council.

Listen to the will of the voters. With the current four council members, only Mary Rocha has four years of experience on the council. Both Harper and Gary Agopian have only two years experience on the council. Davis would bring some longer-term experience and knowledge to the table.

Second, find a source of revenue to fund and fill the much needed police vacancies we currently have. I believe the best way to do that is with a Rental Property Owners Business License Fee on both single family and multi-family units, instead of a city-wide tax.

Running some preliminary calculations, such a fee can generate enough annual revenue to pay for all the additional police, Community Service Officers and Code Enforcement Officers Antioch needs to bring the crime down and clean up our neighborhoods.

Then we’ll be more attractive to businesses who are looking to locate in East County with their jobs and additional revenues.

Third, it would be wise to appoint Agopian to represent the city on the regional transportation boards. We need his experience, knowledge and drive (no pun intended) to help Antioch and our region solve our traffic challenges.

Finally, get the annexation of the northeast land done, right away. That will help secure our economic future with a deep water port facility and manufacturing. Have a very Merry Christmas or a Happy Hanukkah!