YOUR HOMETOWN WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ward Winning News al A pa
Vol. 7, No. 43
Including Surrounding Communities
CSD OKs agenda pick-up location
www.thepress.net
Vasco to be no-go
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.
Staff Writer
see Agenda page 26A
Retraction In last week’s edition, the Press reported a legal opinion from the California First Amendment Coalition that meetings of the Town of Discovery Bay’s Community Center Subcommittee (CCS), whose six members until recently included three directors of the CSD Board, were subject to the posting and reporting requirements of the Brown Act because the committee is a standing committee, not an ad hoc committee as asserted earlier by President Ray Tetreault. The status of the CCS is correct, but the Press was incorrect in reporting that the Act applies to meetings that 1) do not involving all three of the CSD Board members who are on the CCS, or 2) that do see Retraction page 26A
October 23, 2009
THIS WEEK
by Ruth Roberts Discovery Bay CSD meeting agenda packets will now be available to the public on the Friday before a scheduled Wednesday meeting, even after the CSD offices close. In the past, the public has been invited to pick up packets at the town offices as they became available, but there have been times when the packets were completed just as the town offices closed on a Friday afternoon, making it impossible for some residents to pick up a copy until the following Monday. At the Oct. 7 regular meeting, CSD Vice President Mark Simon suggested a box be placed outside the town offices where agenda packets could be placed on Friday afternoons when the packets are prepared
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DBPOA gets fresh faces Four seats on the Discovery Bay Property Owners Association board are no longer empty.
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Press file photo
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Lions tamed by Panthers
or a few days beginning next weekend, Vasco Road will be closed in both directions as part of the Vasco Road Safety Project. For details, check out the story on Page 17A.
Cops concerned about state 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 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 allowing 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 escalatsee Prisoners 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