February 17, 1966 (20 pages)

NEVADA COUNTY NUGGET & EDITORIAL February 17, 1966 NEVADA CITY COUNCIL WAS SUBJECTED TO A DISGRACEFUL DISPLAY Members of an elected governmental organization should always be ready tolistento their constituents. These are the people who put them in office, can keep them there, and it is for these people that the government exists. But there is no law, written or unwritten, that requires that elected officials be subjected to abuse or harrassment. That is what the Nevada City Council faced Monday night during the discus~ sion of the appointment of a new police chief. It continued into the early hours of the morning. Before the people who disrupted the council meeting get the idea that this kind of thing should be the regular thing to do, we think the city should move promptly to put a stop to it. We thought that those who came to the council meeting to ask questions about the appointment were fairly and promptly answered. They were told by the council that city law specified that the job of hiring and firing was vested in the city manager. This included appointment of a police chief. The city manager also answered questions fairly. He answered so fairly that he refused to divulge personal matters unless he had the permission of the person in question. Apparently those who were championing their candidate for police chief were not listening or were pretending not to listen forthey continued to ask the same questions. When they did not get the answers they wanted, they set about to disrupt the meeting. This display finally ended when someone came charging into the council chambers, turned out the lights and then scampered away down the stairs like a guilty child. If the council had been dealing with children, sucha display could be overlooked, But there were nochildren at the meeting Monday night. When members of acity council have to be followed home by police cars ‘and when the city manager has to take his telephone off the hook in the early morning to keep from being awakened by unidentifiedcallers, then it is time that something be done. We all pride ourselves a bit about living among all the reminders of the California's roaring gold camp and of being a part of the wild west. But Nevada City has grown too much and is too far away from the roaring camp days to accept harrassment of city officials as a standard practice. If this is true, then steps should be taken to make it clear that the next time it happens the law will be enforced. If thatis not done now, any-— one in town will soon be subject to this kind of.treatment. IN THE FOOTHILLS VEIN WOMEN ARE FINE BUT NOT AS POLICE CHIEFS We are constantly bombarded with predictions of doom, We will all die ina nuclear disaster, We are poisoning our air and destroying the land on which we live. There is a Commie under every bed ready to pounce as soon as we lower our guard, Despite all of these black clouds" on the horizon, there is still one bright spot. In Nevada City, civic minded women can get together, look at localneeds, weigh the various aspects . of the situation and then come before the city council and propose with perfectly straight faces that the city meter maid be made the city police chief, With all due respect to the ladies of the Nevada City Business and Professional Women and with all due respect to Policewoman Barbara Thue, we think the idea of a woman police chief is as valid a conversation piece to discuss over drinks or coffee as is the idea of having a woman president, It should certainly go no further than that, We havenothing againstwomen. We do not believe that women should be subjegated or tied to the role of scullery maid, We just do not believe we should have a woman police chief, Perhaps in Los Angeles, the job of police chief, as the ladies maintained Monday night before the city council, is purely an administrative one. This is not true in Nevada City, The job of police chief here is demanding, often extremely unpleasant and it can be dangerous, As Councilwoman Carole Friedrich said Monday, the ladies should be praised for their interest and the manner in which they went about proposing one of their sex for the city's top law job, We agree with this, but not the proposal, eeeeoeeese es IN OUR account last week of awards made to area newspapers during the convention of the California Newspaper Publishers Association Convention Feb, 5 in Palm Springs, we neglected to mention that Clint Haywood's Colfax Record won an honorable mention for best special edition for weeklies under 2,500 circulation for the Record's centennial edition, eeeseee te 86 CALIFORNIA ee WORLD MOVEMENT A LA THE TELEVISION CAMERA Television last week presented a moment of pure contemporary Americana, The locale, not surprisingly, was the Los Angeles International Airport, The cameras were there as President Johnson's Air Force One taxied in from its hop from Honolulu. He was to meet Vice President Humphrey for a conference atthe airport. Humphrey had arrived from Washington in his own plane, After thé conference, he would proceed west to Honolulu and Vietnam, while the President went east. Television is perennially reduced to recording great events by focusing on arrivals and departures, The President iscoming, the President is going. The Pope is coming, the Pope is going. McNamara is leaving forthe Far East, McNamara is returning. The motion is substituted for the substance of what is happening in the world, Well, at Los Angeles, motion and substance (such as it was) for once became inseparable,. There was the President’s plane taxiing around in what looked to be an irrational and time-consuming zig-zag course, Finally the plane stopped and Humphrey went aboard, and you could see the back of his head very clearly, He and the President conferred inside the plane, while the television showed us the anti-war pickets linedup at the fence, the lights of the control tower, the Presidential seal on the side of the plane. “I. wonder why they don't come out," complained the announcer, who was outside in the biting cold, They didn't come out, so the television started interviewing people in the crowd at the fence, One man saidthe pickets were committing what amounted to treason, “Those are pretty strong words, " said the announcer. "I didn't say they were committing treason," said the man, who seemed to have studied the laws of slander, One of the pickets said he thought the picketing was useless, For some reason the announcer didn't ask him in that case why he was picketing. The camera's eye swept back and forth across the portholes of the giant 707, Behind them men were making history, perhaps, and television was there. Johnson and Humphrey finally came out of the plane and they were greeted by Gov, Pat Brown and Mayor Sam Yorty, each of whom jockeyed for position before the cameras, (The President gave the Govemor the advantage.) 996T “LT Areniqoy***1083nN Aun0D epeaon***

NEVADA COUNTY NUGGET & EDITORIAL February 17, 1966 NEVADA CITY COUNCIL WAS SUBJECTED TO A DISGRACEFUL DISPLAY Members of an elected governmental organization should always be ready tolistento their constituents. These are the people who put them in office, can keep them there, and it is for these people that the government exists. But there is no law, written or unwritten, that requires that elected officials be subjected to abuse or harrassment. That is what the Nevada City Council faced Monday night during the discus~ sion of the appointment of a new police chief. It continued into the early hours of the morning. Before the people who disrupted the council meeting get the idea that this kind of thing should be the regular thing to do, we think the city should move promptly to put a stop to it. We thought that those who came to the council meeting to ask questions about the appointment were fairly and promptly answered. They were told by the council that city law specified that the job of hiring and firing was vested in the city manager. This included appointment of a police chief. The city manager also answered questions fairly. He answered so fairly that he refused to divulge personal matters unless he had the permission of the person in question. Apparently those who were championing their candidate for police chief were not listening or were pretending not to listen forthey continued to ask the same questions. When they did not get the answers they wanted, they set about to disrupt the meeting. This display finally ended when someone came charging into the council chambers, turned out the lights and then scampered away down the stairs like a guilty child. If the council had been dealing with children, sucha display could be overlooked, But there were nochildren at the meeting Monday night. When members of acity council have to be followed home by police cars ‘and when the city manager has to take his telephone off the hook in the early morning to keep from being awakened by unidentifiedcallers, then it is time that something be done. We all pride ourselves a bit about living among all the reminders of the California's roaring gold camp and of being a part of the wild west. But Nevada City has grown too much and is too far away from the roaring camp days to accept harrassment of city officials as a standard practice. If this is true, then steps should be taken to make it clear that the next time it happens the law will be enforced. If thatis not done now, any-— one in town will soon be subject to this kind of.treatment. IN THE FOOTHILLS VEIN WOMEN ARE FINE BUT NOT AS POLICE CHIEFS We are constantly bombarded with predictions of doom, We will all die ina nuclear disaster, We are poisoning our air and destroying the land on which we live. There is a Commie under every bed ready to pounce as soon as we lower our guard, Despite all of these black clouds" on the horizon, there is still one bright spot. In Nevada City, civic minded women can get together, look at localneeds, weigh the various aspects . of the situation and then come before the city council

and propose with perfectly straight faces that the city meter maid be made the city police chief, With all due respect to the ladies of the Nevada City Business and Professional Women and with all due respect to Policewoman Barbara Thue, we think the idea of a woman police chief is as valid a conversation piece to discuss over drinks or coffee as is the idea of having a woman president, It should certainly go no further than that, We havenothing againstwomen. We do not believe that women should be subjegated or tied to the role of scullery maid, We just do not believe we should have a woman police chief, Perhaps in Los Angeles, the job of police chief, as the ladies maintained Monday night before the city council, is purely an administrative one. This is not true in Nevada City, The job of police chief here is demanding, often extremely unpleasant and it can be dangerous, As Councilwoman Carole Friedrich said Monday, the ladies should be praised for their interest and the manner in which they went about proposing one of their sex for the city's top law job, We agree with this, but not the proposal, eeeeoeeese es IN OUR account last week of awards made to area newspapers during the convention of the California Newspaper Publishers Association Convention Feb, 5 in Palm Springs, we neglected to mention that Clint Haywood's Colfax Record won an honorable mention for best special edition for weeklies under 2,500 circulation for the Record's centennial edition, eeeseee te 86 CALIFORNIA ee WORLD MOVEMENT A LA THE TELEVISION CAMERA Television last week presented a moment of pure contemporary Americana, The locale, not surprisingly, was the Los Angeles International Airport, The cameras were there as President Johnson's Air Force One taxied in from its hop from Honolulu. He was to meet Vice President Humphrey for a conference atthe airport. Humphrey had arrived from Washington in his own plane, After thé conference, he would proceed west to Honolulu and Vietnam, while the President went east. Television is perennially reduced to recording great events by focusing on arrivals and departures, The President iscoming, the President is going. The Pope is coming, the Pope is going. McNamara is leaving forthe Far East, McNamara is returning. The motion is substituted for the substance of what is happening in the world, Well, at Los Angeles, motion and substance (such as it was) for once became inseparable,. There was the President’s plane taxiing around in what looked to be an irrational and time-consuming zig-zag course, Finally the plane stopped and Humphrey went aboard, and you could see the back of his head very clearly, He and the President conferred inside the plane, while the television showed us the anti-war pickets linedup at the fence, the lights of the control tower, the Presidential seal on the side of the plane. “I. wonder why they don't come out," complained the announcer, who was outside in the biting cold, They didn't come out, so the television started interviewing people in the crowd at the fence, One man saidthe pickets were committing what amounted to treason, “Those are pretty strong words, " said the announcer. "I didn't say they were committing treason," said the man, who seemed to have studied the laws of slander, One of the pickets said he thought the picketing was useless, For some reason the announcer didn't ask him in that case why he was picketing. The camera's eye swept back and forth across the portholes of the giant 707, Behind them men were making history, perhaps, and television was there. Johnson and Humphrey finally came out of the plane and they were greeted by Gov, Pat Brown and Mayor Sam Yorty, each of whom jockeyed for position before the cameras, (The President gave the Govemor the advantage.) 996T “LT Areniqoy***1083nN Aun0D epeaon***