Editorial: Antioch Should Wait on Commission Appointments

The Antioch City Council should do the right thing Tuesday and make no appointments to any commission during its upcoming lame duck session council meeting.

With Ron Bernal to be sworn in as Mayor on December 10, along with councilmember Don Freitas and Louie Rocha, it would behoove this council to hold off making any decisions that will tie future councils to the recommendations of outgoing mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe.

After all, Bernal was elected with 62% of the vote to Hernandez-Thorpe’s 30%. Clearly, Antioch gave a mandate for change. Locking a future council set to be seated at the next meeting into commission members for the next 2-3 years is petty.

Set for Tuesday, the agenda lists a series of commission appointments which include:

• Parks & Recreation Commission – Alexander Broom (term through March 2028)
• Planning Commission – Kevin Riley (term through October 2028)
• Planning Commission – Jennifer Perez (term through October 2028)
• Police Oversight Commission – Devin Williams (term through November 2027)
• Police oversight Commission – Alicia D. Lacey-Oha (term through November 2027)

To the applicants, this is no knock on any of you, but rather you are all victims of circumstance in terms of both timing and potential change in direction as tweaks could be made with many changes coming to the city.

Furthermore, the biggest elephant in the room is Hernandez-Thorpe will soon be out of the picture which means more than half the community will no longer be automatically dismissed when applying to commissions—meaning the pettiness has been removed and commissions can be more well rounded with all thoughts and ideas versus a singular voice.

Antioch Police Oversight Commission Must Be Re-imagined or Decommissioned

This experiment to be like the other progressive cities has failed. It’s time to either disband or re-imagine this commission into something more useful instead of the echo-chamber of anti-police rhetoric it has become while wasting precious staff time on silly discussions with little to no results.

So what is next? Several things could or should occur:

• Switch to Open Forum vs. Commission: For starters, nothing in this commission is being accomplished that couldn’t be accomplished in a community forum type setting each month (similar to coffee with the cops). It might actually become more inviting to members of the community and the openness could create real discussions and sharing of information.
• Give it purpose: As it stands, the commission is set up to play “gotcha” with the police department versus seeking out solutions for the community. The council should set clear goals and provide a box this commission will operate in. If the commission continues, then the mayor should set the agenda with the chair versus a rogue mission and agendas.
  • Sounding Board for business community — figure out business needs, seek solutions.
  • Sounding Board for residents — figure out what the community is in need of.
  • Crime Data – monthly report out of Antioch crime data and trends — this data would then be used for the quarterly or bi-annual report to the council.
  • Community Engagement — this commission should create the plan which is then presented to council for final approval.
  • Reports that the council will receive, the commission will get it first to ensure a full, flawless and complete report is presented to the council and public.
• Representation: should the commission stay, a better representation of the entire community must be represented on the commission to ensure a more balanced approach to policing.

Antioch AMTRAK Station

This item should be punted to the next city council to find out if they are even interested in AMTRAK – what are their thoughts and feelings? And most importantly, will they even spend the time on this when there are hundreds of other tasks at hand?

Should AMTRAK be in Antioch? Absolutely, but not until the city cleans up the area and addresses safety for everyone. Regardless of what false promises were being made by Hernandez-Thorpe during campaign season, no one in the City of Antioch has done the work or shown true interest.

At the end of the day, this item was so important to the mayor and members of the council, it took them nearly 20 months to bring it back. When they finally did, it’s been punted twice in the past month. So, keeping with that theme, punt it to the next council. Let them make the call on the potential future of the AMTRAK station.

If You Go
Antioch City Council Meeting
November 26, 2024
7:00 pm
Full Agenda, click here

Mike Burkholder
Publisher of  ContraCosta.news
[email protected]