Antioch Measure C Committee Says All Monies Being Spent Appropriately

On Tuesday, the Sales Tax Citizen’s Oversight Committee made its annual report to the Antioch City Council regarding funding relating to Measure C which is aimed at being spent on Police and Code Enforcement.

According to the committee, a total of $6.8 million were collected from Measure C in 2016 while they had a carry-over of unexpected Measure C money from previous years at $3.9 million leaving the total available funds at $10.7 million.

The committee also made recommendations to the City Council.

“Clearly stepping a little bit outside the scope of the committee, however, the majority of the committee members would like to take this opportunity to make this recommendations to the city council,” said Hans Ho.  “The City Council utilize Measure C Funds and reconsider their decision and promote an Antioch Police Department member to Sergeant to give better span of control”

Their second recommendation was to start thinking about how public safety and code enforcement will be staffed and maintained after the Sunset of Measure C.

Their final recommendation was recommending the City Council unfreeze the baseline budget of $28 million to sustain the current staffing allocation of Public Safety and Code Enforcement.

The data and documents within the report was through June 2016 which the committee says all Measure C monies are being properly account for and meet the objectives of the Measure.

Antioch Measure C passed in 2013 with more than 68% support.

Disbursements:

• $6,532,060 was allocated to Public Safety
• $6,108,340 was spent on Public Safety
• $289,384 was allocated to Code Enforcement
• $289,384 was spent on Code Enforcement
• Surplus of $4,351,967 will be carried to Fiscal 2017 to be used for Public Safety

Impact:

• The City has hired 49 sworn Police Officers since inception of Measure C
• Net gain of 18 sworn Police Officers
•  Currently the City has 100 Sworn Officers
• City has hired 4 additional Community Service Officers for a total of 7 CSO’s
• Additional Public Safety support staff including an Administrative Analyst and a Police Dispatch Supervisor have been hired
• The City now has an active Vehicle Abatement Program with 2 dedicated staff members
• Overall crime is down 5% in the City per crime statistics provided by the Chief of Police
• Officer response time improved from 10:06 minutes to 9:48 minutes per crime statistics provided by the Chief of Police

Code Enforcement

• 1 Code Enforcement Supervisor
• 1 Code Enforcement Officer
• 1 Support Person
• 2 General Laborers for blight abatement
• Purchased 2 trucks and 1 vehicle for the Code Enforcement team
• 778 Code Enforcement cases opened in 2016
• 750 cases closed in 2016
• 3,547 cubic yards of blight and rubbish abated in 2016
• 828 shopping carts abated in 2016

For a copy of the presentation, click here.