The Year of Our Lord 2023 rang in with rains so heavy that Stockton flooded, and ended with state approval of a Delta Tunnel that may deplete our region’s water.
In between was a year as remarkable for what didn’t happen as what did. An example of the former: the FBI, supposedly conducting a yearslong investigation of Stockton corruption, announced no arrests. Observers wondered if their probe fizzled or they just walked away.
Let’s hope not. Some of the same grifters that made Stockton Unified School District a state laughingstock notorious for missing millions are advancing on Stockton City Hall.
“Any attempt to steal off the backs of our children will not be tolerated,” proclaimed San Joaquin County District Attorney Ron Freitas, whose office has not made a single arrest, either.
There was one law enforcement action: the raid on the house of AngelAnn Flores. A worrisome action because it’s not clear if it’s Flores who’s dirty or the system.
Neither, perhaps. But it’s not a trivial concern.
Flores, a reformer, served most of the year as the chairman of Stockton Unified School District’s Board of Trustees after the checkered characters lost the majority. On Nov. 14 deputies with a search warrant seized her phones, tablet, laptop, documents, and thumb drive. Detectives also asked Google and Meta (Facebook) for access to her online accounts. They interrogated her for hours.
The warrant, subsequently unsealed—accidently unsealed, actually—revealed allegations she abused her district credit card. The figure $1,000 has been mentioned. Flores says she used the card strictly for business.
To date, no charges have been filed.
Any official who betrays the public trust, even to the relatively modest tune of $1,000, deserves rebuke, discipline, even criminal charges. If that’s the case here, so be it.
But the context of the raid is impossible to ignore: the enemies Flores made fighting the parasites in Stockton Unified. On her watch suspicious executives were ushered out and guard rails restored.
A rogue’s gallery of current and former Stockton Unified employees looks guilty as sin of far greater crimes. Yet authorities don’t go after them. Why?
As for the Delta Tunnel — the Godzilla to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s Tokyo — its approval by the state Water Resources Control Board is procrustean, a tragic disregard of environmentalism backed by sound biological science. It is merely a government of the moneyed, by the moneyed, for the moneyed.
Diverting 6,000 cubic feet a second of water from the Sacramento River through a 45-mile underground tunnel — if the exporters stop at that much, which they never do — will, by the state’s own account, scar the Delta with construction, further harm dying salmon and Delta smelt fisheries, and hurt regional farming. As if we need our weak economy to be gob-smacked for the benefit of Beverly Hills.
“We and our broad coalition of partners will engage in all necessary processes, and when necessary, litigation, to stop the Delta Conveyance Project once and for all,” vowed Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director for Restore the Delta.
You go, girl.
For “positive” news, it is hard to beat, “A Million Miles Away,” a biopic about Stockton astronaut Jose Hernandez and his path from a farm worker to the stars.
On the City Hall front, the biggest stories were:
1. The Measure A revision.
2. The Marina Towers boondoggle.
3. The emergency rescue of the shelter system.
4. The mayor’s drive to control public information, and
5. His foolish campaign to fire City Manager Harry Black and
6. His suspicious insistence on handing an Internet celebrity $1 million to $2 million.
1. Measure A’s ¾-cent sales tax, approved a decade ago, was supposed to fund the hire of 120 cops to combat crime.. Toward decade’s end, and after well more than $300 million in tax revenue, not one of those cops is on the force.
When 12 or more high-priority crimes stack up, Stockton Police now must retreat into “Condition Blue” and stop responding to hit and runs, reckless driving, non-burglary property crimes, and other calls.
So, City Manager Harry Black rejiggered the Measure A deal: the target is now to hire 60 cops, using the money that would have gone to the other 60 to sweeten their compensation. It’s an intelligent revision. Yet even this program may take a decade to work, Black said.
I can swallow this deal — there’s not much choice — but only if city officials implement a new transparency on expenditures. No more using Measure A tax revenue as a slush fund.
2. Marina Towers, the new City Hall buildings at 501 and 509 W. Weber Ave., were supposed to open this year at a cost of around $25 million. A CPA/watchdog says costs have now quadrupled. Galling.
An unfortunate aside involves construction of a $14.5 million Northeast Library and Community Center. Work halted in April when the city and the builder, Patriot Contracting, got into some sort of legal dispute they have not resolved to this day.
3. In July, Stockton Shelter for the Homeless abruptly announced it was closing, displacing 250 people. City leaders declared an emergency and deftly negotiated the transfer of shelter responsibilities to St. Mary’s Dining Room, a separate nonprofit on the same grounds. A humanitarian crisis was averted. But one wonders why leaders didn’t see the meltdown coming.
In related news, St. Mary’s and Stockton officials unveiled plans for a new low-barrier shelter. The Pathways Project is expected to increase the city’s shelter capacity by 326 beds and provide 24/7 wraparound services. That’s a big step toward reducing the 1,000 or so homeless people on Stockton streets.
4. Mayor Kevin Lincoln contrived to transfer the city Public Information Office to the Mayor’s Office. In fact, the city charter says that’s where it belongs. But the charter is wrong. No elected politician should control a city’s information. They’ll use it as a campaign tool and hide embarrassing truths.
Knowing this, a councilman moved to put a charter revision on the ballot, putting the Public Information Office with the City Manager’s Office where in practice it is now and where statutorily it belongs. That turned into a whole Charter Review Ad-Hoc Committee and Charter Review Advisory Commission, the latter headed — wait for it — by the mayor’s political ally, Motecuzoma Sanchez.
5. Mayor Lincoln tried time and time again to fire highly competent City Manager Harry Black with the help of Sanchez and his smear rag, the 209 Times. They were thwarted by a City Council majority and an outpouring of public support for Black. They’ll keep smearing him. They want to put a Superintendent-Ramirez-like enabler in that position and feast on a city government they are neither competent nor ethical enough to run.
6. As proof of that, I offer the case of I Am Ready. For months Lincoln insisted an out-of-town Internet celebrity with no track record and a vague youth program should be handed $2 million, later $1 million, outside of the vetting process that ensures public money goes to responsible and qualified recipients. A council majority blocked it.
But the Internet celebrity, Jason Lee, is running for Council, and this sort of misappropriation will be standard if the grifters who wrecked Stockton Unified win a council majority.
Or the pointless attempted recall of AngelAnn Flores by a woman she defeated in the election. A judge saw through the former, voters the latter.
Several good things on the horizon: Stockton is scheduled to drop unsafe, overpriced PG&E in 2025 in favor of a greener, cheaper power provider which invests in the communities it serves; the city secured a $2.5 million grant to plan an Aquatic Center, “a riverfront facility that provides access to the Delta for human-powered watercraft activities;” the council approved a plan to transform shuttered Van Buskirk golf course to a 192-acre “adventure playground” with a BMX track, bike trail, community garden, disc golf course, golf academy, dog park, and skate park.
While we’re on the subject of building, the Council green-lighted a big expansion of St. Joseph’s Medical Center: a new 70-unit emergency department, over 140 additional hospital beds, a parking garage and helipad.
Finally, the “Stockton Robbery Beatdown.” When a known thief shambled into a 7-Eleven and began to help fill a garbage bin with cigarettes, fed-up clerks took him down and beat him with “like, 25, 26 hits” with a big stick. The DA charged the thief, not the stick guy.
Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com