Barry Levinson
It is December 26th , the day after Christmas and I hope all of you experienced a warm day shared with loved ones.
As most of you know, I am not Christian, but belong to the Jewish faith.
Having said that, I do participate in the Christian faith, as my wife is Christian and my son has been raised as a Christian since birth.
The story of Jesus is a universal one. It is not about power, or money or even great fame. It is completely about goodness and how that goodness can translate into something wonderful for all of mankind.
We here in America are blessed to be a part of this great nation. But in these tough economic times, it is important, no imperative that we continue to work on our spritual side. For money and/or power are somewhat hollow without goodness in your soul.
It compares to being a child and racing up a hill and using all of your strength and effort to get to that point. Once there if you notice you left all your family and friends behind, you will soon realize that your victory is a hollow one.
We must continue to speak out for justice, openness and truth at all our city council meetings even when those forces of selfishness and self-interest above all else has just won a hollow victory.
No one ever said fighting the good fight, standing up for justice was easy or quickly achieved. However, that is why we must continue to speak out to help achieve the best in ourselves and the best in our city leaders.
The more our leaders ignore us, the more we must stand tall and proud to continue to show them the right path.
An Independent Police Civilian Oversight Committee is the right course and the more it is postponed or ignored by a majority of our leaders, the more I will speak out forcefully for its adoption.
Our City Council should make it a requirement that our next Police Chief accepts the position with a newly installed completely independent Civilian Police Review Board.
The Board must have access to all police records and they would be required to make public recommendations disclosed at city council meetings. There recommendations must have real authority to be instituted and could only be overturned by a majority vote of our City Council.
This will make our city council accountable to the people.
Finally, as the City Council considers who to hire for both Police Chief and City Manager, that both positions be given a limited contract to last no more than five years, at which time the city council would have to review their performances and by majority vote either reinstall or dismiss them at that time.
These steps would be the acts of a City Council with integrity and accountability. Anything less would stamp the 2017 City Council as a failure to the people of Fullerton.
#1 by Fullerton's Consience on December 31, 2016 - 3:03 pm
In addition, our just retired City Manager, who should have been arrested for leaving the scene of an accident with damages, did not have the guts to show his face at the last city council meeting for the year. No private employer would accept that behavior. Not one of our city council members even addressed the incident that lead to his speedy retirement.
Once again another scandal and possible criminal activity gets swept under the rug.