Aiming to fix
”
broken windows
”
and clean up crime in the city’s worst neighborhoods, the Morgan
Hill Redevelopment Agency is taking a new approach to economic
development this year. The agency is hiring police officers, not
for the whole community, but to work almost exclusively in those
crime-stricken parts of town.
Morgan Hill – Aiming to fix “broken windows” and clean up crime in the city’s worst neighborhoods, the Morgan Hill Redevelopment Agency is taking a new approach to economic development this year. The agency is hiring police officers, not for the whole community, but to work almost exclusively in those crime-stricken parts of town.
The Morgan Hill City Council voted 3-1 Wednesday to amend the RDA’s five-year implementation plan, adding a police services plan. On June 13, the council unanimously adopted the fiscal year 2007-08 budget that allocates some $256,000 per year in RDA funds for hiring police officers. Wednesday’s vote clears the way, legally, to make those hires.
But at least one council member, Greg Sellers, is opposed to the plan, partly because he feels it’s wrong to section off part of the community for special police attention.
“We should provide police services wherever they’re needed,” Sellers said in an e-mail.
Sellers, explaining his dissenting vote, said he favors paying for any increases in police services through the general fund, because that’s where all law-enforcement services are currently funded. He also said he’s opposed to siphoning off RDA funds that “are better used for economic development.”
The Morgan Hill Redevelopment Agency, created in November 1980, has been amended four times. Last November, the council amended the plan again to receive more “tax increment” funds – up to $333 million – to continue the agency’s work. This year the council committed to spending $20 million in RDA funds on downtown infrastructure.
Others feel hiring police officers will make the RDA’s project area – the valley floor west of U.S. 101 from the north city limits to the south city limits – even more appealing to developers and encourage investment.
“No one wants to invest in an area that could or would place his or her business at risk,” said councilman Mark Grzan in an e-mail. “New officers will reduce that risk.”
The RDA’s plan is to hire one officer assigned to the Crime Suppression Team, at a cost of $108,951; one officer who will address gang education and prevention efforts, at a cost of $108,951; and one part-time records specialist to support the Crime Suppression Team, at a cost of $38,047.
While the duties of the RDA-funded officers would be to provide services within the RDA boundaries, Morgan Hill City Attorney Janet Kern said it’s her guess that in an emergency situation all law-enforcement units would respond if wherever needed.
The use of RDA funds to hire public safety officers is a new strategy for Morgan Hill, and one city officials say they didn’t model it after other RDAs. Unable to pinpoint where the idea came from, Morgan Hill City Manager Ed Tewes said the Morgan Hill Public Safety and Community Services Committee wanted to address blighted properties that tended to have a disproportionate share of criminal activity.
“There is a rather famous theory about ‘broken windows’ that suggests that public safety is harmed if things like code enforcement issues and broken windows are left unaddressed,” Tewes said in an e-mail. “Rudy Giulani and Bill Bratton take credit for the turn-around in the New York City crime rate (because of) their attention to such issues.”
