Community Services and Youth Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright. It is it is got an echo. We gotta correct the echo before we start here. I don't have any electronics on me. Testing. Testing. That's much better. There we go. Alright. It is 05/20/2026.

It is 01:00, and I'm gonna call to order the safety, wellness, and youth committee meeting. And we're gonna start out with a public comment. And before we we do the announcement, if you're here and you wanna make a public comment on any of the agenda items, there are public speaker cards in the back. You just need to complete one of those, bring it up front, and we'll give you an opportunity to speak to us for three whole minutes. And as a point of order here, item number four, the Riverside Fire Department must master plan phase one implementation presentation.

That is going to be continued until next month. The fire department is still busy and doing follow-up from yesterday's fire. But I will say, I gotta commend them. They did a great job with the fire that took place yesterday and there was a great job in the teamwork that took place with many of our all of our city departments that were involved. That also includes mutual aid agencies, the Red Cross, community members. Thank you for your cooperation. And many of them probably saved their homes by implementing the defensible spaces around their homes. So a great job for everyone. So that presentation is actually going to be continued until next month. Having said that, we will go to our first agenda item which is public comment.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call (951) 826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Alright. We'll give that just a few moments. And I don't have any speaker cards from anyone in the audience. There are no callers, so we will close public comment, and that will take us to our discussion item, which is item number two, which is a proposed amendment to the Riverside Municipal Code chapter 2.1 to change the name from Commission of the Deaf to Deaf Commission by the Commission of Deaf. I will open up public comment.

686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Okay. I am looking at for our presenter who I believe is going to be Michael Anderson.

Yes.

And the floor Hi, is

everyone. Thank you. Yes. My name is Mike Anderson, like you mentioned, commission of the deaf vice chair, and we are here represented. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much, commission and members for having us. Renee Visco is the chair. That's me. Hello. And he encouraged me to take the floor instead. I'm the vice chair. You know, but vice ends up doing a lot more of the dirty work, so that's fine. Alright. Okay.

So I will go ahead and just explain that we we have meetings, of course, and from time to time we have discussed about this name. January 24, I believe in, like, 2023, we talked about something. We realized that to get the full understanding of the system, for example, like the Brown Act and the Sunshine Procedures and everything, we did notice that as commissioners, we have about 19 different commissions. And we felt like, wow, With deaf culture and ASL and language and literacy and linguistics and everything included, commission of the deaf is not very language friendly. So we decided to ask and see if we could change it to deaf commission.

And that's our proposal for today. And we did vote, and we have agreed that would be something we would like to do. And it's been a few years, and over time, we have another slide. Thank you. Oh, yes.

That's the right one. So now we are discussing possibility of changing it to Deaf Commission, because after researching the deaf community in Riverside and outside, and linguistics, professors have actually said that, we should re name it, and they did consider this, because it would be less use of English words, and it would be more ASL friendly. And so that is our request, and it would change the logo, of course, but ASL or American Sign Language is our primary language, and that's what we use in our commission. And so we were thinking, know that might seem different, but it would be different than the other 19 other commissions. But sometimes they, you know, might have no of the, which we don't use those two words of or the.

And so we felt like that would be really appropriate, and it's a clear, obvious choice. Correct? Yes. And so it'd be an acronym instead of COD. It's too confusing, so it would be just DC or Deaf Commission.

You know, that's confusing especially when there's other acronyms that are being used, CTDs, the OD, whatever, like UC. We wanted to be able to use DC. Alright. I hope that clarifies things. Beautiful. Thank you. Are there any questions or discussions? That's our time. Thank you so much.

Wow. Great job. Thank you for the presentation. Let me see if there's any public comment. I have no cards. We'll see if some calls come in. There are no calls, so I will close public comment, and I will bring it back to the committee. Council member Mill.

Thank you, chair. I mean, it makes sense to me. These folks know better than I. If they want to change the name of the commission to Deaf Commission, I wholeheartedly support the recommendations. I'll just go ahead and make a motion that commission of the deaf be renamed to deaf commission per the recommendation that we have before us today.

Councilmember Conner.

We get a lot of requests. Sometimes they're tough. This is an easy one. This is something that absolutely makes sense. How could we not follow your recommendation? So I will second that with a happy smile and let's get this done.

All right, I would say that says it all, but I should probably say that signs it all. So anyways, we.

Sir. Do I need to include that in my motion was going ask you if you can include the logo also. Yes. So including the change for the logo of the commission as well.

And I agree. All right, we have a motion by council member Mill, second by council member Conder. I obviously agree with that as well, so it passes unanimously. Move that on to the city council.

Too easy.

Alright. That's gonna take us to our discussion item, agenda item number three, which is commercial vehicle enforcement program update, and I will open public comment.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call (951) 826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Alright. And I will call upon a lieutenant Chad Chinchilla for a presentation.

Good afternoon. Chachinchilla, Riverside Police Department. I oversee our traffic bureau, our canine unit, our bomb squad, and our drone program. I have an update this afternoon on the previously proposed amendment to the RMC Chapter 10.56 for increasing the fine amount on commercial vehicle violations from $100 to $1,000 and to cite these violations utilizing an administrative citation. This was initially proposed back in October 2025 because it was determined that the $100 fine amount was not sufficient as a deterrent for commercial vehicles that are using the restricted truck routes.

After going in-depth into this particular topic, it unfortunately looks like it's not a very good option for us and not a viable option for the police department to do this using an administrative citation, and I'll explain why. That's the bad news. I do have good news that I will go over at the end of the presentation here. Part of the problem with the administrative citations is that it requires a third party to monitor these citations, administer the Oh, I've got the clicker, got it. The administrative citation process, it's a third party vendor, so we're essentially paying for a third party vendor to provide online payments, to print and mail notices to individuals who receive these citations, and to process all their payments.

So it's an additional expense for us to use these administrative citations as opposed to a traffic citation that is issued out to the traffic court. There's also an appeals process that's associated with that, so that individuals who receive a citation can get their due process. Instead of it being administered by the court, it would be administered by us. So again, we've created another process for ourselves that's going to be time consuming and costly as well. Tracking down individuals that we issue an administrative site to can be particularly difficult as well.

The motor officers that work for me have indicated that as many as 90% of the individuals that we're citing for commercial vehicle violations are living outside of the city and are driving into the city to make deliveries. So tracking them down later on to enforce a civil citation would be extremely difficult. I don't know that we've even identified who would be the ones to do that, to try and track down these individuals to try and get the payment. It also creates sort of a double process as well. So we would be issuing essentially, I'd be asking officers to issue an administrative citation for the commercial violation on a traffic stop, and then issuing a separate criminal infraction citation for any other violations that they observe, and essentially sending this individual to two different places for the exact same stop.

Navigating the potential collections process could also be time consuming as well. We would likely have to go to civil court to collect on any of these administrative citations that are not paid, again causing additional expense and time for us. I do believe there's a way to attach this to their tax refunds. The intercept, there's a way to do that. Again, that's another process that I believe the city attorney is involved in that as well.

The other thing, too, is that the fine amounts actually follow the bail schedule for the vehicle code and through the county bail schedule. So it's $100 for the first offense, it's $200 for the second, and $250 for a third offense. That $250 fine on that third offense, by the time all the fees are added up at the county level, that fine comes out to $1,100 So by administering an administrative site for a commercial vehicle violation, there is a potential to actually reward them by lowering their overall fine amount by as much as $150 depending on the number of priors that they have. So now I believe we'd be encouraging people at that point to continue with the behavior. And there is some question as to whether or not we can force someone to sign a civil citation at a traffic stop.

I think that creates a little bit of a dilemma for us. If we stop someone for a vehicle code violation for running to stop sign, they are required to sign the citation or we are able to remove them from a vehicle and book them in the jail. For a civil citation, we lack that authority to do that, which takes us right back to issuing a traffic citation, criminal infraction citation in the first what we should have done in the first place, essentially.

So

because that dollar amount is already close to $1,000 if not over $1,000 by the time the fee is added up, it may not necessarily be the dollar amount that the drivers are concerned with, but they are certainly concerned with negligent operator points that they can receive for traffic violations. They only receive these points if they are convicted of a traffic violation using the vehicle code and not an RMC section or an administrative citation.

So we would lose

that option by citing with an administrative citation as well. The points are they have significant consequences. They obviously can increase your insurance premiums. It may result in suspension of license for commercial drivers, and it could certainly affect their employment. That's steep price to pay for using a restricted route.

But again, those admin citations do not incur those points. The RMC section cited out to the traffic court does not incur those points, but the vehicle code violation does. And so we come to essentially how do we address this? What we've done so far, and this is stuff that is already in place for the most part, that we've tweaked it a little bit over the last several months since this came to my attention. The first directive that I gave was to begin issuing citations for vehicle code violations, and that's for Section 21.461 of the vehicle code for these commercial violations.

Those citations will likely result in points on the driver's record if they are ultimately convicted in traffic court. We also began doing the commercial vehicle check points. That started just at the end of last year. We've done several of those check points, and they have been very successful. We did that in conjunction with CHP, and they have been a great help to us in that regard with their expertise.

And then I implemented a weekly saturation patrol using RPD officers where I have dedicated motor officers who go out to these areas and do solely commercial enforcement so that they're not pulled away to handle other assignments throughout the city. Their goal for that day is to conduct commercial enforcement and rotate to the various areas throughout the city. We have been fortunate to have CHP assist us with that as well. They have provided additional officers to help us with these saturation days, and we are certainly grateful to them for the extra help. We've also began to bolster the commercial vehicle education and outreach as well.

And we've been doing that by any time someone gets stopped and cited, they are issued this trifold pamphlet. I have one here, you have it up on your screen as well. And it's just an informational pamphlet that shows the potential violations. It also shows the routes that are restricted and where they can't go. So anyone who's gotten a citation has likely gotten one of these informational flyers as well.

But proactively, I had our supervisors and a couple of our motor officers go to several of the businesses here in the city and provide them with this flyer first so that they could educate drivers before they get into trouble coming down one of these restricted routes. And then finally, our social media presence. I've asked our social media unit to increase the exposure on the commercial vehicle enforcement to get the word out that this is being enforced and that we're out there and that CHP is out there assisting us with this so that they're aware that this enforcement is taking place. There should be no question that the enforcement is going on. It shouldn't be a surprise at this point that we are performing all these functions.

And just to throw some stats out there, we issued initially 43 sites for RMC section 10.56 since January 1. And since then, four zero five sites have been issued for 20One-461A of the vehicle code. So the officers are out there. They are working very hard at this and trying to make an improvement and help change the behavior. We're also anticipating likely receiving a grant vehicle, a commercial vehicle through a grant.

That will help us out as well with some of the commercial checkpoint and enforcement, because some of the equipment that we have to carry around, it can't just be thrown into the bed of a truck. It has to be stabilized, like the weight, the scales for weighing the vehicles. Otherwise, it can throw them off of calibration, and we want to make sure that those are accurate if we're going to begin weighing vehicles and seeing if

they are

over the weight limits. So that is the end of the update for this particular topic. I will be happy to take any questions that you might have.

All right. Thank you for the presentation. I have no speaker cards. Let me see if we have any calls. If we have none, I close public comment and I'll bring it back up to the dais. Councilmember Mel? Thank you.

Thank you, Lieutenant. Appreciate the presentation. And we had had a brief conversation on our way in about this, but from your report, I'm gathering that this municipal citation process has pretty much failed to deter people from violating things. And Just so I'm clear, DMV points is really going to be the true deterrent. Is that what you're pretty much the conclusion here?

And that's what the officers have told me with their discussions with the drivers is that they aren't necessarily worried about the dollar amount. They may believe it's only $100 and find out later that it's $1,000 and that might be a bit of a shock. But they are very much concerned with the points on the record for obvious reasons. It's a very steep consequence to get those points on their record. Those points can lead to a lot of issues for them. They can have their license suspended or revoked. And if they're driving on a suspended license as a commercial vehicle, then it can be permanently revoked. So it can be very steep, but it is also very easily avoidable.

As we mentioned, you know, obey the signs. If I disobey a traffic sign, you're going to pull me over, I'm going get a ticket, I'm going get points on my license. And these people drive for a living. These are the people who are professional drivers. And we need to make sure that those people who drive a lot more than the rest of us, that they're obeying the rules.

So I think, you know, our goal here is to deter this type of activity. So I mean, I think we have to the municipal citation process to me clearly is not working. And my goal is to help with, you know, creating the best quality of life that we possibly can in this city. These trucks driving through these areas are a huge negative impact for people who live here. Have we kind of identified what areas are the hotspots?

There's several restricted routes. Troutline and Van Buren, that area up there gets a lot of complaints. There are quite a few coming through the north end down Main Street over by Columbia, and then over on the western end of town off of La Sierra as well. Basically wherever we're setting up the checkpoints, those are going be those hot spots of the restricted routes where we are trying to focus our attention.

And if anybody was watching yesterday, we were having a discussion about budget and tightening the belt. We had a discussion about how much it costs to repair roads. The cost is very steep. And these trucks areplay a large role in tearing up our local roads on roads that they shouldn't be on. So again, this isn't like a victimless crime, so to speak.

It has an impact not only just on the quality of our life, but it's tearing up city infrastructure by them traveling on these roads, these trucks doing it. So by all means, I think we need to do everything we can to crack down. And if it's like we're issuing them real traffic citation where they're getting points, that's going to maybe make them stop. I think we need to do that. So I appreciate the report.

It's kind of disappointing to hear that what we thought might be a solution really is just not deterring folks. I think we need to figure out a way to make a real impact. Thank you for the report. As I said, I think we need to start doing what it's going to do to get us to where we want to be, which is issuing real traffic citations that are going to put points on these people's DMV record, and then perhaps maybe they'll stop ignoring the signs. Thank you, sir.

All right, Councilmember Conder.

Thank you, thank you, Lieutenant, for the report. It is a difficult situation. You're right, we have restrictions. Many of us in the days have gone through restrictions. You said Troutwein from Van Buren to Alessandro, parts of Alessandro. I know that you do a great job with the commercial vehicle checkpoints. A lot of times, unfortunately, you have to have the space to pull them over. That's a hard thing to try to find a place to do that. I know we've done some down by Poly High School, and that's you've obviously heard some challenges from local parents driving the kids to school. One of the things that I tried four years ago, and I'm not sure if it's ever been done, is a lot of these drivers are not only out of town, they're out of state.

And a couple years ago I was talking to one of the drivers at the checkpoint, and he was from Oklahoma, he'd been in San Diego, dropped off a load, had a load drop off Riverside, he typed into his ways, how do I get to Riverside, this address, and I told him, I said get off Van Buren, go up Van Buren, get down to Alessandro. He did not know it was restricted because the geo systems don't report it. We tried to get onto Google Maps, tried to get onto Waze, the other ones that are there. And a very good friend of mine is a lifelong truck driver, has 4,000,000 miles under his belt, he's a two California truck rodeo champion, one time US national champion. The guy's not how to drive.

But as he says, when you've a guy that's new to the area, you've got an eight foot wide plus truck and a 10 foot wide lane, and he's trying to keep that truck there, he's not looking around, He might miss a sign that says restricted because the signs aren't that big. I'm not sure if you can look in to see if we've ever gotten it on board the geosystems that will help the drivers or not because I feel sorry for some guy that just doesn't, didn't see it, doesn't know. All of sudden he's yanked over and he's like, I didn't see the sign, I was driving my rig. But they are damaging the roads, we have to do things to stop them. And you're right, points, and I talked to Steve about it, the points will scare the guys pretty badly.

They know they can cost them their license when they go for an annual renewal. So yeah, let's try this, we'll see if this works. You just gotta get the word out, it's all about communications. You just gotta get the word out. Your motors do a great job, I think you're up to 15 guys now, is that true? Got 15 motors now?

16 motors, four AIs. We

only had like seven a couple of years ago. We've done a great job getting that up, we appreciate that because those motors are invaluable to traffic safety in Riverside. Yeah, we'll see what happens, let's go with this and really you've done a great job with it. Thank you.

Alright, I won't repeat everything that's been said, I agree with it completely. All three of us have major roads where there are issues. Councilmember Condor has the Alessandra and Trotwein, and Councilmember Mill and I share La Sierra and we see it all the time. You know, this is basically about quality of life and safety on the roadway, and of course, this doesn't apply to the trucker who's making a delivery on that stretch of roadway. But I I I think the recommendations you're you're making is correct.

If they violate it, if they're cited, there's points and fines to the driver. It affects their insurance and affects the the company's insurance as well. So, yes, I I agree with the recommendations that are being made and, you know, it's nice to hear that we have 16 motors out there to to make that enforcement. So I think this is a good idea, and hopefully we'll see some improvement really quick.

Yeah, the staffing has certainly helped us out quite a bit. I think it's important to note there are exceptions to those routes, and the motors take that into consideration when they make a stop. If someone is making a delivery to an address that's on the restricted route, they're allowed to be on that route, and they will very quickly provide paperwork showing that they're going to the address that's on the route. And if that's the case, then the officers will let them go unless there's other violations that they need to cite for. As far as the mapping, I did check with the traffic engineering and confirmed that we do share all of our information with all of the major mapping programs.

Many times it ends up being user error, where they put on their phone that they're a car and not a truck. And so it tells them the shortest route and not necessarily a truck route. And then also, I don't want to speak for traffic engineering, but I have spoke with them as well as far as I believe it was Assembly Bill 98 from a couple of years back that is requiring the cities to come up with established truck routes, which I think will maybe help. Because right now, we tell you where you can't go, but we don't tell you where you can. And so that might help out with alleviate some of the problems that we have as well. We'll yet to see what will happen with that.

We can only hope. All right, this is a receiving file. Thank you, Lieutenant. We appreciate your help. Thank you. And again, the Riverside Fire Department presentation has been continued to next month. They don't believe we have a legislative update. I'm looking at staff, and I'm not getting an affirmative response. So that brings us to items for future consideration. Drone drone activity and interfering with public safety.

That should be making its way through to us, which is which is an outstanding idea considering we just experienced a problem yesterday. Very good timing. Any other items? Seeing none, we will bring the meeting to or we'll join the meeting at 01:30. Thank you, everyone.