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Click here for zoom link to Public Safety meeting
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Crime and safety has been on everyone’s radar recently, and many readers may be interested in attending this Public Safety Committee meeting. You may attend either in person or by zoom. The City Council conference room will only comfortably seat about 10 guests in addition to the meeting attendees, so zoom may be a good option for many of you.
Council Members on this committee are:
Chair: Kim-Khánh Văn
Vice-Chair: Ed Prince
Member: Carmen Rivera
Residents and guests will typically NOT have an opportunity to speak at these meetings, as they are working subcommittees of the city council, and there is usually no time on the agenda or necessary record-keeping arrangements to accept public comment. However, you are very encouraged to take notes during the committee conversation, and then give feedback during audience comment at the regular council meeting, which will be later that evening at 7:00 PM. Note that if you think you may want to speak at 7:00 you have to register to speak before 5:00 PM, with the deadline occurring near the beginning of the Public Safety Committee meeting. So you really need to register to speak at the council meeting before public safety begins, and then you may simply decline to speak at City Council if you decide you have nothing to say at 7:00.
Note: Mayor Pavone phoned me today about this sign-up timing, and he asked me to pass along his assurance that your voices are always important, and that he and the council want to hear from you. He’s going to speak with the clerk about the timing of the sign-up cut-off, and he says if you are physically in attendance you can already sign up to speak up until 7:00. He’ll implement a process change to allow zoom sign up for council comment after the committee meetings finish. This Monday I might still recommend signing up by 5:00 in case this change is not fully implemented yet.
Carmen Rivera on public safety?
That’s like having a dead and rotting weasel corpse working at Parfums Christian Dior
Don’t forget KKV was the only Renton elected to endorse Carmen and her “abolish and defund the police” blather. Birds of a feather flock together and all that.
Nice visual image
The zoom cut-off time should be two days before.
Being unable to escape their parent’s basements, it would help keep the crazy Seattle socialists from dogpiling on our council.
Not a fan of the three min time limit. Should be five min for Renton residents and ten seconds for Seattle residents.
I preferred five minutes also. People have to talk like an auctioneer with three minutes, and it’s not fair to people who speak english as a second language. Things did get confounding during the pandemic when people would call in from other states to give us opinions about the Red Lion, and they had no link to Renton other than reading the article in the news. The three minutes may have been an over-reaction to that.
Three people I definitely don’t think of when I think of safety for Renton.
Just read the article in the Renton Reporter (editorial) by Carmen Rivera continuing to show she is not interested in the City of Renton. HB 1513 should fail, because it will only encourage those who so choose to continue ignoring the safety and law followed by the law-abiding citizens of Renton.
Why the Renton Reporter keeps publishing her nonsense is beyond me.
Here’s a tack that the “defund the police” council members are taking… they’re claiming that they haven’t defunded the department. But they’re full of bull pucky:
Given Renton’s population is climb to 111,000 people and that there’s only 129 officers in our police force, that gives us a ratio of one officer per 860 residents.
Based on the data from here:
https://www.governing.com/archive/police-officers-per-capita-rates-employment-for-city-departments.html
We see the national average for a town of our size would be 154 officers.
We’re missing 23 officers, and would need to add about 20% more officers just to catch up. Please also consider that most towns of our size are not located in a metropolitan area.
As a Citizen of Renton who works and lives in Renton get involved with getting our City council to listen to the Public, we want more Officers, we’re tired of looking over our shoulder when we’re at the grocery store or even taking our kids to the park, it’s not Safe anymore, our Government is supposed to Protect its Citizens!, but yet all they do is make Criminals have More rights then us Law Biding citizens???
Why is this?, it’s like the Hunger games and getting worse!
Randy, who chooses which council members are on the public safety committee?
Many do not trust having Rivera on this committee based off her public announcements she has made in local papers and her campaign to defund the police.
How can we get her removed from that committee since she has no business being there for the safety of our community?
The process of determining committee assignments every year is a little bit complicated, but I’ve never written it down before so I’ll take the time to share it here for you and anyone curious about it.
Every year in November, after the following year’s Council President and President Pro-tem are chosen, a “Committee on committees” (CoC) is formally established. This CoC is composed of the outgoing council president, incoming president, and incoming president pro-tem. (This past year that would have been Ryan McIrvin, Valerie O’Halloran, and Ed Prince). The CoC asks Council Members to submit their ranked choices, from favorite to least favorite, for which committee they would like to chair, be vice chair, or be a member of. These ranked choice preferences get turned into the CoC, and then the CoC meets to determine proposed assignments. At this point the CoC makes an effort to give everyone on council as many of their preferred top choices as possible, while also working to ensure that committees have a mix of old and new members, and that council members aren’t always serving with the same two council members– that council members get stirred up enough that they all get to work with each other at the committee level. The CoC will also work to ensure that it appears there is the right talent and interest to chair and staff each committee. Seniority is not really a big part of this process, except when two council members seek the same chair role it might be used to break the tie.
After meeting as necessary to develop proposed committee assignments, the CoC consults the Council Liaison (who manages the council schedule) to ensure the assignments as proposed can produce a workable schedule for every council member i.e. council members won’t have to be two places at once, or still be at their day job when they are supposed to be at committee meetings.
Finally, the CoC submits the proposed assignments to the full council at a regular meeting, and the full council either adopts or amends the assignments. In my 28 years I don’t remember council ever voting down the CoC recommendations, although there may have been one or two votes against in one or two of my years. Occasionally when the report was presented, an amendment would be made to modify the committee schedule portion of it.
Once assignments are set, it’s hard to change them without impacting the whole schedule. By policy each committee needs a chair, vice chair, and member, and the the President is not assigned to committees (they cover in an absence). So moving a member off one committee means pulling a new member in from another committee, leaving a vacancy there. It may sometimes be possible to switch two members, but it would have to be a switch with one of the three council members not already assigned to the committee, and not affect their chair or vice chair roles, and fit into their schedules.
Aside from dealing with these logistics , a majority vote of the council (four votes) could rework the committee assignments at any time.
That’s a great summary, thank you for taking the time to inform us how it the committee assignments work!