Antioch City Council Suggests Police Staffing Should be 104 With Measure C Funds

The second round of the Antioch budget discussions occurred Tuesday night where the City Council took a stance of defending the City Budget by stating the starting line on number of officers hired was 82-sworn versus the 102-allocated figure.

What this means is that with Measure C funding, it will allow the City of Antioch to hire 22 additional officers on top of the 82–making the total number of officers 104 while staff has proposed 97-officers for fiscal year 2014/15 and 100-officers in 15/16.

Measure C supporters dispute the city’s figures for a startling line of 82-officers because the city had allocated 102-positions in last years budget. They believe the starting line should be 102 with 22-offices on top of that. They claim the Measure C funds of an estimated $4 million in tax revenue should be on top of what was already allocated for the police department last year.

Both Mayor Wade Harper and Councilman Gary Agopian stated Tuesday that they believe the number of officers should be increased to 104 as a way to keep the promise to the public.

Measure C supporters now feel like they were lied to in order to pass a tax that will now be used to help with the General Fund versus police staffing levels. While there is no doubt Measure C money will go to fund police and code enforcement, there is now more than $4 million that could theoretically be spend elsewhere in the city since the starting line is 82-sworn versus the allocated 102-positions.

Editors comment: Meaning, the funding for sworn positions number 83 through 101 is being spent elsewhere in the budget while Measure C funds then come in and replace the funding of those positions.

Councilman Gary Agopian explained that the City needs to tell people honestly what they could lose and what we could do because the city budget is not going to get better unless we take in more money or reduce expenses.

“I don’t care how many you want (officers), you don’t get more than that ever. We have to wake up to that,” said Agopian. “No matter what we may argue about what was intended and what was said, it doesn’t matter what we think it only matters what we have in the bank. That is all that ever matters. We can’t do a better job at animal services, library, Water Park, its limited by money and the money is drying up.”

Agopian says the number is “82 and said we would hire 22” while all Measure C money is going to police and code enforcement. He says the final number of police hired should bring the total staffing to 104-officers.

“I don’t care what was promised, numbers change, the economy changes,” said Agopain.

Mayor Wade Harper disagreed with Councilman Agopian saying that he does want promises kept but that the number is disputed but in his view the council is keeping its promises. He says he reviewed the material from Measure C along with robocalls, phone scripts and none of the information said 102 + 22 officers.

“The number was a moving target. It said without measure C we would have 82 officers. Spending all the measure C funds on police and code enforcement close to the 20+ officers is a promised kept. I don’t believe that is a broken promise,” said Harper.

They mayor also explained that when they originally set out on a tax, there was two taxes on the table along with different percentages of sales tax and sunsets—the numbers were all over the map.

Ultimately, he agreed with Councilman Agopian that the total number of police staffing should be set at 104-sworn.

“At this point I don’t think there is any broken promise,” said Harper. “Let’s not look at getting more officers on paper but let’s get them on the streets.”

Councilman Tiscareno explained that there will be a debate on the actual numbers of what was said but that at the end of the days, we have to look at what the numbers actually will be.

During public comments, many residents voiced their concerns on the proposed police budget.

Hans Ho accused the council of playing with the figures and even brought in a copy of the budget from last year.

“In Fiscal Year 13/14 budget approved July 2013, it shows 101.9 sworn officers are funde,” says Ho. “I have the document in my hand. No amendment to the budget was ever voted on. 101.9 became 102. Where did the money and funding for 19.9 officers go to? Measure C funding was meant for 20 on top of 102.”

Mark Jordan scorned staffs use of hope in a city budget calling it unacceptable and did not agree with the budget.

“Hope is not a business plan. I don’t know any budgeting process, economic class that teaches about hope. To have Ms. Merchant provide to us an idea that we need to hope and that the city manager signed off on it is completely unacceptable,” said Jordan. “We have an income problem… it’s not about houses, it’s about jobs and producing income for the city. You can’t budget your way out of this problem.”

Terry Ramus urged the Council to be honest and not to play games.

“If you can’t make the numbers this year or next, keep it honest and lets work together to get the neighborhoods under control. That is a solution approach, but don’t fake me out,” said Ramus.

He asked about why the City was spending just 4% more than pre-recession spending but during the pre-recession levels the city had 32% more police.  He explained how today there is less than 100-officers but the City pre-recession had 125 with the similar budget.

“Let’s find out where all that money is going. The people want the problems in the neighborhoods dealt with,” said Ramus.

Marty Fernandez stated the budget was a hoax because no one was talking about the unfunded liability.

“Nobody has mentioned the elephant in the room which is the unfunded pensions and medical we have for the city. How about that? Where we going to come up with that money? Should we be paying something into that into the budget?” said Fernandez.

Outside of Measure C

• The City Council and staff will look at the privatization of Lone Tree Golf Course and looking at the idea of selling it in case they have to unload it at a cheaper cost later.
• Looking at the idea of outsources the Water Park
• Library budget & maintenance
• Earthquake Insurance was estimated at $150k and they will decide in the near future whether to purchase it or not.
• The Staff will also begin developing a priority list of what the City must fund vs. would like to fund.

Here is a look at some of the staff report regarding Measure C.

Study Session: Budget

Staff’s recommended budget slows the pace of deficit spending by using any increases in non-Measure C sources of revenue to reduce the structural deficit. This is a very optimistic approach, hoping that the City can buy enough time for the current wave of development applications to bring forth development that will increase property tax, sales tax and Measure C revenues significantly enough to avoid significant lay-offs about three years down the road

• Police sworn staffing was 82 thirty days prior to the November election.
• Total personnel cost of all police sworn and non-sworn staffing hired in the last four months. Seven Police Officers and one CSO have been hired since November 1st. Current annual salary and benefit costs are $1,024,585 for the seven Officers and $98,975 for the CSO. However, there has also been salary savings which have occurred through attrition, with 6 total sworn positions having separated since November 1st.
• How many Officers could the Police allocated Measure C revenue fund? We are projecting $4,325,847 in Measure C revenue allocation to the Police Department in fiscal year 2014-15. The amount of Officers this could fund varies on the step the Officer would come in as (A, B, C, etc.), whether they are a “classic” or “PEPRA” PERS employee, what extra compensation the Officer may receive, and what level of benefit coverage they are entitled to. For purposes of this analysis to make it as least complicated as possible, we used the salary of a lateral Officer at Step E receiving the highest level of extra compensation and benefits possible (educational, senior Officer, family cafeteria benefits) and then lateral Step C and a new Officer at Step A for a comparison range (based on fiscal year 2014-15 budgeted salary costs). The cost does not include costs that may be incurred for shift differential, field training, standby pay, holiday pay, bilingual pay or additional overtime. These additional costs could increase the cost per Officer. Each new Officer also has hiring costs that are paid for recruitment/background, uniform and safety equipment. The breakdown of these costs is itemized on the next page.
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• It is important to note that such a significant increase in the amount of officers may require additional senior sworn staff, vehicles, equipment, support staff, etc. which are not accounted for in the table above and will impact the number of Officers that can ultimately be hired as the funds may need to be directed to other staffing and equipment needs besides just the hiring of patrol officers.