A Vision for Lake Forest - KPIs and Public Safety

We spent last week discussing my vision for ways to make life in Lake Forest even better. On Monday we discussed ways to involve more people. Tuesday we looked at making government more responsive. Wednesday we discussed how to improve the ways in which we plan and on Thursday we suggested ways to make better decisions. Friday our focus was on achieving better performance and we looked at crime statistics. Today we’re going to continue our discussion of using key performance indicators to guide decision making, this time looking at economic factors.

The crime statistics we examined last week are only one part of the picture when looking at Public Safety. There is an economic side.

COST

The cost of police services has been rising for nearly a decade, from around 30% of our budget to nearly 40% today. Obviously this leaves less money for other services, and if the cost continues to grow at the current rate, we will be looking at some major problems in the near future. This is made even more problematic by the 15% growth in population we expect in the next 3 years as the new 5,000 homes being built are occupied.

Despite the seriousness of this problem, you’ll rarely, if ever, hear it discussed. Yet if this issue were discussed, it would lead to the obvious conclusion that the City needs to (a) examine what we’re doing and (b) get more competitive bids from other agencies. Right next door we have one of the premiere Police Departments in the U.S. Why haven‘t we asked them if they’d like to contract with our City? Irvine is the obvious choice, but there are other Police Departments as well. If we now get competitive bids on just about every other item, why don’t we get competitive bids on this vital service, particularly from an agency that has a much better record than the agency with whom we currently contract?

The answer is that the issue is never raised, and one of the reasons is that the data is not being discussed.

TRENDS

A recent report showed that public safety costs in Lake Forest were growing at a faster rate than most cities in Orange County, and in the past 10 years had grown nearly 60%. That’s worrisome. By itself 60% is worrisome, but the fact that costs are growing more in Lake Forest than most other places is equally worrisome.

The trend in rising costs is never discussed by the Council. Yet with a 60% rise in the past decade and the current nearly 40% of our budget going to Public Safety, surely we need to be doing some forward planning. Add to this the near 15% gain in population, and we can clearly see that decisions today need to be made so that tomorrow we don’t have to compromise public safety.

Our analysis here is not intended to focus on public safety per se, but rather to point out how the use of key performance indicators, examined closely and regularly by the Council, could create an environment in which the Council would anticipate future problems and act now. The old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” surely applies here.

Tomorrow we’ll summarize.

About Jim Gardner

Dr. Jim Gardner is the editor of CITY WATCH on The Patch and a contributing editor to OC Politics and Voice of OC. He is running for City Council in Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook.