The New Lake Forest and the Challenge of Public Safety

We’re getting ready for our “strategic planning” session in July. I produced some preliminary data about the City which we can use (Click Here) and we’ve been discussing some of the changes in the City which suggest we are entering a new and exciting era (Click Here). These were

• New City Manager
• New General Plan
• New Civic Center
• New Mobile App
• New Approach to Traffic/Parking
• Better Communication
• Better Animal Care

Last week I began the first in a series about how we can meet these challenges. We discussed the need for better quality control and the need for improved research capabilities.

Today I want to focus on public safety.

The elephant in the room has been and will continue to be Public Safety. There are two main issues that stand out –

• Our crime rate consistently is one of the highest in Southern Orange County, exceeding our neighbors in Rancho, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, etc.
• The costs of the contract with Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) has been rising for years, and recently it’s been rising more than $1,000,000 per year, outpacing inflation. Due to the unfunded pension liabilities, these increases are going to continue and a higher and higher percent of our budget will go to this area. In an era of increasing property and sales tax, the problem can be masked, but when the inevitable turn in the economy comes, we’ll be faced with public safety costs we can’t cut and revenues that are declining.

THE CRIME RATE

No one disputes the fact that the costs of Police services are rising, but after years of being told we are “one of the safest cities in the U.S.”, some people are shocked when they learn that our crime rate is among the highest of any of our neighbors. “How can we be one of the safest cities in the U.S. when most of our neighbors are even safer than we are?” Yes, that’s the question. The sad answer is that the people who told you we were “one of the safest cities in the U.S.” were not telling you the truth. Here is the truth from the latest report from the Chief of Police (August 5, 2016)

“In 2014 Lake Forest had the sixth lowest Part 1 crime rate among all orange county cities.”

Cities with lower crime rates than Lake Forest were RSM, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Woods, and Laguna Niguel. The only city that had a higher crime rate, among our neighbors, was Laguna Hills.

These results have been consistent for the past decade.

As dreary and concerning as it may be to have one of the highest crime rates, there is some good news – For all cities, violent crime and property crimes have been going down for the past decade.

It is unacceptable to me that Lake Forest has one of the highest crime rates in our area.

In the past I’ve asked for a Public Safety Committee but my colleagues turned it down. I’ve asked for competitive bidding on the contract, but my colleagues turned it down. Everyone agreed for us to consider ways to cut the costs, but no ways emerged.

DON’T MAKE IT EASY WASN’T EASY AFTER ALL

We did do a few things. We put crime information statistics on the Internet (Click Here) which is a big step forward in terms of informing us what’s going on.

We also took a look at those crime statistics and instituted a new program “Don’t Make it Easy” (Click Here) designed to reduce “crimes of opportunity” like burglary, robbery, and theft. But the latest crime statistics aren’t encouraging. Comparing January through March of 2016 (before the program) with January through March 2017 (6 months after the program was in force), robbery is up 8% and burglary is up 22%. We did see a minor decrease in stolen vehicles (-2%). We also had a decrease in larceny/theft (-33%), but larceny/theft is a broad category that includes embezzlement, forgery, check fraud, confidence games, etc., so no conclusions can be made from this. Bottom line – “Don’t Make it Easy” has not achieved the success we intended.

Public safety is job #1 and I’m not satisfied with the current picture

CRIME RATE MAY RISE

One of the few consistent social science statistics is that as cities grow in size, the crime rate increases. There are, of course, other variables at play – economic conditions, demography changes, etc. But the relationship between city size and crime rate is basic.

Our City population has increased by thousands of people. That’s a result of the 2,000+ new homes that were built and occupied. We’ve got a similar number of homes approved but not yet built, so our population is going to increase once more. By the time we finish building and occupying the homes already approved, many predict our population will be over 90,000 which is a long way from the 75,000 quoted in even the most recent studies. Those 15,000 people are not spread evenly throughout the city, but rather are squeezed into a small corridor about 1 mile east or west of the 241 Freeway. So we are not merely going to have an increase in population, but a big increase in population density.

More people and higher densities will inevitably lead to more crime and likely to even higher crime rates. This will put fresh demands on our budget.

PUBLIC WANTS A BETTER JOB

In the past few years more and more people have been asking that the city do a better job in crime, traffic, and parking, 3 areas that fall within the public safety budget. The many requests for us to do a better job in parking enforcement led to my recommending a new parking enforcement officer which is going to boost the budget by $185,000 this year. But throwing money at problems is not the best way to conduct business.

SUMMARY

Looking forward, public safety is one of our greatest challenges –

• Our crime rate is among the highest of all the cities around us.
• Our costs of the Police contract are nearly 40% of our budget and rising by more than $1,000,000 per year with no end in sight given the unfunded pension liability.
• The growth of the city of 5,000 more homes and 15,000 more people means that increased or police services.
• The dramatic increase in density in the FHR and PH areas (where all the new homes are being built) probably will result in an even higher crime rate increase, as a function of increase density on top of increased population.
• Demands from the public for the City to do a better job in crime prevention, traffic and parking management will create more pressures to expand the costs of public safety.

It’s not a pretty picture. What can we do to meet these challenges? Let’s look at this next time.

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 June 10 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.