As a result of a four-hour City Council workshop on public
safety Friday, two public committees will explore ways to fund four
additional police officers and one sergeant to the Morgan Hill
Police Department.
Morgan Hill – As a result of a four-hour City Council workshop on public safety Friday, two public committees will explore ways to fund four additional police officers and one sergeant to the Morgan Hill Police Department.
A report from the city’s Public Safety and Community Services Committee on May 2 recommended a tax to pay for more officers.
The same committee reviewed a 27-page report prepared by MHPD plus a 16-page POST, or Peace Officer Standards and Training report, which recommended the City Council increase police staffing.
If the council approves a tax to fund the staffing increase, a general tax could be put on the November 2008 ballot. Funds raised through a general tax would not be restricted to police staffing, but if the council proposes a specific tax, it could only be used for that purpose. A specific tax, which requires a two-thirds majority vote, could be on the ballot as early as June 2008, Morgan Hill City Manager Ed Tewes said. A general tax requires a 51 percent majority vote.
The department is funded for 38 sworn officers, but that just barely reaches one officer per 1,000 residents, the lowest officer to population ratio of any department in the area. Gilroy, San Jose, Santa Clara, Milpitas, Campbell, Palo Alto and Mountain View all have higher ratios.
Morgan Hill Police Chief Bruce Cumming prepared a detailed report for the city’s Public Safety and Community Services Committee which he presented this spring. The report recommended increasing the department’s staffing. As a result of Cumming’s findings, the committee recommended the council consider increasing local police staff.
Friday’s workshop educated council members on the city’s policing needs and city staff prepared an extensive report that included information on police services reviewed by the committee but also questions submitted by Councilmember Mark Grzan and staff responses.
In the audience for the workshop were City Attorney Janet Kern, Morgan Hill police Cmdrs. David Swing and Joe Sampson, Morgan Hill police support services manager Patti Yinger and several Morgan Hill police officers.
“It is encouraging that the council is looking at the issue of public safety staffing,” said Swing. “Certainly our goal is that they examine it closely and put together a long-term solution.”
Tewes said the workshop’s objective of clarifying the public safety committee’s recommendation was accomplished.
“If another objective was to start developing consensus on the next steps, we made progress on that as well since the council finance committee is going to follow up on the council’s direction to ‘think outside the box,’ to look at reducing costs without reducing service levels,” Tewes said.
Councilmember Marby Lee said she “strongly supports” finding a different method besides a tax to fund the increase to the department.
“What bothered me about the (staff) report was that the only thing on the table was a tax,” she said. “To me, that is the very last resort.”
Although she denied the suggestion that she wanted to cut recreational services, she said, she believes the city should explore another way to fund those services so that there is more money to fund public safety.
Tewes said 81 cents of every general fund dollar goes to public safety.
Councilmember Larry Carr said he felt the council members agreed that they want to pursue other methods of funding.
“I think the consensus is that to cut from the 19 cents that is spent on other general fund expenses to put more into the 81 cents is not what we want to do,” he said. “What we want is another dollar.”
Grzan said he believes the city should look into contracting out for police services, or at least dispatcher services. He also said perhaps the department could rely more on mutual aid from other departments.
Cumming said the council needs to carefully consider the impact of requesting more information about contracting out dispatch services specifically or police services in general.
“Before you launch into something like this, it is not a light-hearted decision,” he said. “This is not like getting a bid to paint your house.”
Cumming told the council that investigating the possibility of contracting out services would affect department morale.
Lee said she requested more information about contracting out services to answer questions from community members who ask her why the council doesn’t consider that avenue.
“That’s not something I want to do,” she said. “In my mind, local control is good to have.”
Cumming said the general public may not understand the complexity of law enforcement, which may be why some in the community are calling for the city to contract for services with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department.
“My guess is that those people that ask (about contracting out police services) that are not people who understand policing,” he said. “It’s not a dollars and cents business.”
Carr and Councilman Greg Sellers pointed out that the council has decided not to pursue contracting out any services.
“Can we focus ourselves on things that we might actually do,” Carr suggested, noting that to spend city staff time researching something the council would not consider would be a wasted effort.
Morgan Hill police Sgt. Dave Myers offered to give the council members first hand information on contract services if they desired. When Morgan Hill Mayor Steve Tate called for public comment before adjourning the workshop, Myers said, “If anybody would like information about contracting out dispatch services, what it does and what it doesn’t do, I’ll be glad to talk to you. I experienced two years of that.”
The public safety committee will attempt to bring back their next report to the Aug. 22 city council meeting, while the Finance and Administration committee would only say they would try to complete their work on this issue by September, Grzan said.
