A crowd of about 40 people attended the June 12 meeting of the Temescal Valley Municipal Advisory Council meeting and learned about the burden the state’s prison realignment program has placed on the county. Another presentation outlined the county’s plan to improve rapid transit services.
BUS SERVICE
Gordon Robinson, director of planning with the Riverside Transit Agency, told the audience the RTA currently is gathering public surveys to develop initial recommendations for its 10-year plan to improve service and increase ridership. The study began in January and has an 18-month timeline.
Robinson is aware that rapid transit is not available in Temescal Valley but urged everyone to complete a survey. Although the survey is geared to non-riders where service is offered, Temescal Valley folks have two places in the survey where they can voice opinions on wanting bus services.
We took the survey and here’s what we wrote in the comment section of question No. 4: “RTA services are not offered where I live — Temescal Valley south of Corona.”
Here’s what we noted in the comment section of question No. 27: “We do not have bus service in the Temescal Valley. There is no school busing for many of our intermediate and high school students. Our older students have trouble getting to community colleges. I had a friend who is visually disabled and she had to move because no bus service is offered here. And, many senior citizen residents who live in Trilogy cannot drive.”
You can tailor the comments to your own reasons for wanting bus service, but it’s important that Temescal Valley residents respond to the survey. Take the survey HERE
REALIGNMENT’S IMPACT ON COUNTY
Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach told the audience that the realignment program, which took effect in October 2011, was designed to reduce the state’s prison population but instead has placed the burden of incarcerating low-level offenders on the counties.
Zellerbach said overcrowding in county jails has forced the early release of certain inmates: those jailed for non-violent, non-sexual and non-serious offenses. He said the county in 2012 released 6,990 prisoners and this year that number will grow close to 9,000 early-released inmates. The early releases are necessary to ease overcrowding in county jails which creates lawsuits filed by the inmates for the crowded conditions and poor medical services.
While the state pays counties to assume the cost of caring for the inmates, as well as probation and parole services, Zellerbach said state funds only amount to 25-cents on the dollar. And if inmates reoffend, they are not sent back to state prison, but stay in the county’s correctional system. He said county jails are filled about 24 percent to 25 percent with offenders who used to be sent to state prison.
While state funds and grant money is available to ease the financial burden on county jails, probation officers and mental health services, it falls far short of solving the problem, Zellerbach said. He said realignment and early-release are a risk to public safety and undermine the integrity of the justice system. He also noted that the property crime rate is up 10 percent to 15 percent countywide.
The Press-Enterprise recently published a report detailing the severity of the issue. Read it HERE