YOUR HOMETOWN WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ward Winning News al A pa
Vol. 11, No. 43
Including Surrounding Communities
www.thepress.net
Bond sale saves city $14.6 million by Rick Lemyre Staff Writer
The City of Brentwood has completed the sale of bonds to finance the downtown civic center at a record-low interest rate of 4.97 percent, which will free up approximately $14.6 million over the 30-year life of the bonds for use on other projects. “This is the lowest yield the city has ever received on any bond issuance,” Director of Finance and Information Systems Pam Ehler said in a memo to the City Council last Thursday. The bonds will be repaid with existing revenue streams, Ehler added, and will not require additional taxes. The news on the interest rate comes on the heels of last week’s awarding of the civic center construction contract to Lathrop Construction for $28.6 million, which is $16.4 million below city estimates. The city will spend a total of see Bond page 26A
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October 23, 2009
THIS WEEK
Good time to get it in gear
From customizing classics to winterizing your vehicle, our Fall Auto Care Guide puts you in the fast lane.
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Med memory goes mobile A high-tech card allows you to stow all your medical records in a pocket or purse.
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Photo by Richard Wisdom
Tech assistant Joe Ruzon works on installing the dais in the temporary City Council Chambers in the city’s Tech Center at 101 Sand Creek Road, next to Los Medanos College’s Brentwood campus. Beginning Oct. 27, the council will meet here during construction of the new downtown civic center.
Lions tamed by Panthers
Cops concerned about prisoner release by Dave Roberts Staff Writer
Tens of thousands of criminals will be released early onto the streets of California in the coming years to help relieve prison overcrowding, and local police are concerned it will result in increasing crime. “I know from the Contra Costa Police Chiefs Association, we do have a concern that if the state of California is going to be releasing between 20,000 and 40,000 inmates to the California streets, what’s the plan for re-entry (into society)?” said Antioch Police Chief Jim Hyde. “We haven’t heard a serious plan other than the folks will be assigned to parole officers and all that. “If you release them from state prison and they don’t have any place to go to, then they are homeless. If they are homeless, they are in a desperate state and they tend to re-offend and turn back to a life of crime as a way to live.” The prisoner-release program was announced last month in response to a threejudge U.S. District Court ruling in August that state prisons, which are at nearly double their capacity, have two years to reduce overcrowding to no more than 137.5 percent of the prison space. That would require a reduction
EVENSON of about 40,000 prisoners. State officials responded with a plan that takes three years to nearly meet that goal through a variety of measures. Those include sending fewer parole violators back to prison, reducing the time that prisoners serve, deporting illegal immigrant prisoners, reducing to a misdemeanor thefts less than $950 and allow-
ing low-risk offenders to serve the last year of their sentence under house arrest. Antioch Mayor Jim Davis, whose city has been struggling to keep a lid on escalating crime in recent years, said he would talk to Chief Hyde to find out how many of the released prisoners might arrive in Antioch. “I don’t know what the impact’s going to be,” said Davis. “It’s very disappointing, though, that the state’s doing that. That’s why the governor’s approval rate is 24 percent.” Brentwood Police Chief Mark Evenson doesn’t need to deal with the level of crime in Antioch, but he shares that city’s concerns. “Obviously, it’s a concern any time they have a mass release like that,” he said. “I am not saying that all of these people are going to go back and commit crime in the community. But it’s definitely a concern when you have that amount (of criminals) coming out and trying to re-enter the community. “We are just going to have to kind of, at this point, wait and see if it does impact us at all. I can understand there are issues (with overcrowding) and (state) budgetary problems. I wish there was some other way of doing it. We are concerned, we are aware of it and we will see what happens. We are watching see Prisoner page 26A
What’s past became prologue when a hot-off-the-preseason Liberty squad got cooled off by Antioch.
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INSIDE Business .............................6A Calendar ..........................27B Classifieds ........................17B Cop Logs ..........................19A Entertainment ................13B Fall Auto Care Guide........ 1B Food .................................14B Health & Beauty ............... 9B Milestones .......................12B Opinion ...........................18A Outdoors ...........................4A Sports ...............................21A Talk About Town ..............5A
FOR MOVIE TIMES SEE PAGE 5A