New Dixon police chief sworn in Monday
"What an incredible night as we honor Ryan Bivins as he begins to lead our Dixon Police Department into this next chapter," Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss said.
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Dixon Mayor Glen Hughes (right) administers the oath of office for Dixon's new chief of police Ryan Bivins (left) at the Dixon City Council meeting Monday, June 2, 2025. (Payton Felix)
Bivins' appointment as chief comes after former Chief Steve Howell's retirement May 9. Bivins was one of two candidates that went through the interview process conducted by a committee of 10 people and led by Jon Mandrell, vice president of academics and student services at Sauk Valley Community College and a former police officer.
"It is with great pride and confidence that our committee recommends the appointment of Sgt. Ryan Bivins as the next chief of police for Dixon...his integrity, professionalism and dedication to community engagement make him exceptionally well suited to lead the department into the future," Mandrell wrote in a statement that Langloss read at the meeting.
[ Dixon's new police chief plans to prioritize community policing, youth engagement ]
Bivins joined the Dixon Police Department in 2009. He's served in many roles, including detective, street crimes sergeant, and hostage negotiator, among others. He also leads the department's Crisis Prevention Team and was instrumental in launching the Police Chaplain Program, Peer Support Program and First Responder Resiliency Program, according to a May 27 news release from the city of Dixon.
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Los Angeles Times
17 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
The fliers say ‘Save Our Services.' Airbnb is actually pulling the strings
When Marni Lustig saw a flier for the Save Our Services campaign, she didn't immediately grasp what she was reading. The flier appeared to be about Los Angeles' budget crisis, potential layoffs of city workers and possible cuts to public services. But when she spotted a sentence about expanding short-term rentals, she realized the campaign applied directly to her. Lustig, a fashion photographer, already rents her Pico-Robertson home on Airbnb. She said she would buy another home in L.A. and rent it too, if the campaign achieves its goal of legalizing short-term rentals of second homes — which, according to supporters, would generate tax revenue to help address the budget crisis. 'I'd like to be able to buy in L.A., but because we're not allowed to [rent second homes] here, I've been looking outside of the city. So they'll get my money, not L.A.,' Lustig said. In the last few weeks, residents around the city have been flooded with fliers hung on their doors and canvassers polling them about Save Our Services. Some of the fliers don't mention short-term rentals and only describe the budget crisis while including a QR code for the campaign's website. That website paints a grim picture of the city's finances and proposes a solution: allowing 'a limited number of people to rent their second homes to travelers.' Supporters say the plan could generate about $80 million in tax revenue annually, especially as tourists descend on Los Angeles for the 2026 World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl, and 2028 Olympics. 'We can generate millions in new tourism revenue dedicated for L.A.'s long-term recovery — paid for by tourists, not taxpayers,' the website says. Fliers for the campaign, which urges the City Council to amend the short-term rental ordinance to include second homes, list as supporters a broad coalition of groups, from unions like Teamsters Local 911 to the business-aligned Central City Assn. Conspicuously absent from the website and fliers is Airbnb, the short-term rental giant that is a backer of the campaign and would profit from the change. Nick Gerber, an organizer for the hotel and restaurant workers union Unite Here Local 11, which opposes the campaign, said that when a canvasser knocked on his door, he asked who the campaign's supporters were. He knew the campaign involved short-term rentals, so he was surprised not to see Airbnb's name. 'I looked at the back of the shirt with all the [organizations] listed and did not see any of these short-term rental companies, but right away, I thought this was clearly something they were behind,' Gerber said. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, a former Unite Here organizer, said he learned of Save Our Services when he came across a flier in his parents' South L.A. neighborhood. 'It doesn't say Airbnb on it, but this is something that Airbnb has been pushing for years, and they're using what I think is pretty deceptive tactics to try to get sympathy from the public,' Soto-Martínez said. When the City Council debated a home sharing ordinance in 2018, Airbnb pushed for second homes to be included. But the council limited the final version to primary residences, in part to avoid decreasing the number of long-term rental properties amid a housing crisis. Airbnb confirmed that it is involved in Save Our Services but declined to say whether it has contributed any money to the campaign and did not respond to questions about its exact role. 'It's pretty simple: new tax revenue from tourists can give Los Angeles much-needed funding for city services and union jobs that are at risk,' said Justin Wesson, senior public policy manager for Airbnb. Wesson said that Airbnb has organized a 'diverse coalition' for the campaign and will continue to 'support practical short-term rental policies that balance the benefits of tourism with community needs.' The campaign does not appear to be registered with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, according to the commission's website, and Airbnb did not immediately respond to a question about whether the campaign has registered. Anyone who spends $5,000 or more to attempt to influence municipal legislation, and who is not a lobbyist, is required to register with the commission as a 'major filer' and report their spending. A commission spokesperson said there was no record of a major filer report from Airbnb after 2016. Airbnb said in an email that 70% of the 50,000 people polled by canvassers supported the Save Our Services campaign. The campaign website notes that the additional tax revenue would come in two streams: an estimated $38 million from the sales tax generated by tourists spending money at local businesses and another $41 million from the transient occupancy tax of 14% on short-term rentals. The city of Los Angeles faced a $1-billion budget shortfall this year, closing the gap through proposed layoffs and other cuts. The financial woes are likely to continue for several years, amid weak tax revenues, skyrocketing legal payouts and increasingly expensive union contracts. Critics of Save Our Services said that Airbnb hosts often evade the transient occupancy tax and that the city should step up its enforcement of the tax instead of opening up more homes for short-term rentals. Randy Renick, executive director of Better Neighbors LA, which focuses on regulating short-term rentals, said evading the tax is 'the fundamental issue,' with some Airbnb hosts claiming their residences are outside city limits. Maria Hernandez, a spokesperson for Unite Here, which is part of the Better Neighbors LA coalition, said an increase in short-term rentals would exacerbate the city's housing shortage by removing units from the long-term market. 'We are facing a housing crisis for working people, and this only makes it worse,' Hernandez said. 'The way for the city to address its budget crisis is to enforce existing laws, fining the landlords who illegally convert housing to hotels, and making sure the platforms actually pay the taxes they avoid.' The campaign has created some strange bedfellows. The hotel industry and Unite Here have battled over a $30 hotel and airport worker minimum wage, among other issues, but have aligned against Save Our Services. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who often spars with Soto-Martínez, also opposes the campaign, saying she doesn't want to create an incentive for people to buy up properties and turn them into short-term rentals. She added that the city's limited housing stock should be for the people who live and work here. 'It's where I actually align with my colleague,' she said of Soto-Martínez. Still, Save Our Services supporters say a short-term rental expansion would be an effective way to raise revenue. 'Labor, community, housing, business, and civic organizations have come together to find immediate and practical solutions that would help generate nearly $80 million in new annual revenue to save jobs and services, protect Angelenos' livelihoods, and stabilize the city's finances,' said Eric Tate, executive secretary treasurer for Teamsters Joint Council 42, in a statement.
The Hill
17 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump wields funding card in fight with DC
Republicans are embracing President Trump's bare-knuckled fight with Washington, D.C., as a winning issue for the embattled president and say that Trump will use federal funding for the city as leverage to get Mayor Muriel Bowser and the City Council to crack down on local crime. Conservatives on Capitol Hill are calling for Congress to end the District of Columbia's era of home rule and federalize the city, something that has little chance of happening since legislation to do so would need 60 votes and the support of at least seven Democrats to pass the Senate. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, however, could extract significant concessions from the mayor and City Council in return for critical funding, as a proposal to restore more than $1 billion in funding for Washington remains stalled in the GOP-controlled House. Republican aides say that one of Trump's top priorities would be to press D.C. to eliminate no-cash bail, a policy whereby individuals arrested on criminal charges do not need to post cash bonds to avoid pretrial detention. Other priorities would be to prosecute teenagers accused of serious crimes as adults and to implement stricter policies mandating pretrial detention of adults and teenagers accused of such crimes. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) and Rep. Andy Ogles (Tenn.), are pushing for more drastic action. They are backing legislation to repeal the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which gives the city the right to elect its own government and manage local affairs. Lee in an op-ed for The Spectator cited several high-profile attacks, including the fatal shooting of congressional intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym in July and the 2023 knife attack that left a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) with a punctured lung and penetrated skull. 'This isn't just a local issue — it's a national embarrassment, and the Constitution itself makes it a national issue. Federal oversight will restore order and make DC a model city again,' Lee posted on the social platform X. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) in an interview on Fox Business applauded Trump's takeover of D.C.'s police and predicted: 'If there's a significant law enforcement presence, these crimes are going to go down.' He said a car belonging to one of his staffers got shot up in a gang fight while it was parked six blocks from the Capitol. 'We spent one of our Steering Committee meetings talking about what we should get our employees to protect themselves when they're walking home. This is our nation's capital, for crying out loud. This is where you bring your family, and you become a patriot, and it's not safe to be here,' he said. 'I'm saluting President Trump. More power to him to do whatever it takes to secure our nation's capital.' Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the chair of the Senate Steering Committee, told reporters Tuesday he hoped Democratic mayors from major cities would follow Trump's lead and increase law-enforcement activities. 'I'm optimistic this will show D.C. you can have safety,' he said. 'The first thing I say to everybody when they're coming to D.C. is, 'You better think about where you're staying, you've got to think about every street you're on, you've got to think about you can't be out at night.' Hopefully that will change.' Early polling is mixed on Trump's takeover of the capital's police department and plan to deploy 800 National Guard troops, along with dozens of FBI agents, to step up law enforcement activity around the city. An Aug. 11 YouGov survey of 3,180 U.S. adults found that 47 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat disapproved of Trump's actions, while 34 percent strongly or somewhat approved. But the poll also found that 67 of respondents said that crime in large American cities is a 'major problem' while 23 percent described it as a 'minor problem.' Focusing on crime in Democratic-run cities has been a successful political tactic for the president going back to his first term and comes at a time when his approval rating has sunk to 37 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll. Democratic lawmakers slammed Trump's action. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asserted 'there are currently no 'special conditions of an emergency nature' in D.C., which the president has to claim in order to take federal control of MPD under the Home Rule Act.' 'This is unprecedented,' he said. Jim McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who has done work for Trump, said that Trump's takeover of the police force and deployment of National Guard is a popular move but argued it's not motivated by politics. 'He's doing it because he thinks it's really important to keep people safe,' he said, noting that crime and law enforcement in major cities was an issue that Trump identified as a top priority when he was thinking about running years before the 2016 presidential election. 'I know there are a lot of people looking at the political angle here, but it's not politics, it's about doing what he thinks is right,' McLaughlin said. 'D.C. is a special place. We have people not just from all over the country but all over the world come to visit D.C., and they should be safe there. 'We've got members of Congress and their staff getting attacked there,' he said, referring to the assault on Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) in 2023. Trump will have an opportunity to press his demands ahead of next month's government funding deadline, Sept. 30, when Democrats in Congress and advocates for the District will call for the restoration of the funding held back in the March funding deal. 'I can see that being an anomaly in a [continuing resolution],' said a Republican strategist, who suggested that Trump could also request more federal oversight of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in exchange for funding to hire more police. 'You're working within the confines with what will probably be a' continuing resolution, the strategist said of the expectation that Congress will need to pass a stopgap funding measure to avoid a government shutdown. 'You could do it via a handshake agreement,' the strategist added, referring to concessions Bowser would make in exchange for more federal funding. Bowser 'already opened the door' to a potential deal with the White House, the strategist noted, by acknowledging in a recent statement that beefing up policing in some parts of the city could be a good idea. Bowser at a press conference Monday acknowledged that 'we experienced a crime spike post-COVID' but argued 'we worked quickly to put laws in place and tactics that got violent offenders off our streets and gave our police officers more tools, which is why we've seen a huge decrease in crime.' The mayor pointed out that crime is down compared with 2023 but pledged: 'We're not satisfied, we haven't taken our foot off the gas, and we continue to look for ways to make our city safer.' Bowser met with Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, a meeting that Bondi called 'productive.' 'I just concluded a productive meeting with DC Mayor Bowser at the Department of Justice. We agreed that there is nothing more important than keeping residents and tourists in Washington, DC, safe from deadly crime,' Bondi posted on social media. Trump on Monday vented his frustrations over no-cash bail and what he views as the lenient treatment of teenagers accused of felony crimes. 'Every place in the country where you have no-cash bail is a disaster,' Trump declared at a White House press conference where he announced a federal takeover of D.C.'s police department and the deployment of 800 National Guard troops to the city's streets. The president called for the District to change its laws to allow for teenagers 14 and older to be prosecuted as adults, complaining of juvenile offenders: 'They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it's going to happen now!'
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Not everyone who votes in Knoxville lives here, and the little-known rule is totally legal
A little-known rule allows some who don't live in Knoxville city limits to vote in city elections. The property-qualified voting provision allows any Tennessee resident who owns property in Knoxville city limits to have a say in deciding the city's leaders. In a primary election, those voters can make a difference. There are only 287 property-qualified voters, but that number is enough to sway a low-turnout race like the Aug. 26 primary. In 2021, the last city council race that didn't have a citywide position on the ballot, 9,998 people voted in the primary election across five districts. One council member, Seema Singh, won her district by just 59 votes. It's a sweet deal for property owners: registering to be a property-qualified Knoxville voter doesn't cancel your current registration address where you live, according to the Knox County Election Commission. Only two other cities in Tennessee extend the option to out-of-city voters. What are the requirements to be a property-qualified voter in Knoxville? In order to cast a Knoxville ballot, property-qualified voters must: Own land within city limits that's at least 4,000 square feet Have owned that property for at least six months before Election Day and until the election Be registered to vote elsewhere in Tennessee Provide proof of ownership at the time of voter registration, including a certified deed or most recent city tax bill Only one owner from a property can be property-qualified. How can I register to be a property-qualified voter? The deadline to register to be a property-qualified voter in the Aug. 26 election has passed. It's the same as the regular deadline to register to vote in an election To register for the next election, voters must do the following on the Knox County Election Commission's mail-in registration form: Write or type "property qualified" on the form in a noticeable manner. On the "residential address" line, write the address of your qualifying property. On the "mailing address" line, write the address where you receive your mail. Mail the completed voter registration form to the Knox County Election Commission, P.O. Box 51530, Knoxville, Tennessee 37950. The election commission will review your application and reach out with any questions about the property. The Tennessee Secretary of State's online voter registration form cannot be used. How many property-qualified voters are there? As of July 14, there were 287 Knoxville property-qualified voters. How many property-qualified voters can cast ballots in August? Out of the 287 Knoxville property-qualified voters, 242 can vote in the city council primary election on Aug. 26. The other 45 are in District 5, which does not have a council seat up for election this year. However, all voters, including property-qualified voters, can cast a ballot in the Nov. 4 sales tax referendum. How do property-qualified voters cast ballots? Property-qualified Knoxville voters must vote absentee by mail. If a property-qualified voter is registered, the election commission will automatically send them an application for an absentee ballot. The election commission will take absentee ballot applications up until 10 days before the election. Absentee ballots must be mailed back in time for the election commission to receive them before polls close on Election Day. Allie Feinberg reports on politics for Knox News. Email: This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knoxville elections allow out-of-town voters who own property Solve the daily Crossword
