What pops into my mind when I think about our community, its
values and where we’re spending our precious dollars these days, of
all things, is a fairly recent Wal-Mart TV commercial.
What pops into my mind when I think about our community, its values and where we’re spending our precious dollars these days, of all things, is a fairly recent Wal-Mart TV commercial. There’s a cartoon-character red dot that zooms around to different items in the store and zaps the price. “Price Rollback” the screen screams.
That’s exactly what needs to happen with this community’s expenditures for public safety: Price Rollback.
It’s hovering, last time we checked, near 80 percent of the city’s General Fund. That’s a huge number that handcuffs and burns to the ground so many other possibilities for improving our city.
Gilroy, of course, is just a microcosm of a far larger public safety spending problem that exists all the way up the governmental food chain. But there’s only one way to eat an elephant – one bite at a time – and that’s how the problem has to be addressed. We have to deal with off-the-charts spending on public safety right here at home.
What our City Council members have to ask themselves – and what they should ask the community – is simple. It’s the question our Web poll asks readers this week:
What percentage of the Gilroy city budget should be spent on public safety (police and fire)?
A) 80%; B) 65%; C) 50%; D) 35% or E) 20%
When the Council goes on its retreat to start the year, that’s really the topic that’s the proverbial “Elephant in the Room” because there simply isn’t much spending flexibility after we pay for the fire and police departments.
If the new City Council could come to a consensus on a percentage number and make that public, the movement toward restoring sanity to the city budget could begin.
It certainly won’t happen overnight. But if Gilroy City Council had a policy in place, for example, that the goal is to spend no more than 50 percent of the annual budget on public safety, there’s a vision. After that comes the plan. It’s all on the table, and the discussion shifts to “How does the city achieve that goal?” And we keep at it.
The first thing that would have to go is binding arbitration – the law Gilroy voters passed in the late ’80s that allows an outside arbitrator to decide on the labor contracts for police and fire. Gilroy simply can no longer afford, not tolerate, having a Palo Alto attorney decide how we’re going to spend our money. Binding arbitration needs to go back on the ballot for a vote of the people.
The Gilroy Chamber of Commerce tippy-toed into this water a year or so ago, but hardly caused a ripple with a tortured, politically perfectly imperfect stance. The Chamber couldn’t bring itself to enter controversial territory by asking the Council to put it on the ballot for repeal. Instead, the Chamber simply asked the Council to review binding arbitration. Ah, the courage of the cowardly lion.
But back to percentages.
It would hardly be unreasonable to set the goal at 50 percent of the annual budget.
Along with the number there would have to be a timeline. How long would it take the city to attain that goal?
So many options would open up if Gilroy didn’t spend all its cash on public safety. There could be legitimate discussions on things like hiring a downtown events coordinator, fully funding the Economic Development Commission, rebuilding the decaying amphitheater at Christmas Hill Park, funding a small business loan program to help building owners fix up the now-vacant unreinforced masonry buildings downtown, starting a Police Activities League for youth sports, holding a free summer community concert series, building the Arts Center or adding soccer fields to the Gilroy Sports Complex.
Those are just a handful of examples of how we might improve the quality of life in Gilroy.
The Council should look at putting in rules for Gilroy that change the nature of “the game.”
One to seriously consider adding to the Gilroy law books is a rule that forbids the hiring of anyone who is retired from another public safety organization. The same common sense rules that apply to collecting Social Security should apply to public safety employees. Retiring from one organization should mean retiring. If the person decides to come out of retirement to work again, great, but there should be an earnings threshold that, if exceeded, triggers a halt to retirement paychecks.
Gilroy can’t pass state laws to erase double-dipping, but it can choose to take a stance against double dipping by refusing to hire retirees.
The Council should also scrutinize every aspect in all labor contracts that potentially pave the way for spiking retirement pay such as saving vacation time, vehicle allowances, uniform allowance and stand-by pay. Anything even remotely illegitimate that can be used to spike retirement should be modified or done away with. Vacation time is given for a reason – to be used. We certainly don’t want police and firefighters who are on the cusp of retirement to be burnt out for lack of vacation. Most of this is just common sense. But the powerful unions aren’t interested in common sense or the best interests of the community.
Our Community Pulse Board is a cross section of involved residents with diverse opinions who answer the Web poll question each week. The most popular answer by far: 50 percent. Why? Because it’s reasonable and that’s what we have to get back to – reasonable.
Reach Editor Mark Derry at
ed****@ga****.com
