City Council TV goes on despite writers strike

If one of your New Year's resolutions was to spend less time watching meaningless television and to pay more attention to important matters, this would be a good night to tune in to the Modesto City Council meeting. Our city leaders are scheduled to decide:

Whether to outlaw Dumpster diving. Under the proposal, people caught rummaging through residential or commercial garbage cans could be subject to arrest and a $500 fine. Police Chief Roy Wasden says the city received 105 complaints about this over the past six months. We don't doubt it occurs, or that some of the divers are looking for credit card applications and other paperwork that would allow them to steal identities.

But many of the Dumpster divers are people looking for recyclables or edibles or items of some value. The important questions are these: Will outlawing Dumpster diving really stop it? And will the police actually respond, given the number of cases pending?

Wasden suggests there are maybe 100 people committing this act and that enacting this law will help authorities reduce the problem. He also insists his officers will respond to calls of Dumpster diving because it will be a property crime in progress, rather than an after-the-fact report, such as usually occurs with break-ins and stolen cars. We're still skeptical about the potential effectiveness; this is a great item for community debate.

Whether to spend $400,000 for a camera system downtown to improve security. Ten cameras would be put in the busiest areas, between 10th and 12th and H and K streets. Camera systems are being used in more and more places, with safety overriding privacy. Presumably one of the council members will pull this off the consent agenda for at least a bit of public discussion.

Whether to put more teeth into the law that bans drinking alcohol in public parks. People can obtain a permit to do so.

Whether to approve the revised capital improvement budget, which is for big-ticket items such as water and sewer system improvements and roads. Most of the money available for these projects cannot, by law, be switched over to operating expenses, such as more police and fire positions.

Also potentially interesting: Remarks by longtime parks director Jim Niskanen, who will be in his first meeting as interim city manager.

If you want a script to follow along, that's available at www.ci.modesto.ca. us/ccl/agenda. The show itself begins at 5:30 p.m. and is broadcast on Comcast Channel 7 and streams live on the Internet. Go to www.ci.modesto. ca.us and click on the Council Webcast button on the right side.

There's a third option: Go to the council meeting. It's in the basement of Tenth Street Place in downtown Modesto, and parking is easy on Tuesday nights.

This story was originally published January 8, 2008 at 3:42 AM with the headline "City Council TV goes on despite writers strike."