The editorial
by the GNP last week sheds some light on the dynamics of policing and the pay
disparity between the GPD and
We can’t discuss the scheduled 6% pay
increase the GPD will have in July out of context of the trends in the general
fund, the four-year contracts, the comparative pay with the annual gross pay
fire fighters get, and the performance of the department.
These discussions are not helped when
the city council has generally taken a hands-off approach to the two safety
departments. We don’t get an evaluation
of safety performance. The lack of
external oversight and the councilmen’s eagerness to please the safety unions
have resulted in safety budgets that are now out of control and out of
proportion to the city’s total general fund.
Most people who undertake discussions
about policing usually bring some anecdotal evidence as justification for their
opinion. It makes it more difficult to
evaluate performance when the police leadership does the same and relies on
telling a story as justification for major policy issues such as pay rates or
the decision to keep or abandon the
On one point the GNP was spot on. The revenues the city receives are
insufficient to meet its expenditures. Though
the slowdown in the economy has had an impact, the greater impact, in my
opinion, has been self-inflicted. The
management of the city of Glendale has made major increases to its internal
staff, increased its salaries significantly, and increased its pension benefits
to the point that those actions by themselves have pushed the budget to nearly
unsustainable levels without lower services and imposing higher fees on the
public.
The police department and the fire
department have been the primary beneficiaries of those increases in pay and
benefits, but no one at the city council has taken on the job of evaluating if
the increases have been truly justified. What we do know is that the income gap between
the typical fire-fighter and the typical policeman is huge – easily about 30 to
40 thousand dollars per year in favor of fire fighters.
Sadly, instead of a reasoned and
determined evaluation of efficacy or performance, we get hero-making or
self-sacrifice stories. Those make for
great newspaper copy but they do little to create reasoned budgeting or
departmental performance evaluations.
For years, the city council has failed to
address the three major components of the budget deficit: Overtime pay,
increased costs of medical benefits, and the changes to the pension system that
two of the sitting councilmen approved eight years ago. Those changes alone account for tens of
millions of additional safety costs to the city each year. It is my perception that without those
additional costs and irrespective of the national economy,
We are in dire need of changing the public
dialogue to a more mature form of discussion and accountability. My suggested reading
for our city council members and for the public at large is a document that was
funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and Published by the Police Executive
Research Forum: The “Bottom Line” of Policing – What citizens should value
(and Measure!) in Police Performance.
If we can’t have Glendale city leaders
change to a more mature dialogue, then we need to do a wholesale change in top
management with a couple of the self-promoting, self-serving councilmen as part
of the exit package.
Herbert Molano