At this week’s City Council meeting, the Council held a “study session” with the city staff on how best to spend the money that could become available should Measure K and Measure PSK be passed by voters later this year. (Agenda, Item 7b).
By a 4-3 vote, the Council created a list of priorities for what could be funded by ½ of Measure K should it pass. Mayor Phil Brock, Councilmember Oscar de la Torre, Councilmember Christine Parra and Vice Mayor Lana Negrete all voted in favor of the motion. Councilmembers Gleam Davis, Caroline Torosis and Jesse Zwick voted against the measure. Davis clarified, with the agreement of Torosis and Zwick, that the vote was against the specific budget items included in the list and should not be seen as a lack of support for the police, fire and other departments on the city’s frontlines of public safety. Davis in particular objected to the city adding funding for more police officer positions while the city has not filled all of the positions that it already has
The lengthy discussion ate up over two hours of the meeting despite the reality that a majority of the council may not be on the dais when making a decision on how to spend the funds occurs next term. Two members (Davis and Parra) are not seeking re-election this fall and two others (Brock and de la Torre) are seeking re-election on the same day voters will decide the fates of Measures K and PFK.
Measure K is a proposed tax on private parking lots that would raise $6.7 million every year for the city’s general fund (read more on Measure K here). Measure PSK is an “advisory measure” where voters can recommend to the city that this $6.7 million annual infusion be used to “enhance public safety” (read more on Measure PSK here).
The Council endorsed plan includes funding for:
• Special Investigations Unit of SMPD – Add one sergeant and one officer to re-establish a Special Investigations Unit (SIU) that would provide tactical surveillance and assist in identifying and apprehending dangerous individuals. The department may also need to divert officers from other duties to fully staff this unit.
• Drone Program Expansion for SMPD – Add a second Drone as First Responder (DFR) team with two police officers to enhance the 17 of 25 Police Department’s ability to respond to incidents rapidly and provide critical, time-sensitive information to first responders. This proposal will enable the program to operate 7 days per week.
• Security Monitoring Services for SMPD – Provide ongoing funding for proactive security services and cameras at the Main Library, Miles Playhouse and Camera Obscura to deter vandalism at these locations and provide the police department with additional camera footage for investigations.
• Advanced Provider Unit for SMFD – Establish an Advanced Provider Unit (APU) with the addition of two firefighters and two registered nurses trained in mental health emergencies, crisis communications, de-escalation, and substance use disorders to better respond to calls for service for homeless and other vulnerable populations.
• Downtown Outreach Team – Establish a new multidisciplinary team (MDT) by adding one uniformed police officer and an additional MDT Outreach Team to enforce trespassing and no sit/lie doorway ordinances specifically in the city’s downtown core, with an initial focus on the Third Street Promenade, and connect people to services and programs.
At the risk of repeating myself, since the actual budget that will include Measure K will be passed by a future Council, the vote is more symbolic than anything else, especially considering three of the four people that supported this list of projects may not be on the Council. In the official legal analysis for Measure K, the city states that the money produced by Measure K can be used for any purpose by the government, regardless of what the promotional materials and support statements for the measure say.
Negrete, who authored the motion that put Measures K and PSK on the ballot defended the need for the discussion noting that much of the discussion around these measures talks about public safety and increasing funding for the fire and police departments.
“If we’re telling people to vote for something and that we desperately need money to address these issues, then we need to be really clear and transparent about how that money is going to be spent or else people won’t vote for it,” Negrete argued. “The people that are here on this dais now are the people bringing this forward.”
Despite the open-ended language in Measure K, Negrete is assuming that the future Council will stick to a handshake deal made when K and PSK were placed on the ballot in the summer.
When first proposed, the idea of raising the tax on private parking would have been used to backfill cuts to the transportation department to increase funding for the safety budget, but the council majority of Brock, de la Torre, Negrete and Parra didn’t agree with that expenditure plan.
The following meeting, the council approved placing what would become Measure K and Measure PSK after the two factions on the Council agreed that the funding should be used to increase safety by reducing traffic violence and violent crime.
