Smith: Why all the cops at the meeting of SRJC's bond panel?

For police officers to appear at a meeting of the SRJC Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee happens about as often as wildebeests wander in.

Not just one but two law-?enforcement incidents rendered the panel’s latest session at the Santa Rosa campus far more classically interesting, yet?distressing, than is typical.

The excitement began with a shouting match by two mature fellows on either side of the hot-button issue of whether the JC should enter into an agreement to apply union rules to major construction projects.

Both Curt Groninga and Jack Buckhorn addressed the committee during the public comments portion of its July agenda. The state-mandated panel meets twice a year and exists, it’s probably obvious, to provide independent monitoring of the spending of dollars from voter-approved bonds.

Groninga, the retired JC vice president and assistant superintendent, stood to speak against SRJC adopting a project labor agreement. Buckhorn, chief of the North Bay Labor Council, promoted it.

Each said his piece, then returned to his seat in the small meeting room, then called one another liars. Tempers escalated and Buckhorn entreated Groninga to step outside.

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THE TWO OF THEM retreated to just beyond the door and at once had at least some of those inside fearing that there’d be blows. It was Leigh Sata, the school’s capital projects director, who called the SRJC District Police.

Two officers arrived, and the rivals chilled.

Minutes later, Sata’s cellphone pinged. He read a message, then rose and approached Ernie Carpenter, the former Sonoma County supervisor and current member of the Bond Oversight Committee.

Sata discretely told him something, and Carpenter sprang up and hastened out.

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WHAT WAS UP? Someone at the campus police station had alerted Sata that officers were at Carpenter’s car and deliberating over what to do about the dog locked inside it.

It was a fairly warm that ?afternoon and, regardless, SRJC forbids confining an animal “in any vehicle parked within the college boundaries.”

While the ex-supervisor was still absent, another district police officer appeared at the meeting room door. He announced that he was looking for Ernie Carpenter.

Evidently, that officer, too, was onto the matter of the locked-in dog and was unaware that Carpenter already had hightailed it to his car.

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MINUTES LATER, Carpenter reappeared at the meeting, leading his quite adorable dog on a leash.

Had the next issue to arise been put to a vote of the 12-member committee, a majority might have agreed to let Carpenter bring his pet into the room.

But Sata checked with someone in authority and affirmed that dogs are prohibited in parked cars at the JC, they are not allowed onto the grounds, even if leashed, and they surely cannot be brought indoors.

So Carpenter tethered his friend just outside the glass in the room’s exterior wall.

The dog could see Carpenter and expressed his desire to be with him by whining and whimpering all through the remainder of the meeting of the Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee that might have made for a passable episode of COPS.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.