The City of Antioch will hire 22 more police officers using Measure C money, however, the overall number of officers may be less than assumed by voters who supported a sales tax increase.
According to the recent staff report which highlighted a preliminary review of the General Fund. It stated that the City is proposing to have 97-officers by next year–this is 5 less positions than what is currently allocated for the police department. Currently, the police department is allocated to have 102 positions.
The question that comes to mind is how can you pass a tax for 22-positions and actually have a reduction in police services by 5-positions? The City Manager and City Council are set at changing the starting line and using “funded positions” which is a lower number than “allocated positions”.
According to the preliminary budget, City Manager Steve Duran explained that the starting number is positions funded which that number is 82. Under his proposed staffing levels, police would be brought up to 97 positions in 2014/15 and to 100 positions by 2016.
Another starting figure 89-officers. This is on the Argument for Measure C where it states “A Yes on Measure C will allow us to immediately hire 22 new police officers, decreasing the time it takes to respond to 911 calls.”. The argument then proceeds to state that our police force has dwindled from 126 officers four years ago to only 89 today—so according to Measure C discussion, the starting number is 89. This argument was signed by Mayor Harper, the Antioch City Council, and the Antioch Unified School Board President Joy Motts.
Another startling line figure is the number today which stands at 87-positions are filled.
The public for the most part believed the startling line was 102 which was the allocated positions. This is the figure shared at council meetings, public outreach, and the Coffee with the Cops presentations. Supports of Measure C have stated that they were under the assumption the starting figure was 102 and an additional 22 positions would be added to that figure.
Here is a look at Chief Allan Cantando’s presentation to the council in January.
Taking that a step further, Chief Cantando explained during the February meeting that:
In 1995, Antioch had a population of 74,925 with 89 sworn positions. Today, the city has a population of 103,833 with just 88 officers with calls for service nearly doubling (47,677 in 1995 vs. 81,572 in 2012). In doing the math, Antioch has increased its population by 28,908 people, while the police have actually lost 1 sworn position when compared to 1995.
When comparing to other cities. Concord has 151 officers (1.23 per capita), Richmond has 185 officers (1.76 per capita) and Fairfield has 119 (1.12 per capita). Antioch is dead last at just .98 per capita.
The Chief was honest in stating immediate goal is to get to 123 sworn positions with an end goal of 144 sworn positions. The difficult part is trying to fund it. To get the 123, the Council needs to find or create $3.4 million in revenue. To get to the ideal staffing level, close to $6.8 million is need.
What is scary here is when you look at a “per capita” figure, it’s actually lower than what was shared if the City Manager and Council are using the 82-fugure. At one point, the City of Antioch had the number of positions in the 70’s for a good portion of 2013.
For a Mayor and City Council who ran on “reducing crime”, that promise is now up in the air given the fudging of the starting line–its no wonder why this website and voters feel bamboozled for supporting Measure C.
So when in doubt, go to the budget.
On page 27 it highlights the breakdown followed by page 119 which offers more information:
Unfortunately, it’s ambiguous of what the starting line actually was when voters passed Measure C and you have a police department who is stuck in the middle between the City Council and voters. Whether the starting figure is 102, 89, 87, or 82–neither argument is wrong because no baseline was ever set which in my opinion was a dirty campaign trick and political move.
The question that should be asked is if Measure C is supposed to get police officer levels to what they are supposed to be today, what happens to the $4 million plus that is added to the General Fund? The staff report highlighted new positions, staff reclassification, a reserve that increased from 15% to over 19%, etc.
It is my hope that during the next General Fund study sessions, a lot of this miscommunication is cleared up and better explained because right now the Budget does not pass the smell test with Measure C funds potentially being strategically moved around within the budget.
City Council Recap:
As the Budget Study began, Antioch City Manager Steve Duran stated he wanted to frame the budget by explaining Measure C funding.
“Contrary to the blogosphere on Measure C, the Staff is recommending that 100% of measure C money go to police and code enforcement,” explained Duran. “There may be some confusion because we calculated they wanted to be balanced budget in the police department. We figured they could get to 97 officers up from 82 officers. We think by getting to 97 we think we will be pretty good. The next year will be 100 officers.
Duran state they will not hire 90 officers this year.
Finance Director Dawn Merchant shared the general fund spending (shown above), however, By 2017-18 the city is projecting they will have no reserves due to salary and pensions.
She further explained that current fiscal year projections indicate a fund balance of $7.86M, which is higher than projected with the adoption of the fiscal year 2013-2014 budget. This equates to an unassigned fund balance of 19.66% which exceeds the fund balance policy target of 15%.
Measure C Discussion
Public Comments
Hans Ho – I have to apologize to the Mayor because when I got wind of the budget I was very angry. I feel a bit better after talking to him. The budget doesn’t smell right to me. I will take Mr. Durans word that 100% will be spent on police and code enforcement. It feels like we are trimming the current police budget to wait until the Measure C funds come in. That is not what we campaigned for and be on top of the current police budget is. I hope I am wrong because if I am not I would have a very difficult time explaining to all the people who I solicited for votes.
Katherine Walker – I am concerned with the budget in what I read and that we are not going to be given what we felt what was promised. I saw some fluff in the budget that they consider. I noticed salary increases, classification changes. There is some fluff. Antioch has changed, we really need law enforcement.
Martha Parsons had a comment read into the record in Support of Measure C and encouraged the council to keep its promise in spending the funds where they were promised.
Bill Cook (via City Council portion of the meeting) says he heard was the 102 number (as a crime commissioner) and the 102 was what he was given out over 2-years. Now he hears 82?
Council Discussion:
City Manager Duran stated that the Police Allocation for 2014 was 102 but that is not what was fully funded, Measure C was an increase of $4.3 million to the budget.
Councilman Gary Agopian explained this is a real turning point deciding how to use the windfall of the money and keep the faith.
“A lot of it is miscommunication and misunderstanding of how the budget works and partly of the council — when u look at numbers you have to understand what they mean and how did they set the baseline,” explained Agopian.
He further suggested the Council and City do a better job with communication.
“How will we know other than seeing a line item on a budget without moving money from one line to another? It’s a fair question. No one should feel put down, every question is a good question,” said Agopian. “We are going to make mistakes. Communication mistakes. When I say communication mistakes and how we communicate is two separate things. We then have the press how to put it out. You are going to get sound bites and bits and pieces. You are not going to get it there, you have to come here.”
Agopian explained how people care where the money is spent.
“You care how we spend the money on just what we said it would be spent on. No smoke and mirrors. That the money at the end of the day does the things that we want it to do. What would that be?” said Agopian. “Crime is reduced and the city is cleaned up. We have not yet collected the money we are arguing about. But we started hiring police ahead of time. If you want to make it pure, lets stop hiring until we actually collect. If you want to be a purist in this business you only spend it when you collect it.”
He then questioned what the “trigger” was for what they were going to hire.
“So when did we trigger what we were going to hire… well I don’t know. Do you? I know it was put out in advertisements at 82, 83 and went to mid-70’s,” explained Agopian. “What was the staffing level in the 30-days prior to the election? I want to know that number. Not something in a political advertisement. That is our baseline. Whatever it is.”
Agopian further explained how he wanted to know the costs of how much it is to hire an officer and what is the net number per officer. He wanted to know the number if they are new and the number if they are coming from another agency. If they were sworn vs. unsworn.
“I want to know how many officers that represents or are we covering our deficit with Measure C. I am not accusing anyone, I just want to know,” said Agopian.
Agopian questioned staff but admitted he wanted to verify the information first.
“It sounds like what we are doing is covering our base deficit. I want everyone to know. Eliminating a furlough is a non-starter for me right now. In the middle of that recession and I lost 90% of my income, the next year I lost 85%. We almost didn’t make it…. We made it, but I am hear and I am looking at this budget, when I get at a final budget and I want to know why. I want the public to know. I want people to have faith with measure C,” said Agopian. “I don’t want them to feel for one second they are being bamboozled. But I wont vote to approve a budget when I think I am shortchanging something I promised.”
He further explained what he would like to see.
“What we should be doing is freezing salaries on all employees until we get this under control. And I am going to say that because I have no agenda—I just want to speak the truth. The public needs to know the truth,” said Agopian. “I am not saying anyone is lying, but we all need to know the truth. If we can’t hire to 105 officers why not and when will we? We have to be honest about that. We have a real problem. We have a budget deficit and we have a real problem.”
Agopian explained that there is going to be real sacrifices and the city and residents will have to buy in saying if not everyone is on the same page then the city as a whole will fail.
“I will not approve 1-new position, no new money spent on new positions. When it comes to police I want to know the cost and projection.”
Mayor Wade Harper defended the staff position on 82-officers as the starting point.
“The 102 number never said they would have 102+22 number to 124. I went back and reviewed all the documents and robo calls/srcripts/contributions/all the signs. The message was we were going to hire as close to 22 as possible. Hire on the street, not on the paper. Someone can spin it the way they want,” said Mayor Harper. “The reason we aked for measure C was because we cannot afford to hire more officers. What we were trying to do is get more officers on the street and all those Measure C funds will go towards Police and Code Enforcement.”
Harper explained that although 102-sworn positions have been authorized, the General Fund has not been able to support that level of staffing due to the financial hardships the City has been facing since 2009. Sworn staffing has hovered in the 80 FTE range in the last several years.
Harper encouraged staff to improving wording stating by proposing to increase staffing from a set number at a time to a number of final number to show the (20 or 22) to increase in the number of police–the idea is to be transparent of a starting point.
City Manager Duran said current staffing today is 86, not the Aug. 2013 which was at 82. Explained that the City were never at 102 positions and says that Antioch can only sustain 82 without Measure C funds.
Harper expanded that proper use of the Measure C funds will be verified and checked by the Citizen Oversight
Chart B then came into question by Councilman Agopian.
Agopian requested an explanation on why the baseline budget did not change from yer to year.
“I wanted to see why a baseline that doesn’t change from year to year which says they are using Measure C money to cover the gap. Why are we using static baseline and why not a reasonable plan increase in the police dept. and then Measure C after that? Looks like we are establishing a low baseline and using Measure C to cover the difference,” said Agopian.
Councilman Tiscareno agreed and wanted to see accurate projects over the next few years.
“We need to make sure we have adequate number of police officers now. I want to see us be proactive on this and I understand actual numbers is important but you are never going to run a business or city on actual numbers you need projections. I am appreciative that we have said Measure C will be used for police and code enforcement,” said Tiscareno. “It would be nice to put in 22 officers and do it right then I know we are going to satisfy what the voters asked us to do.”
Business License Tax Collection Discussion:
Councilman Tiscareno asked about staffing adjustments and enforcing licensing fees to help bring in revenue—such as hiring a dedicated person to that. Staff explained there is not a person because the General Fund cannot afford it. Staff explained they do send out notices.
Mayor Pro Tem Mary Rocha questioned the reclassification of staff and adjustments of hours—specifically the recreation vs. code enforcement. She supported putting more support towards a Code Enforcement Manager vs. Recreation”.
“When I see recreation to see how much we subsidize it and we do not have a person for code enforcement on licensing, it seems like we would make more money raising funds to pay for other programs.
Councilwoman Monica Wilson questioned staff on how much is being left on the table by the City not collecting all its fees. Staff again explained that they send notices annually and rely on business’s to submit to them on application/renewal then we send monthly notices. They then send to collections or in extreme cases code enforcement issues citations.
Mayor Wade Harper requested this position be brought back to the Council to see if the position would pay for itself if they created it.
Editors Note: For the Staff Report and more background information, click here
By Michael Burkholder
[email protected]
24 comments
I thank you for bringing attention to this. I voted for Measure C thinking we would have police staffing of 120 officers as presented at the coffee with the cops meetings. It was always a staffing of 102 and to hear it will be under 1 offer per 1,000 people in Antioch means this council has failed. The council is backtracking in its promise and I am disappointed.
Recall the mayor and fire the city manager. I am ashamed that this is even an issue. I reviewed the budget proposal and I see fluff from city reserves, staff increases and classifications, and to me it seems like Gary Agopian is the only one who cares to do the right thing. Fix crime first, spend on fluff second.
Are you Measure C supporters surprised. Welcome to Antioch!
As a rule of thumb, never vote for a tax that goes into the General Fund. Make sure it has a specific purpose. This is such a shame voters were tricked.
Tricked? So they aren’t hiring what they say they would. 5 less officers? Wow whoopie dingle. Sometimes having a little is better than having none at all.
This whole backpedaling has me sick to my stomach. I supported this tax and wish I can have my vote back. If the police staffing levels do not go further than they are today then what is the point of more money? Even if all the money does go to police, I cannot trust them based on the lower than anticipated staffing levels.
Just for kicks you may want to see how many officers is recommended by POST for a city this size. Last I knew it was 156 and that was in 2004; which really shows how under staffed the department is. The target of 100 is still way below recommended levels.
Come on Burkholder, expose the lies. You can do better than this. The city of Antioch is lying and the council is covering.
The council is lying and the employees are doing what they are told to do to keep their jobs! This is Mr Harpers way of doing business.
Kudos for quoting my comments correct,
Regarding collection of fees– what a joke to be sending out notices when there is no one to enforce collection. If the city is not going to hire someone to monitor/collect the fees then quit sending out the notices. At least it would save money on paper and postage costs.
Measure C is NOT a dedicated police tax ….. Again, as I put in my other blog entries, one can sum it all up anyone who bought the idea that the passage of Measure C would guarantee the hiring of 22 additional officers is an IDIOT ! The council never intended and CANNOT dedicate the funds solely for hiring police officers and/or code enforcement people.
The City Manager (Duran) is TOTALLY in the dark about the issue of an adequate number of police officers needed for a city this size, and with the violent crime (I mean come on, we now have stabbings and shootings/shoot outs in highly traversed public areas of the city during daylight hours) that is commonplace here now.
Keep the heat on the city council and Duran — if in fact he will even return your calls and/or emails, one has to wonder about that.
97 is NOT enough, 102 is NOT enough, Chief Cantando stated that ideally he would like to have 144 officers to do the things he wants to do — at a minimum 144 is more of a proper number of officers NOT 97.
The council, and City Manager have not addressed the issue that 2 new officers (acad. grads) recently resigned, 1 in the police academy that was hired by Antioch PD to attend has resigned, and one veteran officer left to another police department, with possibly more in the pipeline.
Officers leaving is NOT a plus, especially when your staffing levels are as terrible as what we have here in Antioch.
I say too, come on Burkholder, you can expose the BS that the council along with the City Manager is trying to “lay on the people” as acceptable.
I’m not going to fry Mr. Duran yet. He still has a grace period in my book. But the three R, H and T, are very certainly guilty. I know how Ms Wilson works, very honestly and Mr Agopian is the same way. I did not vote for “C” and those who did deserve what they get.
Be careful next time you vote. Demand clarity and full disclosure. Truly a sad day for measure c supporters. I can’t blame them for wanting a safer community, we all want one. Unfortunately, the mayor and council need money in order to keep this city afloat and they need to get money no matter what.
This the time for a big recall. At some point people need to our elected officals accountable. The only reason I voted for measure C was to: hire more police officers and get the neighbor-hood-improvement department back in force. If someone wants to start a recall, I’ll be more than happy to sign it.
I voted against Measure C for this exact reason, because it really needed to be fully outlined in the Measure that all funds would go to Hiring of Officers and Code Enforcement. When the signs all over Antioch went up prior to November it made everyone think this was ALL for hiring of LEO’s. This is not as I assumed isn’t turning out to be the case. The Citizens of Antioch didn’t want more tax increases, but we knew that we had to make some changes so that we can enforce the laws in our City. I truly hope that the 9th Circuit court of appeals law on CCW gets upheld. Once the criminals realized we can carry then I can bet you crime will go down. We as citizens need protection and if we can’t get that, then we need to provide protection on our own. But, right now that we can not. There will never be an easy answer to anything, but common-sense goes a long ways to making people feel more at ease. Sad day in our town.
Amen to that! I, too, am closely following what is happening with the CCW law change. If it is changed for the better, I’ll be one of the people camping out in front of Cantando’s office to turn in my application for a permit.
This city can’t protect its citizens, we need to do it ourselves.
All the people (Burk, clueless, and others) who defended measure C by telling people to trust government and there was no way a police tax would pass with 2/3 of the vote were wrong on both counts.
Take a leap of faith with the government but don’t trust the voters to pass an honest police tax…ouch! That is demonstrably bad advice.
Everyone can be wrong. No shame in that, but try to allow for a little less certainty next time.
Measure c passed proof that 2/3 of voting public are idiots. Police no/general fund yes. It actually said that in the measures description.
Another issue that is never discuses is the high attrition rate antioch police suffer from for newly hired officers. In the last two months 3 of the newly hired officers have quit either just before completing the training process or just after at great cost to the city. It is interesting that as we talk about the number of officers no one is asking why experienced officers leave and newly hired ones decided this is not the place to work.
Excelent points, Another Antioch Resident. This is a topic that definitely needs to be explored.
one can’t address the police issue, because everybody feels right away offended. but this is NOT a performance or job evaluation issues, this is a financial issue where a city department of about 100 employees holds our city of 105,000 financial hostage. council has never searched for solutions, they just declared a “fiscal emergency” and put measure c on the ballot.
even all monies are going into the general fund, people were made belief, specially by our mayor harper, there will be 22 officers hired, immediately.
in the new proposed budget, the salary % (police department) went up from 65 to 73% of the total city budget. since the animal shelter is belongs to the police department, it even is now at a staggering 74%. raises are still given.
i strongly believe the city needs a independent work load study of our police department.
we need a fully staffed code enforcement, all cso’s hired back, and any and all sworn “indoor” cops back on the street.
@Karl Dietzel, There was NEVER going to be 22 officers hired “immediately” upon the passage of Measure C … No one needs to be offended, all they had to do was to have read the language of Measure C instead of blindly believing what the campaign ads had printed on them. You keep talking about all these “indoor” cops like the police department is “hiding” them from the public, please answer this question, “What “indoor” cops are you referring to — detectives, administrative staff, INJURED cops working light duty (if it’s available) ??????”
Karl, you keep harping away at “fiscal responsibility” but yet you want fully staffed code enforcement, ALL the CSOs hired back, I think you forget that costs a lot of money …. And besides, Code Enforcement, and CSOs don’t respond to calls for service, make traffic stops, and arrest people when necessary …. I believe the last count of sworn police officers that make up the police department is around 89 officers, that number includes the Chief of Police, the command staff at the police department, the detectives and officers who work the street.
For the last five years the Antioch Police Officers Association, along with the Sworn Management did NOT receive some VERY substantial pay raises — in fact there were no pay increases given during that time (from 2008 to 2013), and during the same time members began paying the employee portion of their PERS, which equated to a 9% cut in pay.
Lets all save the money in hiring ANOTHER “consultant” to perform a “work load” study of the police department, one can see they are EXTREMELY OVERWORKED just by looking at the City Manager’s report from the last week.
The agency that does a “workload audit” is POST, and several years ago they have already determined the police department to be “over worked” and severely under staffed based on the needs of the community.
The financial issue you are talking about lies squarely in the lap of the current city council, and city manager who think it is more important to use some Measure C money (mixed with the general fund — required by law because Measure C was NOT a specific tax to be used for one use — remember?) to hire a new Recreation Director, and return employees that are not essential to public safety back to a 40 hour work week, while the number of police officers they want to hire (97) still leaves Antioch with less than the 102 authorized positions.
@Another Antioch Resident, excellent points.
Experienced officers leave a police department for a variety of reasons, possibly the reasons (just a few) some are looking elsewhere is more pay, better benefits (Antioch used to offer the best, but not anymore), a look at the “big picture” making one realize that things will NOT get better in Antioch because of a non-supportive City Manager who wants to take away from the police department budget — thinking they are Underworked and Overpaid. I don’t know for sure, but I heard talk that his track record from Hercules shows he “decimated” the police department budget.
Why newly hired people with no police experience quit? They get overwhelmed with the workload and responsibility, many have NO military or real life experience or lack the maturity to understand that one cannot allow events taking place in their personal life to flow over and effect their work life.
I mean when you have recruits who have been living at home, except for a brief period of time when they lived in college dorm, take them off their mommy’s teet and thrust them into a job like being a cop, you are gonna have problems with retention no matter what type of degree one possesses or how well they did in college …….
Again, the key words here are this scenario: 22 or 23 years old, fresh out of college, living at home with mom and/or dad, no bills other than student loans —- SOMEONE WITH NO REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE WILL HAVE PROBLEMS AS A COP.
But police departments love these people because they possess a college degree (which is not easy to achieve but ….. ), so they will continue to waste money on them until they wake up to some study put out by some Chief of Police Association somewhere that sheds light on them needing to change their hiring practices.
DO NOT CONFUSE WHAT I AM SAYING AS SOMETHING LIKE HAVING A COLLEGE DEGREE IS A WASTE OF TIME, NOTHING IS FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.
Some of my points from another post:
The council, and City Manager have NOT addressed the issue that 2 new officers (acad. grads) recently resigned, 1 in the police academy that was hired by Antioch PD to attend has resigned, and one veteran officer left to another police department, with possibly more in the pipeline.
Officers leaving is NOT a plus, especially when your staffing levels are as terrible as what we have here in Antioch.
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