Council Preview - Feb 16

The big ticket item on this week’s City Council agenda is the “Mid Year Budget Review”. This is the time to take the actual year end figures and see whether or not we did a good job estimating how the year was going to close, and what adjustments need to be made. It’s also a time to add or subtract some items.

The proposed Mid-Year Budget Review would increase General Fund revenues by $2,761,600 and increase expenditures by $1,405,700. On balance, that’s good news.

The biggest increases in revenue came from the ongoing development (Building Permits, Planning and Zoning and Engineering fees) which accounted for over $1.5 million. Correspondingly, the biggest increases in expenses were the servicing of these users in the Planning, Building, and Public Works Departments, accounting for $1.1 million.

Other notable revenues were increased property taxes ($300,000), hotel occupancy fees ($200,000), and sports field fees ($58,500).

Other notable expenses are animal care ($40,000), 25th anniversary expenses ($20,000), and personnel increases in the departments of City Manager ($41,000), City Clerk ($29,000), and Community Services ($42,400), and $50,000 to improve the look of the Whispering Park area.

That looks pretty healthy. Bear in mind that a few months ago we set aside over $3 million to cover our pension costs which are now fully funded.

In addition to the general budget review, the staff have separated out 3 items – (a) 4th of July Parade, (b) Cost savings for Police, and (c) Whispering Hills.

4th of July Parade

The City spends $43,000 on our 4th of July Parade. There is very little information about how we spend it, except for some broad categories such as Entertainment ($11,000). In addition, OCSD in 2015 charged us $8,600 for the event, which doesn’t show up in the budget, but should, even if for accounting purposes it shows up in the Police budget instead of the Parade budget.

The budget claims we spent $5,900 on car rentals and we rented 13 cars. That means we spent $453.85 per car rental. That seems pretty high for the use of a car for a few hours. In fact, we have dozens of great looking convertible owners who want to participate in the Parade. Why don’t we give the honor to some of our residents and save the City $5,900?

There is very little else to say since there is so little information available. $11,000 sounds like a lot of money to spend for “entertainment”, and quite frankly, I always thought the parade itself was the entertainment, and never noticed any “entertainment” per se. And if I recall previous warrant registers, most of what is spent as “entertainment” goes to people from outside our City. Whatever the entertainment is, why can’t we find it here instead of elsewhere?

If we are seriously going to do our jobs we need more information so I’ve asked Community Services to give us more details.

Cost Savings

In July the Staff was asked to give us some examples of how we could save money by looking at other cost savings programs in other cities and to see if we could adopt some of them in Lake Forest. Instead the staff went off on a tangent and gave us a report about how we spend our money on the Police contract, with not a single example of any cost saving program. Instead the staff simply rehashes what has been done in the past with the assurance that everything is OK and being monitored, and then makes the outrageous statement that “any significant cost savings measures at this juncture would likely involve modification of the number of OCSD personnel serving the City.” Meantime crime was up 30% last year and our Police budget has grown to more than $15,000,000.

Google the topic and you’ll find dozens of excellent examples of the ways in which Police Departments have cut costs. The Urban Institute, for example, has an entire series about how to reduce costs without negative impacts on quality, including how to respond to false alarms, how to reduce fuel consumption, etc. Cost savings programs have been examined by Harvard, NIH, the Justice Policy Institute, etc.

The topics studied include car costs, shift changes, use of specialized teams, surveillance, etc.

Even our neighbor, Laguna Hills, did their own study and managed to cut costs. How can we have a cost savings report with no costs savings?

Without doing too much thinking at all, here are some examples of how we could save on the costs of Police services without impacting the quality of the service.

· What about the thousands of dollars being spent on having a Sergeant, on OVERTIME, stand around at the back of the Council chambers during sessions. I’ve been to many City Council meetings where there isn‘t any additional Police in attendance. What’s so scary in Lake Forest that we need this additional cost? And if we needed it, why is it being allocated to the most expensive people in the contract and at an OVERTIME level.

· How about the thousands of dollars spent on Police Officers who deliver “Council packages” to each Council member on every Thursday night. All of this material could be delivered by e-mail saving us the costs of the time and car expenses, and also the hundreds of pounds of paper that are literally wasted.

· How about looking at how and why overtime is being allocated? According to the staff report, 5% of the $10 million plus in Personnel Costs goes for overtime. That’s more than $500,000 a year. There are many examples of ways in which agencies have reduced Police overtime. The National Institute of Justice wrote -

“Reliance on overtime in American policing may have harmful consequences that are not sufficiently considered by police managers, such as exhaustion on the part of officers, unwillingness to provide any service without a tangible reward, increased antagonism between supervisors and line officers, and the undermining of professionalism. • Overtime practices represent substantial possibilities for cost savings. Though overtime can never be eliminated, it can be more successfully controlled.”

I could go on but you surely get the point. We asked for examples of cost savings programs and recommendations and after 6 months we got back nothing!

Whispering Hills

For more than a year I have been asking for some global planning and despite the fact that everyone seems to agree this would be a good thing to do, instead of the “one off” problem solutions that have been trademarks of the past, we have yet to devote a minute to this issue. Now staff wants to spend $50,000 to make the Whispering Hills area look less depressing, yet within a year or two we might well decide to put in an indoor soccer arena and remove the entire $50,000 investment. I’m not advocating for the indoor soccer arena, but it is on the table, and with no global planning, who knows when and how it could be approved.

Six months ago I asked the staff to fix the blighted look of Whispering Hills. They did this. It no longer looks disgraceful, as it had looked for decades, and merely looks vacant. Until we make some global decisions about what we’re doing with the existing vacant land in the City, a $50,000 upgrade of Whispering seems to be not merely silly, but irresponsible. I’m open minded enough to see what the staff say, but my inclinations are to do some global planning first.

Neighborhood Park Improvement Plan

Slipped into the dozens of pages in the mid year review is a $50,000 item called Neighborhood Park Improvement Plan which proposes to “evaluate 10 parks and facilities that were not part of the renovation effort in Phase I.” This appears to be basically a staff function and in my mind doesn’t warrant spending $50,000 as described in the one line.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss some costs that should have been in the mid year review but weren’t.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. 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. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on March 26 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library

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