City Council at 100 days - Part 3

We’ve started a multi-part series looking at how the new City Council is performing after their first 100 days. Our first article looked at what was achieved last year to set a baseline against how to evaluate the new Council (Click Here). In summary, last year the Council –

“Established more than three dozen new and effective ways to better communicate, to improve our quality of life, and to make government work better. Most of these innovations continue to this date.”

Our second article (Click Here) summarized the new initiatives launched in the first 100 days. They are summarized below –

(blank space intentional)

In other words, not a single new project was initiated in their first 100 days.

Following that we looked at eight of the major projects that were in motion last year to see how much was achieved in moving these along to fruition. Here’s a brief summary –

• Civic Center Construction – still on budget but start was delayed. This means $1 million in extra costs.
• Performing Arts Bookings – nothing being done. Hundreds of thousands of new dollars in revenue being squandered.
• Online Neighborhood Watch – no progress.
• Ring Doorbell Rebate program – started two months late.
• Street sweeping – put off until mid-2020 – extra costs in excess of $100,000 per year due to delay.
• Fee Schedule - no progress. Who knows how much lost revenue results.
• Mobile apps - no progress

It’s a pretty grim record. Not only is nothing new being initiated, almost none of the major projects underway are being moved along in a meaningful fashion. This is not merely a problem for our quality of life, but the delays are costing more than $1 million in lost revenue or extra expenses.

Today we’ll focus on projects that impact Police services. To understand what’s happening here it’s important to know that Police Unions spent over $100,000 in recent years to influence elections in Lake Forest. Money flowed to elect Tettemer, Moatazedi, Robinson, and to try desperately to keep Hamilton from being thrown out. Outside of the developers, the Unions have been the most aggressive trying to control the City Council.

Homelessness

We made a lot of progress in 2018 including developing a comprehensive plan, getting a committee up and running, and bringing in a social service agency. Since then there has been no progress, nor have the staff followed up to see what the impact of the social service agency has been. I did my own study (Click Here) and reported that the social service agency was more effective, provided more coverage, and cost considerably less than the Police program. This research suggests that we could save $150,000 a year by transitioning from the Police to the social agency model. But nothing has been done.

(A skeptic would say that the $100,000 spent by the Police unions to put these people in power means that they will not replace the Police oriented program with the social agency program, even though the social agency program provides more coverage, is more effective, and would save us $150,000 per year.)

Parking Enforcement

One of the major problems in the City is parking. It rivals traffic and in some neighborhoods it is even more problematic. In 2018 we added a parking enforcement officer and we doubled our tickets and towing. But the costs of parking enforcement through the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) is enormous – over $200,000 per year per officer. Because of this cost, many cities use civilian enforcement, which generally costs half of what it costs to provide Police officers.

We spend nearly a million dollars a year on our traffic and parking enforcement. A switch to civilian enforcement might save between $250,000 and $500,000 a year. But nothing has yet been done to develop an RFP to study this issue.

(A skeptic would say - read the analysis under Homeless to understand what is happening in this case. IWO the huge amount of money spent by the Police Unions to put these people in place means the Council will do nothing to offend the Poilce Union.)

Street Sweeping Enforcement

Street sweeping is a big concern in many neighborhoods. Cars remain on the street and the sweepers don’t do their job. This means that the street debris ultimately makes its way into our oceans. In the interim, our streets look poor and this decreases the value of our homes.

There are several problems with street sweeping

• The city does a poor job educating people about when street sweeping happens. It happens on the day after garbage is picked up, but most people don’t know that.
• The city does a poor job with signage, and even resists putting up signs even when neighbors complain about the problem.
• There is no enforcement so there is no penalty for people who don’t move their cars.

An additional problem caused by the lack of enforcement is that city streets are used to store vehicles. Although there is a city ordinance prohibiting parking your car for more than 72 hours, by the time someone notices the infraction, and by the time that the Police finally come by to mark the car, it can take a week or more. Cars illegally stored on the streets contribute to the parking problems in many neighborhoods.

The solution is better education, signage, and enforcement. But at a cost of $200,000 per year or more to use OCSD for enforcement, the extra costs are prohibitive. This is why many cities use civilian enforcement.

(A skeptic would say that using civilian personnel for street sweeping enforcement would upset the Police Unions who contribute so much money to elect City Council members. OCSD would like the City to spend $200,000 a year using a highly trained Deputy Sheriiff to give out street sweeping tickets.)

Police Contract

Public safety is the single biggest part of our expense and accounts for nearly 40% of the City's spending. In some cities it is over 50%. Every year the problem gets worse because of the yearly increases in the fees paid to OCSD who have such a generous pension program that many officers retire and get $300,000 a year. Many retirees earn more in their pensions than they did when they were working. Check out Transparent California if you want to see just how generous these pensions are. To pay for these generous pensions, our costs go up 5% or more every year.

A few years ago Councilman Adam Nick and I suggested that we review the OCSD policies and staffing and see if we could come up with some places where savings could be realized without impacting quality of service. We got immediate condemnation from the Gang of 3 (Hamilton-Voigts-Robinson) along with charges that we were anti-Police. Shortly after that Adam Nick was wrongfully arrested (an apology was later offered by the DA) and the Police Unions began spending tens of thousands of dollars to oppose Nick and later me, and to support Hamilton and others who would not question their policies.

But Nick and I were not alone in our pursuit. Conscientious City Council members from all over OC were equally concerned, and in 2017 13 cities agreed to do a joint study to do what Nick and I originally suggested. That study was completed last year, but to date, the Council has yet to follow up. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to be saved every year by getting OCSD to do a more effective and efficient job, but OCSD and particularly the Police Unions are against any changes.

SUMMARY

Here's a summary of the progress on projects that impact Police services, keeping in mind that one of the biggest contributors to elected the Do Nothing Council has been the Police Union.

• Transitioning the homeless program from Police services to social agency services could save $200K per year, but has yet not been discussed.
• Transitioning parking enforcement from Police services to civilian enforcement could save us $250K to $500K per year, but has yet not been discussed.
• Analyzing the results of the multi-city study to reduce the costs of Police services while maintaining the existing quality could save us untold millions of dollars per year, but has yet to be discussed.

Next time we'll look at some of the other projects that are impacted by special interests.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner was on the Lake Forest City Council from 2014 to 2018 and Mayor in 2018. Under his leadership the City became the first debt free city in the U.S. with a population over 25,000 people and the first city to live broadcast City Council meetings that allowed residents to participate online (Click Here). Dr. Gardner is one of the organizing members of Lake Forest Community Action Network. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook