By Sergeant Tom Fuhrmann, Antioch Police Investigations Bureau

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016 at approximately 9:14 p.m., Antioch Police Officers were

dispatched to the area of Mark Twain Drive and Ebbetts Way on the report of shots heard in the area. While responding, additional information came in that a subject had been shot on the trail.

When officers arrived on scene they found a 17-year-old male from Antioch suffering from gunshot wounds. The victim was transported by ambulance to an area hospital where he subsequently died.

Antioch Police Investigators were called to the scene and are in the early stages of the investigation into this shooting death.

No further information will be released at this time. Anyone with information regarding this case is encouraged to call Detective Colley with the Antioch Police Department at (925) 779-6922. You may also text a tip to 274637 (CRIMES) using key word ANTIOCH.

By Corporal James Stenger 3604, Antioch Police Field Services Bureau

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016, at about 7:33 AM, Antioch Police Dispatch received a call regarding a 38-year-old male who jumped into the water district canal to the rear of the Sutter Delta Hospital Emergency Room, near Lone Tree Way at Sunset Lane. An APD K-9 unit was first on scene and contacted the male in the canal. The K-9 officer used his dog leash to attempt to help the male Oakland resident out of the canal.

The ConFire Water Rescue Team arrived on scene and assisted the APD K-9 officer by providing a long pole. They were able to get the male out of the frigid water.

This was a great collaboration between the APD and ConFire. It was determined that the male intentionally jumped into the canal and because of this he was placed on a mental health hold.

This preliminary information is made available by the Field Services Bureau. There will be no further information released regarding this case at this time.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Antioch Police Department non emergency line at (925) 778-2441. You may also text-a-tip to 274637 (CRIMES) using the key word ANTIOCH.

Dear Editor:

Following is the statement I gave to the Antioch City Council, tonight.

I question if you really care about this city over your personal, political wants. By paying labor agreements that lack actual funding, is a knife in the back of Antioch before you are out the door. I hope the labor unions that you have talked to fully understand how bankruptcy of a city can impact personal incomes. Tonight, you’re putting Antioch in a position of almost certain bankruptcy.

We already carry major unfunded debt on our books and now you add an additional burden for your successors to deal with. And that can only be seen as a political move.

I figure if you lay this groundwork tonight and hurt this city, as I know you will, you then as the knights in shining armor, can ride back in during the next elections and pretend to save the day.

Tonight you plan on taking advantage of a city that is already bruised, battered, underfunded and unsafe, for what purpose? For the betterment of our city? Or for the appeasement of your political base and to grease the skids for your future election.

Hold off any vote and let the new council decide what is best in managing the budget as they will hold the responsibility and accountability to our city and its future.

Fred Rouse

Antioch

Council Member-Elect Thorpe not happy contracts extend beyond expiration of Measure C.

Plans afoot to hold oaths of office ceremony for new members on Thursday before regular meeting in December.

By Allen Payton

In an effort to get a variety of items approved before a new council member and possibly a new mayor take their oaths of office in December, the Antioch City Council will deal with an unusually full agenda with 21 items for discussion, including all of the employee contracts up for renewal, during their meeting Tuesday night, November 22nd.

While there’s no doubt that Lamar Thorpe was the top vote-getter in the council race in the November 8th election and will replace Councilwoman Mary Rocha, the race for mayor has not yet been decided. It has most likely been won by Dr. Sean Wright. But with only 129 votes between him and incumbent Antioch Mayor Wade Harper, it’s possible the outcome could change, as thousands of remaining ballots are counted by the County Elections office.

But, instead of waiting for the possibly two new council members to be seated, the current Council will have the opportunity to vote on the five-year contracts for each of the six employee groups that have been participating in negotiations, this year. Those include the contract for the Operating Engineers Local Union No. 3, Antioch Police Officers Association, Antioch police Sworn Management Association, the non-sworn Police Dispatcher Classification salaries, as well as the City’s Confidential and Management Units.

Recent council meeting agendas have been very light in comparison. The October 25th agenda only had three items on it, as did the October 11th agenda. The November 8th agenda was light, as well, with only five items. But, that was on Election Night. In comparison, tonight’s meeting has 19 items for discussion on the agenda.

The mayor and City Manager are the ones who set the council meeting agendas. An email was sent with the following questions: Must all the items on the agenda be decided tonight? Or can some of them wait until the one or two new council members are seated, forming a possible new majority with a different direction for the city, including spending?

As for the employee contracts, shouldn’t those wait to be voted on by the new council? Also, why five years instead of a more reasonable time-frame of three years, with the City facing future deficits and especially since the contracts will extend beyond the expiration of Measure C? Isn’t that part of the problem the City is currently facing, playing catch up, specifically with police hiring, from the six-year, rich contracts approved in 2007 by the Council, at that time? Is the Council not learning from history and repeating the mistakes of the past?

In response, City Manager Steve Duran wrote via email, “The Council asked for a lighter Agenda on election night 11/08 and so now they have to deal with a longer agenda on 11/22. Mayors and Council members are elected for a term of office and it is their duty to do the City’s business for the whole term.”

“It’s up to the sitting City Council if they want to postpone any items, but I would not recommend it and I hope people won’t play politics with things like the labor contracts that this Council, staff and union reps spend months negotiating in good faith,” he added.

Some of the contracts, such as the ones for police, are retroactive to and begin September 1^st or October 1^st of this year. They include such things as holiday pay for this Thursday, Christmas and New Year’s Day, so those contracts are time sensitive.

Only Duran responded to follow-up questions asking was it procrastination or merely a desire to get all the agenda items done at the last minute, with the current council, and what the City’s plan is if Measure C isn’t renewed or if revenues haven’t increased enough to replace those generated by Measure C.

“That will be up to the new City Council,” he wrote. “Measure C will be about $7 million a year.”

Neither Harper, nor any of the other council members responded to any of the same emailed questions.

Thorpe Responds

However, Council Member-Elect Lamar Thorpe and Dr. Sean Wright, who is possibly the next Mayor, received the same questions.

“I don’t know why the council agenda is so loaded,” Thorpe wrote. “However, I have grave concerns about the employee contracts because of the city’s inability to recognize and correct its poor spending decisions.”

“To ensure we’re able to keep city services at adequate levels, employee contracts – especially police contracts – should not extend beyond the expiration of Measure C funding,” he continued. “These contracts should be two or three years long until we can figure out where new revenue will come from.”

Wright did not respond before publication time.

In response to Duran’s comment about Measure C, the following additional questions were asked: So, this council will strap the future council with the responsibility for paying the bill when it comes due? Is that responsible governing?

Why not make the contracts only until the end of Measure C and then base new contracts on it’s renewal or failure or the city’s finances at that time? Doesn’t that make more sense?

Duran responded, “The labor contracts are on the Agenda for tonight. Responding to your questions in email would be a violation of the Brown Act (state open meeting law).”

An email was sent to City Attorney Michael Vigilia’s asking his opinion on that.

Oaths of Office Ceremony and Council Reorganization

Duran was the only one to respond to questions about the idea of scheduling the oaths of office ceremony and council reorganization to Thursday, December 8th instead of the traditional second Tuesday in December, which would be on the 13th.

“The idea is to take the time to recognize any outgoing members and give the new and re-elected officials a night to celebrate with family and friends rather than squeezing the ceremonial stuff between closed session and regular agenda items and it’s best to have our new Council deal with closed session items on the 13th after they are sworn in on the 8^th,” he wrote. “You will notice that we have no closed session items tonight. There is only one regular Council meeting in December and the agenda is not set yet, but anything that cannot wait until January 10th will hit the 12/13th agenda, so it could be a longer than average meeting.”

Follow up questions asking if the council could hold a special meeting either next Tuesday, November 29th or on Tuesday, December 6th to deal with the agenda items planned for December 13th, did not receive a response prior to publication time.

The County Elections office has until December 8th to certify the election. However, County Clerk Joe Canciamilla expects for the ballot count to be completed by Friday, December 2nd. As of last Friday’s update, Wright was leading Harper in the Mayor’s race by 129 votes, with approximately 50,000 ballots left to be counted in the county. How many of those were from Antioch was not known.

 

By Carina Sherborne

I am coming back to the Antioch area on my first music tour, and am booked as the National Headliner at the Streets of Brentwood Tree Lighting Festival on Saturday, November 26.

I am 19 years old and live in a small town outside of Seattle. Both of my parents graduated from Antioch High School and all of my family, except my mom, Amy (Anderson) DeAngelo O’Hearn, still live in the area including my grandmother who is a teacher at Dallas Ranch Middle School and my father who is a resident of Brentwood. I attended Sutter Elementary in Kindergarten and Belshaw Elementary in first grade before attending 16 schools across the county as we travelled with my active duty military step-father. Through my struggle to settle in each new state, to fit in, and find friends, I held on tightly to dreams of being a famous musician.

After settling in Washington, I continued training, and began writing and was well on my way in the industry at 16 when my mother became very ill. Now a single parent family, we were faced with the news that my mom was dying, and I chose to put my dreams on hold on heels of having just made it through 4 rounds on American Idol. I left high school my Junior year and attended online school, was caring for my deathly ill mother, and raising my brother while also attempting to keep afloat my mom’s dream – the business we started together called Pop Star Kids which is a school that trains kids to sing and perform. In 2014, my mom had a life saving surgery at University of Washington and although had a very low chance of survival was able to pull through. Today, I have a healthy mom and we have a thriving business in our town which I run with her.

Following this tumultuous time in my life, I was apprehensive, and struggled with getting back in to music, but knew as I graduated High School in 2015 that this is all I have ever wanted to do. Going against the grain, I turned down acceptance letters to college, and invite from American Idol producers to join the shows last season, and once again began pursuing my dream of musical stardom. Through the help of my family members in Sacramento, and all of our supportive east county family residents I was able to release my debut EP on my 19th birthday on July 28th this year! The first week of sales put me on the national Pop Charts topping out at number 54 above Meghan Trainer and even Prince, while my debut video went viral with over 300K views in a week and my life was forever changed!

My music is now on over 50 radio stations nationwide, more than 15 worldwide, and available on every and any streaming site, as well as Pandora. I currently hold the #3 spot in Seattle Pop Charts and am ranked #83 nationally. I just got signed to a producer in Nashville who’s team will be producing my next single which we will release in early 2017.

That team has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, and feel this song is a “smash hit.” I will be debuting this song on stage at the Streets, along with all the original music off the EP and future releases.

The headliner spot at the Streets has spun off an entire West Coast tour which kicked off in Seattle November 19th with stops in Portland, Sacramento and the East Bay, along with more venues as we travel back to Seattle.

My show in Sacramento is the day before the Streets performance, where several big name reps will be in the house to hear me debut my EP, and I will be joined there by the producers who worked in kind on my EP, including Sammy-nominated Patrick Grizzell of Proxy Moon, Kai O’Hearn who graduated from Antioch High, and the legendary David Houston who has worked with Cake, The Deaftones, Club Nouveau just to name a few and was as an engineer on my EP project.

My music is currently on the desk of FM102.5 in Sacramento and I will be interviewed live on the radio in Sacramento while I am in town this week.

More than anything, I want people to know how thankful I am to have such amazing support and secondly to know that no matter how hard life gets, or how impossible it may seem to reach your dreams, it can be done and I am proof of that. To some this may look like an overnight success story, to me it has been a long and winding road that has lead me back full circle to my home in the East Bay.

You can find my music and all other information at www.facebook.com/officialcarinamusic and www.officialcarina.com.

A vital part of the Antioch community since 1947, the Antioch Rotary Club, a non-profit service organization, has a reputation for excellence in community projects, from its free dictionaries for third-graders to providing scholarships to local high school students.  Antioch Rotarians feel that literacy is an important factor in being a successful adult.

The Antioch Rotary Club continues to help children in our local community by providing dictionaries to third-graders as one of their annual, service projects.  The mission was accomplished, recently when Rotarians from the club, personally delivered hardbound dictionaries to every third grader in the Antioch Unified School District.   Many Antioch children do not own a personal dictionary and some do not have access to one in their home.

“In Antioch, nearly 70% of our third graders receive free or reduced lunch and may not have the resources to have access to their own dictionary or the internet,” said Antioch Rotary Club President Milanka Schneiderman. “The Antioch Rotary Club wants to reach out to the third-grade children and give them an additional learning tool. Plus, the importance of the English language acquisition cannot be overstated as nearly 18% of our students speak a language other than English, as their first language.”

The Dictionary Project also known as READ – Rotary’s Empowerment of Antioch through Dictionaries – encourages children to use dictionaries so that they will be able to use the English language effectively during their school years and lifetime.  Besides its own funds, Antioch Rotary Club received a $7,000 grant from District 5 Supervisor Federal Glover’s Keller Canyon Mitigation Fund, a $1,000 grant from Pacific Gas & Electric, and an $800 grant from Higgins Mortuary for the READ Program.

“These sponsors of the READ project greatly help us make a difference in Antioch,” Schneiderman shared. “We really appreciate their support in the Antioch community.”

The remaining funds for the project were raised through the Antioch Rotary Club’s annual golf tournament and its sponsors.

“We greatly appreciate the community support for our golf tournament,” she added. “These sponsors, along with Rotarians make our scholarships and community projects possible.”

Next year, the 23rd Annual Golf Tournament will be held on May 5th, 2017 at the Lone Tree Golf Course & Event Center.

The Antioch Rotary Club was chartered in February, 1947. Their regular meeting days are Thursdays at 12:15 p.m. at the Lone Tree Golf & Event Center. Contact Lindy Maynes-Kolthoff, Club Secretary for more information: lindym2009@live.com.

Join us – All nations, Every generation, Giving thanks together. Wednesday, November 23, 2016, 7:00 p.m. St. John’s Lutheran Church at 1360 E. Tregallas Road in Antioch. For more information call 925 757-3070.