Mea culpa
We took another beating in the newspaper today from a raft of letters denouncing the City for the sin of gouging citizens out of $1.49 a month per phone line.According to the outraged letter writers, we're guilty of arrogance, incompetence, waste, sloth, manipulation, stupidity, greed and, probably the most grevious offense of all, getting the newspaper mad at us.
Mea culpa.
For those who don't know Latin or aren't Catholic, it means "my own fault." Those who are Catholic know that early in each mass, we admit, "I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do." We used to ritually beat our chest while reciting these words, but I notice that has fallen out of fashion.
When I was hired four years ago as City Manager, I inherited a budget crisis. We had a hiring freeze, a salary freeze, a contracting freeze and an out of town training freeze. We were spending more than we were taking in and the budget office's projections showed it would continue to get worse. The Council's Ad Hoc Budget Committee had come up with a sweeping set of recommendations for change.
The first thing I did was to undertake a comprehensive review of all City operations, top to bottom. The report is still "online" on the city's website:
It was the basis for a Three Year Budget Plan that was approved by the City Council. It called for cutting city expenses and increasing revenue to eliminate the spending gap. It also called for addressing four neglected priorities, starting with expanding our police and fire staffing to improve emergency response, deal with a rise in gang crime and put school resource officers back in our schools.
The three-year budget plan worked. We reduced expenses. We raised revenue. We eliminated the deficit spending. And we hired seven additional police officers and put on the streets a new 3 person fire/paramedic crew.
With the revenue from the 911 fee, we can add an additional six officers and three firefighter/paramedics. After sixteen straight years in which our population grew and 911 calls soared, without adding a single officer or firefighter, in two years we will have added 13 officers and 6 firefighter/paramedics. We will have improved emergency response time, reduced gang crime and put school resource officers back in the schools.
Did we do a lousy job of communicating all this? Absolutely. Did we give the impression that we were bent on sneaking through a crazy fee for people calling 911? Unfortunately. Did the newspaper and out of town media have a field day with all this? Yes, they did.
Whose fault is all this? I'll take responsibility. Great, say the angry letter writers and bloggers. RESIGN!!! Go to Texas!!! REPEAL THE EVIL TAX!!!
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But the next time they or you have a life-threatening emergency, I want the response to get there within five minutes. I want the best qualified and best trained people to show up with the right equipment with one goal in mind: saving your life and home.
Maybe there is a better way to achieve that goal. Clearly there was a better way to handle getting to that goal. But as City Manager, that will continue to be my goal, as it has been for the last four years.
posted by Rick Cole at
8:10 AM
9 Comments:
People really want service but don't have a clue what it costs. Hence, sometimes the less you tell the public, the less they complain. That is the sad general state of politics. Look at the Federal situation. Most people don't have a clue how big the deficiets are and that we spend $200 billion just to finance the debt. They want their tax breaks and our politicians are more than willing to accomodate.
Police and fire services are very expensive. Perhaps its time we made some hard choices about how much we can really afford to spend. I think the 911 service is critical but perhaps there are some other areas we can cut back - can more routine tasks be done by non-uniformed staff at a lower pay rate? Perhaps overtime policies should be reviewed? This may be an opportunity for a closer look at our fiscal situation.
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But the next time they or you have a life-threatening emergency, I want the response to get there within five minutes
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Mr Cole, this comment conflicts with part of the 911 tax proposal. As part of your proposal you are offering a $50 opt out fee for the $1.49 per month. From reading the PDF file that you made available on the VC Star website it sounds like the $50 can be waived by the City of Ventura if a 911 call is deemed an emergency. This of course in and of itself would be a hoop to jump. The real problem I have with the $50 opt out fee, is the fact that it is even being considered as an option. Many people won't take the time to read the fine print, as they shouldn't be expected to. We all have busy lives. I am afraid that people who have opted out of the $1.49 when faced with a possible emergency situation will now hesitate to call 911. They may hesitate because they are not certain if they will be billed $50 for this call, or they may hesitate because they figure someone else will call. How would you like it if it was you or one of your family members who were faced with an emergency. Would you want a possible good-samaritan to then hesitate and possibly NOT call 911 because of the possible $50 fee? You talk about wanting to collect money from this proposal to help 911 response time and to improve public safety, but the $50 option does the opposite. It puts the public in more danger. From doing research, I have come suspicious that the $50 option was put in place probably by city lawyers to keep the $1.49 tax/fee from being challenged in the courts. We shouldn't put above the safety of our citizens the worries of our City Council and Manager of the $1.49 fee being challenged in the courts. It is hard to believe that the City Council (5 of it's 6) members and the City Manager can't see this. Are the dollar signs that blinding? Please think of the elderly who will be confused by this $50 opt out, please think of those whose lives can be saved/lost by a hesitation of a few seconds because someone was contemplating a possible $50 fee.
Rick, seems like you have become the lighting rod on this issue. Shouldn't the City Council, whom the public voted into office, be out in front to help explain the City's position?
I also think that special Town Hall meeting is probably due to explain the broader budget status and the options considered in coming up with this tax. I am not sure that the back and forth in the newspapers is helpful. It seems to be more like venting than real communication.
All good comments and appreciated.
I agree with Anonymous One that the current structure for the opt-out as proposed might very well inadvertently discourage someone. As I've acknowledged, we did not do a good job of explaining the opt-out provision to the media who in turn did not do a very good job communicating it to the public.
The Council gave us instructions to rethink this for the February 25City Council hearing to officially set the rate (so far, the Council has simply passed the ordinance authorizing the fee.) We are doing just that and looking at several options that have been suggested both by the public and by public safety staff.
I told the Council we would be guided by three principles:
1) Since the rationale for the fee is to improve emergency response, we strive to avoid discouraging anyone from calling 911.
2) We should strive to make it as fair as possible.
3)We want to make it as simple as possible for citizens to understand and for the City to administer.
We clearly do need more face to face discussion rather than all the often erroneous or emotional exchange in the paper and cyberspace. The town hall suggestion merits consideration.
The Star article about the man who died in an apartment fire in Montalvo last week said the fact that it took the fire dept. 8 minutes to arrive was NOT due to not having enough personnel. It was because of the location of the fire stations. How in the world will adding more personnel increase response times with this scenario?
Well, the Star, as always, is entitled to their own opinions. But we have deployed a roving fire engine precisely to overcome the fact that our stations were built before much of the housing added over the last forty years. The addition of three more firefighters will allow us to expand that deployment at less cost than building new stations.
I have observed over the years that there is increasing pressure for Ventura to grow. When I first moved here there was strong resistance on the Ventura City council to growth. I find it difficult to believe that the need for more infrastructure funding is unrelated to pro-growth planning which I do not support. I believe the low population density and social stability of the city is something which most of the residents find desirable.
I also believe that housing expansion into the hillsides contaminated by years of oil industry use is the natural path of this expansion, and that such an endeavor is fraught with the danger of unexpected fiscal and health costs.
So while the idea we are being tricked into a new tax is disturbing on its own demerits, it also brings into question what larger plans lay in store.
Re: Response Times; Just to add, another way to save money and reduce the response time is to do away with the private ambulance service and utilize Fire EMT's. From what I've heard private ambulances aren't typically on-call from fire stations so they may have to travel a farther distance. I'm not sure what the arrangement is with the private companies, but I would think it would be more cost effective to employ Fire EMT's[?].
Its freaking ridiculous i have not called 911 in about 6 or 7 years and my family and husbands buisness has 14 phones all together its so stupid that i have to pay more on top of my taxes its not my fault people responisble for the citys budget is incompitent it pisses me off you guys are nickel and diming us to death especially in the time of recession thanks!!!
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