This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If the challenger in Granite School Board's Precinct 1 race prevails in the November election, constituents in the Holladay area will be represented by a board member who is legally barred from visiting the schools he would represent.
That's because Richard Wagner Jones, the challenger to incumbent Dan Lofgren, is a registered sex offender.
He fulfilled all the obligations imposed by the court after his 1990 second-degree felony conviction of sexual abuse of a child.
He spent five years at the Utah State Prison and another 10 years on probation, which ended in 2005.
But he still is on the sex-offender registry which, according to state law, prohibits him from going to public or private elementary or secondary schools.
Jones told me in a response to my email that the law provides for exceptions, including attending school events participated in by his own children or grandchildren, or attending public events held at the school, as long as he obtains permission from the principal.
The issue of his record and sex-offender status arose two years ago when, as co-founder of the Holladay Republican Club and the East Side Voter Forum, he helped organize a meet-the-candidate event that several Democratic candidates claimed was a tea-party set-up against them.
In fact, former Democratic legislator Phil Riesen backed out of being the emcee of the event because of the tone of the questions sent to candidates and Jones' status as a registered sex offender.
Jones told me at the time that since he has been off probation, he has been an active community organizer and advocate, and has been a presenter at forums on how to prevent sex abuse.
He called Riesen a "bigot" for his views.
He told me in his email Tuesday that the real issues in the school-board race are conflicts of interest on the board and transparency in the way the board issues contracts.
Touting himself to constituents as the conservative Republican voice in the nonpartisan race, he said he will "fight for teachers who motivate their students to learn, and will fight for more good teachers per number of students."
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The Keystone Kops? For some reason, Richelle Charles' car seems to be a magnet for parking enforcers run amok.
I wrote in February about Charles' dilemma with Salt Lake City Parking Enforcement after she was ticketed on Market Street because Mayor Ralph Becker's new solar-powered parking meters weren't working right.
She had put money in the meter before going into work at the Oyster Bar, but when the enforcement officer scanned the machine with his handheld electronic monitoring device, it registered zero.
Even though she had a receipt showing she had paid, she had to pay the fine, although the nice people at the Parking Enforcement office gave her a reduction.
Four months later, it happened again.
While swimming laps at Steiner Aquatic Center on Guardsman Way, she received a ticket, even though there were no signs indicating she couldn't park there, and she had parked at the same spot on the curb for the past 10 years.
She confronted the enforcement officer, who said it was a through-way, so she couldn't park there, even though that had never been a problem before.
When she noted there was no red paint on the curb that would indicate no parking, he said the paint would be covered up by the snow anyway.
This was Sunday. There was no snow.
This time, when she complained again, the nice people at the Parking Enforcement office dismissed the ticket.