Finding a Green Way to Govern

 The mayor and city council are moving quickly to restructure city government.  Perhaps too quickly. Substantial ordinance amendments, which have yet to be shared with the public, could be approved by the end of August. The timeline presented by Mayor Jacob Frey in June called for the public hearing on August 4 and approval on August 20. Some of it is already underway. On June 30, the Council approved two new executive positions: a Community Safety Commissioner and a Chief Operation Officer to replace the City Coordinator Ordinances amendments were approved to create the position of City Operations Officer, with a salary of $269,943 to $320,000 and the position of Community Safety Commissioner, with a salary of $295,250 to $350,000. Both salaries exceed the cap of $192,144 imposed by state law and will require a waiver. Both positions will report to the mayor.  The City Operations Officer will oversee the proposed new Office of Public Service which would in...

This was a formerly unpublished blog from my first term in office.  Since both Don and Paul are running this year for other offices, I decided to publish it now.  While I was working hard in 2006 and 7 to decriminalize poverty, othere were doubling down and not willing to be concerned about unfair and biased enforcement.  There was another aspect of the speeches made by my colleagues who are supportive of the Remington/Ostrow amendment to further criminalize panhandling which I found distrubing. CMs Paul Ostrow and Don Samuels both, in different ways, stated that the proposed ordinance was going to be selectively enforced but concluded that that's ok . Here's CM Ostrow: “There’s a longstanding doctrine of prosecutorial discretion, and in every single law that’s ever been written, there are circumstances where the prosecutor and the police can say: ‘this is not an appropriate situation to apply the ordinance.’ So while I think that Council Member Gordon has pointed out...