The Meltdown - Part 3 (Correcting More Falsehoods)

Yesterday I posted Councilman Robinson’s comments from his Facebook page to The Patch so that we could all see what he wrote. Today and tomorrow I’ll reply. On Tuesday I’ll sum up.

It’s good to see that Councilman Robinson can respond without making outrageous personal attacks.

It’s important to point out that Councilman Robinson began his first of several responses by exclaiming “lies, lies, and more lies”. Given that I made more than a dozen assertions in my article (Click Here), I expected a blow by blow response to each of my assertions with some evidence that they were (a) incorrect and (b) lies. Nothing in Councilman Robinson’s long FB response posted yesterday indicates any of my assertions were incorrect, much less lies. He does have a different point of view, to which he is entitled.

I’ve gone through his response and found a number of issues I want to comment on. Here is my response along with his original assertions. Today I want to focus on the mis-statements of facts which appear in Councilman Robinson’s comments. Tomorrow I will deal with more general issues.

Note - The italics refer to Robinson’s remarks and the bold is my response.

NORTH VS. SOUTH

ROBINSON SAID - “Councilman Gardner says the North pays more so leave them out of a JPA. Actually, the numbers say they would be an advantage to collectively associate with since they pay less than Lake Forest on average.”

CORRECTION - I never said that “North pays more..” Councilman Robinson’s comment is completely false.

What I did say was - “North Operations (3 cities) … have a much higher crime rate….” I never commented on their cost per capita. In case you share Councilman Robinson’s lack of awareness about crime statistics, crime rate and cost per capita are two very different numbers that are often correlated, but not necessarily. All my discussion was about crime rate and I even gave the statistics that justified my position. I even sent him separately the statistics along with a URL from where I got those statistics. It’s hard to believe he would misrepresent what I said.

Just to see how poorly Councilman Robinson was reporting the facts (rather than mis-reporting my figures) I did check up on one of his statistics – about the City of Stanton. Robinson said

ROBINSON SAID - “…and Stanton (with population of less than 40,000) pays $209 per capita….”

CORRECTION - Stanton is a city with 38,623 people (Click Here to verify). The budget for “Law Enforcement” is $9,543,925 (Click Here to verify, see page 39). Now do the math. Divide the cost ($9,543,925) by the population (38,623). What do you get? $247.10. That’s the true per capita cost of police services in the city of Stanton. Councilman Robinson claimed it was $209. He doesn’t tell us from whence he gets his figure, so it’s difficult to know why he is reporting the wrong figure, although it should be noted that the wrong figure bolsters his argument. But go ahead and check my figures if you want the real answer!

LAGUNA HILLS (LH) STUDY

ROBINSON SAID - “Councilman Gardner used the recent Laguna Hills police services study as a reasoning why Lake Forest should form an ad hoc committee and potentially conduct a similar study. He said Laguna Hills saves hundreds of thousands of dollars based on what they gleaned from that study. I know the Laguna Hills council members. I know the reason for the study. And I know how they managed to save money. They were providing a disproportionate/non-reciprocal amount of services to the City of Laguna Woods which was not reimbursing Laguna Hills for said services. Laguna Hills used the study to show how much they were shortchanged and they rectified the situation post study. Lake Forest does not have this problem so we would not see those savings.”

CORRECTION - Councilman Robinson is once more incorrect. He may know “Laguna Hills council members” (and why should that matter, although he is fond of saying how many important people he knows) but apparently he does not know the Laguna Hills (LH) study, even though I sent it to him and urged him to read it. The study was concerned with far more than the reciprocal relationship between LH and other cities (called “regional policing” and used heavily by OCSD), but even on that point, he is grossly in error. He claims that we don’t “have this problem” but in fact the LH study shows that we do. The LH study showed that LH provided about twice as many patrol officers (for service calls) to Laguna Woods (LW) as they received from that city (1099 vs. 520). So there’s an imbalance disadvantaging LH. Robinson claims we don’t have that problem, but that same study shows that we are in an even worse situation. Our City, Lake Forest (LF) provided three times as many services to LH as we received from them (223 vs. 83). So in fact we are in an even worse situation than LH was in. LH suffers from a 2:1 imbalance in service with their neighbor (LW), but we suffer from a 3:1 imbalance with our neighbor (LH). Councilman Robinson’s comment that we don’t have this problem is simply not true. Either he didn’t read the study, didn’t understand it, or is purposefully being deceitful to prove his point. I don’t know which, but I suspect he really didn’t understand the study.

Click Here for the report. See pages 27 through 30 of the LH study.

THE COST DATA

ROBINSON SAID - “In the meeting, Councilman Nick said Lake Forest pays $247 per resident for police services while Irvine pays $265 I assume Councilman Nick got these numbers from Councilman Gardner who has used them in the past)”

CORRECTION - I don’t know from where Councilman Nick got his numbers. I don’t recall using these numbers and if Councilman Robinson wants to claim I did, he should provide some evidence.

The numbers I use are the numbers that anyone can use. The current figures are these -

Irvine reports that it has 250,384 people. (Click here to verify) The Irvine budget for 2015 to 2016 is $68,798,953 for “Public safety” (Click here to verify). The per capita is $274.77 ($68,798,953/250,384)

Lake Forest reports that it has 80,070 people (Click here to verify).The Lake Forest budget for 2015 to 2016 is $15,321,700 for “Police Services” (Click here to verify). The per capita is $191.33 ($15,321,700/80,080).

These numbers are different from what Councilman Nick used and different from what OCSD used. But without performing a forensic audit, my way of calculating the per capita costs is the accepted method. Notice that I am actually explaining how the figures are calculated and giving the sources. Everyone else has numbers with no references so you can’t check it for yourself.

(BTW – during the City Council session, someone in the audience approached the OCSD representative and asked her how she obtained her figures. At first she demurred, and then she said she didn’t know. The figures were given to her and she was reporting them. The citizen asked how they were calculated. She also didn’t know or at least she wouldn’t say.

After the meeting I asked Councilman Nick how he calculated his number since it was different from mine. He said he used the same method as I used, only he added in the unfunded pension liabilities to the cost data, which explains why his figure is higher than mine. I did not add in the unfunded pension liabilities and therefore our numbers are different.)

ROBINSON SAID - “When a member of the Finance Team for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department came to the microphone, opened her giant binder with all the data, and explained that Lake Forest pays $170 per resident and Irvine pays $325…”

CORRECTION - I believe The OCSD is incorrect even though they have a “giant binder” which impressed Councilman Robinson. We pay more than $170 and Irvine pays less than $325. See my note above. She gave no basis for her figures so it’s difficult to know why she is incorrect, but I suspect that she is only looking at the OCSD contract and not at the entire Police services budget (making that error does produce a figure close to the one she produced, which was confirmed for me in a meeting I had with the City Manager). Irvine has no “contract” as they provide their own services. Hence comparing our contract with their entire costs is not apples-to-apples. This is only my guess. Unlike Councilman Robinson I don’t possess the ability to read minds or predict the future, so I don’t know why her figures do not match my own. I did provide my analysis to the City Manager some time ago and I’m waiting for his confirmation.

THE AD HOC COMMITTEE

ROBINSON SAID - “Councilmen Gardner and Nick wanted the City Council said they would not vote for the contract unless the City Council agreed to form an ad hoc committee to evaluate whether we could contract with other cities, form a JPA, or start our own police department . They did not present a budget for this committee and they did not explain what its specific charter or commission would be…”

CORRECTION - Wrong again. Councilman Robinson answers his own question. The specific charter was exactly what he said – “to evaluate whether we could contract with other cities, form a JPA, or start our own police department…” How can he then say we had no specific charter when he cites it here? and it looks specific enough to me!

As far as a budget, there was no need for a budget. A few months ago we set up an ad hoc committee on the Investment policy. It too had no budget. Why would this ad hoc committee patterned exactly like the other ad hoc committee have a budget?

ROBINSON SAID - “Nothing precludes 2 council members from meeting with city staff to discuss options regarding any topic…including this one”

CORRECTION -Councilman Robinson is being disingenuous or simply ignorant. Two council members cannot solicit bids from neighboring cities, which he knows was part of the charter of the committee. Therefore a formal ad hoc committee needed to be established to move forward. I can’t go into the Mayor’s office in Irvine and say – “I’d like you to bid on contracting with the City of Lake Forest. Please send us a bid.”

SUMMARY

· Robinson is wrong when he says I claimed that North cities had a lower cost per capita. I never said any such thing. I talked about the crime rate, not their cost per capita.

· Robinson is wrong when he gives the cost per capita for Stanton, the only statistic I checked. His error is in a self-serving direction. He under-estimates the cost per capita of Stanton ($209 vs. $247) which is the point he was trying to make.

· Robinson claims Lake Forest does not have the problem of an imbalance in reciprocal services that Laguna Hills has with Laguna Woods, but in fact our imbalance problem is even worse when you look at the imbalance between Lake Forest and Laguna Hills. Bottom line – we can learn from looking at the Laguna Hills study.

· Robinson is wrong when he claims that the figures offered by OCSD are true figures. OCSD under-estimates the per capita costs of Lake Forest and over-estimates the costs for Irvine. I provided the basis for my calculations. Robinson provides nothing.

· Robinson is wrong when he says that I did not explain the charter for the ad hoc committee. As his own comment demonstrates, I made it perfectly clear that it would evaluate whether we could contract with other cities, form a JPA, or start our own police department.

· Robinson is wrong when he implies that a budget was necessary in order to form an ad hoc committee, as illustrated by the recent ad hoc committee on the Investment Policy.

· Robinson is wrong when he implies that 2 Council members can solicit bids from cities to replace OCSD as our contract Police department.

It’s a shameful record of providing inaccurate information, most of which is without a framework or reference. It’s particularly disturbing when you realize that this is being done within a context of dis-proving someone else’s work, and establishing that they have been lying. If there are lies being told, clearly they are from Councilman Robinson. I’m not accusing him of lying, but I am documenting that he is providing a lot of false information.

Tomorrow we’ll continue the dissection of Councilman Robinson’s response.

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 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on August 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.

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