DATASET #1

KEYWORDS:“air quality” “diesel” “particulate” “pollution”

SYNOPSIS:  Jeff Stone is the supervisor for the Third District in Riverside County. Our team conducted a search on Mr. Stone and his association with terms like “air quality”, “diesel”, “particulate”, and “pollution” in an attempt to data mine any rarities in relation to Stone and the Latino community. Out of the eleven articles and citations that were procured, only five were directly relevant to Mr. Stone. From these results (or lack thereof), it seems that he was silent on many of these issues or terms. Three of these results (over 50%) were related to “air quality”. “Pollution” was the next popular term followed by “Diesel”. “Particulates” failed to turn up any results at all.

Results for “air quality” covered how Stone attempted to sue local shipping ports because of the amount of pollutants being released into the environment. His main concern appeared to be for the health of the surrounding citizens. “We still have the impacts from the ports after discussing it for five years, and things are still getting worse,” Stone said. “If we don’t see any movement on grade separations or air quality, we’re going to use this (the attempted law suit) to get them to the table.” The next search result was tagged for “pollution” (the related article was written by Jeff Stone himself). In this article, Stone talks about the benefits of building a new highway in Riverside County in order to ironically reduce the risks of air pollution for residents. His reasoning being a new highway would reduce congestion and reduce the amount of time people would spend sitting in their cars emitting more and more air pollution. He also understands the impact such a highway would have on residential home and community members, which is why he created a possible route for the highway that would cause the least amount of disturbance to the existing way of life in Riverside. Lastly Mr. Stone confidently mentions how the new highway will have a positive economic impact as its construction would attract jobs and its added ease of mobility would encourage immigration. The final search string that yielded results was “diesel”. Jeff Stone did not have much of anything to say, but was attributed with voting for a proposed project where diesel-emitting trucks would be required to take an alternative route to reduce the amount of pollution the Stonehill Estates are exposed to.

It is also important to consider the lack of comments put forth by Mr. Stone on these important issues. Air pollution directly impacts the Latino community, which makes up a vast portion of the Inland region (including Riverside County). Latinos in this area are already low-income wage earners with little to no health benefits. Stone’s lack of urgency to do something about the imminent health threats posed by this on-going air pollution does not in any way help this situation. The few number of times Mr. Stone has voiced himself in over 3 ½ years indicates a diluted attitude towards assisting the situation, even though it is apparent he does care somewhat about the issue. Despite an attempted law suit against shipping ports, and a slightly ironic proposal to decrease pollution via an additional highway, Stone seems to sit in the background as the battle against air pollution is fought elsewhere.

Total number of articles in which Jeff Stone is represented at least once as an attributed source: 45

Time span between first and last attributed statement by official (11/15/2007-9/4/2009).

RESEARCHERS: Greg Kinaga & Antonio Archuleta

SPREADSHEET: Stone Set #1

DATASET #2

KEYWORDS:  “redevelopment” “developer” “real estate development” “growth”

SYNOPSIS: The Third District, which Stone currently leads, includes cities such as Murrietta, Hemet, Temecula, San Jacinto, and Menifee. Stone’s political career has run the gamut of local politics, including three terms on the City Council of Temecula, time spent as Temecula City Mayor, and he is currently serving in his second term of Third District Supervisor.

There was limited information based on the search terms, which excluded us from developing very many patterns. To be certain, information regarding Jeff Stone abounds, however, the search words only yielded us between twenty-six and thirty-four results. This obviously indicates that the words that would yield better results should be used in future searches. In our case, “redevelopment”, “real estate development” and “growth” were to be used; we on the other hand, was able to find a few quotes from Jeff Stone using the search word “development.” We found significant results for both “redevelopment/development” and “growth” but did not find any articles that explicitly mentioned “real estate development” leading us to believe that such a search string is too specific. Searching “real estate” instead led to primarily to explanations of a subject’s occupation and less about development, which was not helpful.

It appears from our results that Supervisor Stone suggest that he is pro development, especially that of creating ways of bettering the issue of freeway congestion. Another trend that is observed is the fact that he tends to favor the disadvantaged and the community as a whole. He proposed to build a homeless shelter that would facilitate services for four hundred people and plans to build preschools, flip warehouses, and build housing projects. Other themes he has talked about are projects that will benefit the community as a whole. He proposed a project to help preserve the Ramona Bowl, restore it and to use it for special events that will also serve to for city revenue, upgrading the firefighter state-of-the-art computer system of global positioning that will also benefit the police department. I think that he was very much consistent on the topics, however, he does not address openly any issues relating to the Latino community.

While Jeff Stone is in favor of bettering the community of his district, his lack of addressing the Latino community leaves much to the imagination. One conclusion that we can draw upon is the fact that he tends to favor certain a certain group of the community, that is, the middle-class Caucasians. We can speculate that given the demographics of the surroundings of the district neighbor districts with high concentration of immigrants who do not feel represented by Mr. Stone.

Mr. Stone, throughout the findings, seems to be backed by his constituents, and therefore speaks vehemently about his plans and the interests of the community, which in the end, are personal gains. One article from Dec. 2007 inferred that Stone made a tidy profit from the region’s growth by buying and selling industrial properties.

Total number of articles in which official is represented at least once as an attributed source: 45

Time span between first and last attributed statement by your official: (3-19-1995 to 3-06-2009)

RESEARCHERS:  Ericka Romero-Rojas & Aubrey Bull

SPREADSHEET: Stone Set #2