The one refrain you hear from the City of Santa Ana’s administrators and City Council members is “we don’t have the money for that!”
Is that true? Let’s see where we might be able to find some extra money:
- $2 million a year – cut the Bowers budget and let the rich guys on the board fend for themselves.
- $5 million a year – We can get this by leasing the Bowers to the rich guys on the Bowers board. They can continue to keep the concessions money. Bowers chones for all!
- $100K – no more handouts for the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce. Let those rich guys fend for themselves.
- $25 million a year – possible savings if we outsource our police to the O.C. Sheriff’s Department. I am assuming about a twenty percent reduction in the police budget, which is $123,184,940.
Wow! in one year you could bring in $32 million that could be spent on new libraries, fixing our roads, fixing our parks and creating new parks, etc. Si se puede!
Over the course of the next five years you could realize $160 in savings! Or the city leaders could just continue wringing their hands and crying about the fact that we have no money. That isn’t true and we know it.
Now I know that some folks will scream and holler about outsourcing the police. But our co-blogger, Thomas Gordon, in recent weeks has twice called 911 and got ZERO results. One instance involved a tagger that he observed – the cops never showed up.
More recently, he saw a guy getting beat up by three perps – and again the cops never showed up. They asked if there were weapons involved – Gordon said yes, there were six fists being used to beat up a guy. And no one showed up.
I am sure we can get that kind of “service,” if not better, from the Sheriff’s Department.
This Monday night, at 6 p.m., you can let the city leaders know how you feel about all this, at the City Council meeting. You can read the agenda at this link. This is it folks. Show up and let your voice be heard – or else they will pass the new budget and keep wasting our money.
Thanks Art. What do you know about the Trash Fee increase mentioned on page 4 of the Register Local Section today? This can’t be true! We already pay way to much in taxes in Santa Ana! This tax/fee must not be increased! BUT with the political power of Waste Mangagement and Judy Ware (Major Trash Companys) can we trust the council to vote against it? It would be nice if Michele and Sal would take hard stands against the fee increase before the meetings. Please try to call them and find out where they stand..thanks
Poster 1,
I saw that. We are working on another “Eye on Santa Ana” column today that will include that story.
You are quite right. We need to stand up and ask the city to find another way to save money re trash. We paid for those robot trucks by the way!
Check your math Art – the police budget is proposed at $114 million so a 10% savings is not $25 million. Also, fellow blogger Gilbert thinks MV is getting a deal from the sheriff when they pay $200k per officer as compared to SA’s cost of $160k per police employee – not a bargain.
The Bowers dog doesn’t hunt. Stick to filling potholes.
Don’t these trash haulers have long term contracts which they fought touth and nail to get with the city? If the current trash hauler does not want to work for the city any more then perhaps it’s time to put the trash contract out to bid again. How can the working poor in our city pay anther increase in taxes? Even most of the renters get these increases passed through to them in rent increases or many pay the trash fees directly. Where is Latino Health Access OCCO to stand up to these increases? They do so much great work but could do more when we need them to be our voice, I hope they will be out in force on Monday night too.
I have lived in San Clemente and the sherif are a big improvement over our old police force.
Poster 3,
Good point. I was relying on numbers I got from a friend. I took another look and revised accordingly.
To do a fair comparison using Larry’s figures you have to identify how much of that budget is for personnel and vice versa.
Trash fee increase?
Is that to recoup the money given to politico’s like Carlos Bustamante, Miguel Pulido, David Benavides and others during their most recent election?
# 7
Waste Management gave Bustamante big bucks in his supervisor race and he should sit this vote out.
hello Mr. Pedroza
can you tell me where you got the 1 million dollars given to the chamber annually?
what is your source? Can you point this out in the proposed budget I am having a hard time finding it. Thanks in advance
carlos,
The city will admit to $100K in Chamber related expenses. I am assuming there is a lot more money scattered throughout the budget in programs that the city works with in conjunction with the Chamber.
I am saying CUT OFF the Chamber 100%. We don’t need them. Never did.
thanks again Mr. Pedroza, Just what in the world are they providing for 100K?
carlos,
You won’t believe it! Go back to my article about the city budget meeting. Assistant city manager Catherine Standiford said that $25K is going to the city’s membership in the chamber (those are some expensive bagels at those meetings) and $85K for distributing the Chamber newspaper, the Cityline.
Problem with that is the paper includes ads against City Council candidates the Chamber dislikes. And two of THEM won last year…
The city should not be paying to distribute propaganda that includes political ads!
Given that the Police and Fire unions did not support Bustamonte, Tinajero, Martinez, OR Alvarez the first time she ran or against Umberg, Perhaps you may find Councilmembers open to your ideas
Poster #3.
I posted facts and figures from official city documents and added my observations. No, we do not pay our OCSD deputies an average salary of $200,000 per year.
However we also do not have our own Theo Lacy, Musik or any other jails in that those costs are included in the total budget. The same applies to support staff and equipmment that is maintained by the county.
Every policy decision regarding when to outsource a function of government should be closely weighed before tkaing that step. In our case, I think our founding fathers made the right choice. Some have suggested creation of our own police department. If that were to happen we would end up spending x dollars for a new police station that, using our design criteria, would put our city into the red. One suggestion is to sub contract with Irvine’s police department or create a southern regional force with other south county cities. To me this trial balloon will not fly.
thanks mr. Pedroza
that begs the question how much does the chamber charge for their membership fees. I bet it is not $25K. what business would pay that kind of annual fee?
on another note maybe you should edit the post to say the chamber gets only $100K instead of a million since it is not in the proposed budget. with that said I do agree with you on cutting them off UNLESS they are providing a valuable service for a competitive price. I would not mind 85K in their newspaper if it delivered 85K worth of advertising. I doubt that it does.
carlos,
That is a fair request. Consider it done.
The city by the way approved a massive expenditure for flat screen TVs that they are going to install in order to show propaganda to city residents and visitors, in public places.
So what exactly do they need the Cityline for? And can’t they issue press releases and put information on their website if they have something to say? Again, why do we need the Cityline?
I think the Chamber is going to be in trouble over this issue…starting Monday night at the City Council meeting.
We subsidize parks, I think subsiding our museums is fine, but city residents should get a break if not a free pass into a place like the Bowers when it gets city subsidies. They should know that. On the police: I think an across the board outside audit of their budgetary practices is crucial for the city. When my house was robbed they showed a surprising lack of interest in the physical evidence; I know people other than Thomas who get almost no response or an hours delayed response to 911 calls; two property thefts at my house went unsolved; how many of the shootings have been solved? Why do the police share so little about what happened at the scene of these shootings with the families? They talk to the press… they should talk more with the victims’ families. Do they really need helicopters? Seriously they get half the annual budget from the city, not to mention outside government aid… if a damned needle falls and pops a tire illegally, how come they don’t know about it? 123million dollars. There must be better administration practices.
The folks at Bowers don’t really want Santa Ana residents at the museum every day…we might scare off the out of city folks who come to visit. No, instead they offer a token day a month to us and then try to buy our support by putting on a Mexican Art exhibit now and then thinking it will keep the natives from getting restless.
The suggestion that an organization run by Mike Carona would be better than the SAPD is ridiculous!
Look back at the posts from this blog and you’ll see nothing but hacks at the Carona follies, and yet suddenly Pedroza is advocating that the sheriffs take over the city. Does Art have a major memory problem or is he a hypocrite?
Poster 20,
Carona is a horrible Sheriff, no doubt, but you cannot say that his entire department is like him. There are many decent deputies who did not support him.
Usually when the Sheriff’s take over a city police department they hire most of the cops. They just change uniforms.
If we can save $$$ by outsourcing to the Sheriff’s we need to do it. Our city has so many needs that we cannot afford to do otherwise.
Residents should attend tonight’s
Santa Ana Council meeting (Monday)to express their displeasure with the wild tax spending the city is proposing instead of just complaining about high taxes and corrupt politicians.
Santa Ana
Resident