Police force size

September 21, 2013

Let me start by stating that I respect the job that the El Paso Police Department does, both in terms of quality and relative cost.  Our current chief seems to be a no nonsense type who unfortunately has to deal with the city heirarchy.  He seems to have been able to keep a low profile and not bring his difficulties with city management out into the public eye.

How many policemen do we need?

I am not an expert on law enforcement issues.  I might be wrong in what I am about to say.  If so, I trust that someone will set me straight.

Many times when I hear about the need to increase the number of officers, the justification given is in terms of number of officers per population size.  The list below shows those numbers for a few cities in the area:

Citizens per officer
Albuquerque 517
Austin 496
Dallas 356
El Paso 579
Fort Worth 496
Phoenix 491
San Antonio 606
San Diego 705

The average for these cities comes to 512 citizens per officer, putting El Paso in a position where each officer must deal with more people.

Number of crimes

El Paso is recognized as the safest large city in the United States.  Our crime rate is low compared with other cities.  The FBI publishes reports that show the total number of crimes (violent and crimes against property) by city.  Looking at the numbers based on the number of crimes that each policeman has to deal with:

Crimes Officers Crimes per Officer
Albuquerque 33,869 1,055 32.10
Austin 46,878 1,605 29.21
Dallas 62,680 3,666 17.10
El Paso 19,270 1,078 17.88
Fort Worth 36,986 1,505 24.58
Phoenix 70,368 3,146 22.37
San Antonio 89,611 2,303 38.91
San Diego 37,229 1,863 19.98

The average number of crimes each officer has to deal with each year in these cities is 23.  El Paso’s police officers deal with fewer crimes than the average.  By the way, I wanted to include Tucson but the FBI says that Tucson does not tally property crimes the way that the other cities do.

Remember that these are not jaywalking or traffic offenses.  Violent crimes and crimes against property take more time than simple events.

The size of the police department is a major factor in our city budget.  We should at least have a thorough discussion about how big our police department should be.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Money down the drain

September 20, 2013

When we created our Municipal Drainage Utility (stormwater) the city promptly moved it’s operations  over the the Public Service Board.

These were costs that were formerly contained in the city budget.  A new user fee was created and added to our water bills.  The revenue exceeds $15 million each year.  The city moved personnel and equipment and other costs over to the utility.  There are now 104 people allocated to the utility with operating costs of just over $6 million each year.  Another $1.3 million is paid to the city because, after all, they need our money.  That brings the operating costs to just over $7.3 million annually.

What happens to the rest of the $15 million?

Before we go there remember that the city did not lower it’s budget or reduce our taxes when it moved the function out of the city general fund over to the utility.  We are now paying those costs twice.  Nifty huh?

Unfortunately the utility does not have a pay as you go attitude.  The other roughly $8 million is used to fund construction of facilities.  Actually the utility sells general obligation bonds and uses the $8 million to pay the principal and interest.

As an example, the 2013-2014 budget shows this:

principal $2,359,000   interest $3,216,968    total $5,575,968

We are paying more in interest than the value of the projects we are funding!   Yes, not borrowing would slow down the construction.  The reality is that there will always be flooding.  We should take a prudent step-by-step approach to the solution and pay as we go.

We would get more than twice as much for our money and not saddle our children with more debt.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Earth to the Times — wheel was invented years ago

September 19, 2013

The El Paso Times front page headline yesterday introduced an article about the city releasing more than 180 previously unreleased emails Tuesday evening.  Two reporters worked on the article.

Old news

I don’t think that there is such a thing as old news, but evidently the Times does.  The emails in question were released a few weeks ago on the city web site.  I know — I read them weeks ago.

Out of touch

Are the Times reporters and editors this much out of touch?  City council approved releasing the emails on August 20.  Yesterday was September 17.  The documents were on the web site soon after August 20.

Did the reporters miss the invention of the wheel?  Will that be their next headline?

I can’t imagine the reporters assigned to the city beat not knowing for a month that the emails were released.  The email controversy is a major one in the public mind.

Maybe it is true that the reporters do not investigate our city government, but instead only act as a publishing arm for the city.

Bashing the schools

The same issue of the Times featured an article where the El Paso Independent School District rolled out a new payroll system.   They paid over 10,000 employees.  The headline “Payroll glitch hits hundreds” portrayed a pretty ominous picture.  Of the over 10,000 paychecks, 355 were reported to be wrong.  Anyone in business knows to expect problems with every payroll.

The Times evidently thinks that this is another sign of the incompetence over at the district.  If it is, shouldn’t we hold the new board of managers responsible?  After all, the chief financial officer (CFO) of the city is a member of the board.

Then again maybe we should have expected a bigger failure given the CFO’s history of presenting wildly misleading numbers to city council.

Talk about embarrassing!  The Times has sunk to a new low in my opinion.

Muckracker

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Build it and they will come. Right.

September 18, 2013

A comment came in from Hell Pasoan today that points us to a USA TODAY article about how major league baseball teams, even those in the playoffs, cannot get people to attend their games.

I thought his comment deserved an article of it’s own.  Below is his comment:

If teams who are making the playoffs can’t get people in the stands because of a poor economy, then El Paso is going to have a hard time. Hell, Oakland is having to give tickets away at $2 a piece to get people to show up.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2013/09/17/dwindling-crowds-puzzling-for-contending-athletics-indians-rays/2829543/

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | Ball park | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

First things first

September 18, 2013

The recent rain and flooding has some of us thinking about the city’s priorities.

We must be patient

  • We have passed a bond election calling for the building of a new children’s museum costing up to $19.2 million.
  • The city has other things to do so the museum will not be built in the next three years.  No one has said that they plan to build it in the three years after that, or after that.  It is not even scheduled at this point.
  • Despite the fact that city council authorized the issuance of $218 million of certificates of obligation over a year ago to be spent on streets, our roads are still a mess and they have not told us what the plan is.
  • Our new city budget decreases spending for libraries, parks, museums, the zoo, public health, transportation, and environmental services while increasing funding for city planning, engineering, the city manager and a host of other “internal” departments.  See City budget
  • After creating a new tax in 2007 (the city calls it a fee — one that you must pay) to improve storm water handling and collecting many millions of dollars the city tells us that it will take time (unspecified) to solve our flooding problems.

On the other hand

  • The city has fast-tracked construction of a new ball park, one that none of us voted for.  Local contractors say that the spending is “wildly high” because of the need to finish the ball park on an emergency basis.  Work is going on in the residential neighborhood 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  The project cost is now well over $60 million.  They evaluated the bids and chose their contractor in only one day!
  • The city needed to sell bonds for the ball park but started construction without them.  That are in a hurry.  The plan is to build the stadium in less than one year.
  • The city tore down our old city hall and bought and remodeled buildings  in less than a year, once again actions that the public did not vote for.  The moves have cost us more than $70 million.  Much of this was done without bidding and giving 4% to Houston schools.
  • The city is closing one of the busiest streets in town for 18 months for reconstruction.  The project is scheduled to cost $12 million.

What’s important

Evidently the city thinks that the ball park and city hall relocation are more important than flooding, road repair, Country Club road, the children’s museum or a host of other projects.  They can move fast when they want to but not for the things that we think are important.

We deserve better

Brutus

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