During the three-and-a-half long study session, a number of separate dives down various rabbit holes resulted in some lengthy, super-specific discussion over all manner of reasons why each and every City services department needs more money.
Back in July, Council directed staff to return with a study session on the best ways to make strategic investments to enhance public safety and address our homelessness crisis. This was done in conjunction with placing a Parking Facility Tax measure (Measure K) on the November 2024 ballot.
The measure was originally rejected during the June 25 meeting, however, during the July 9 meeting Vice Mayor Lana Negrete — who had originally opposed it — asked the City Council to direct the City Manager to halt the process to identify tradeoffs and budget reallocations within the existing budget.
If approved by voters in November, Measure K is estimated to raise an annual $6.7 million, at least half of which would be spent on public safety and addressing homelessness.
The staff report provided three funding scenarios that focus the resources to address different but equally important goals and strategies around public safety and homelessness:
• Visibility – increasing visibility of city resources in the community
• Systemwide – increasing capacity across the public safety system
• Rightsizing – restoring staffing and budget or narrowing funding gaps in existing services
City Attorney Doug Sloane began the appeal, presenting his case for needing more lawyers. "The city attorney's office is down five positions, or about 10%, from pre-covid, and two of those positions were in criminal prosecution. So with or without the parking tax funds, we need more positions just to keep up with PD as it is," he said, adding, "We have a hard time keeping up right now, and if those PD positions are filled [and] adding more, we're going to be writing more tickets, arresting more people. We won't be able to keep up with that."
Lindsey Call, Chief Resilience Officer with the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which incorporates 911 dispatch, was next. "In 2020, to 2023, our communication center lost 25% of our staffing and experienced tremendous difficulty hiring dispatchers," she said, adding that under the guidelines, one full time lead dispatcher as an incremental first step to support the city’s emergency response was essential.
Santa Monica Fire Department Chief, Matthew Hallock appealed for funds to help the FD deal more effectively with incidents involving homeless individuals, specifically to create what he called an Advanced Provider Unit, or APU which would include one nurse practitioner and one firefighter paramedic. "We're actually requesting the implementation of two of these units … simply because that would give us specialized services, [available] seven days a week," Hallock said, adding, "We have two ambulances in our fleet that could be put into service to make this a reality, therefore not creating any capital outlay for apparatus."
Next up was Police Chief Ramon Batista who covered a considerable amount of ground, including the still under-quota numbers of staff, plus the technological elements of operating an effective police department, including the Drone First Responder (DFR) unit, changes coming in street camera surveillance, license plate recognition and smart video analysis software. All of which incur expense and in the case of the DFR, an additional operator is required to have the unit functioning seven days a week.
City Manager David White then reiterated everything Batista had just said and with the presentations over, discussion began. Regarding the use of additional staff and therefore cost to enforce the City’s no sleeping in doorways policy, Vice Mayor Lana Negrete raised some pertinent questions.
"DTSM is spending a ton of money, in part, to address this exact issue. So … So just curious why we picked that to happen in that particular area when there's [sic] already efforts happening there, and then also why would we use code enforcement when we have this downtown service, police unit that's kind of addressing these issues? She asked.
Heather Averick, director of the Department of Housing and Human Services responded, "The downtown area is just a hot spot … not only for people experiencing homelessness, but [also] for our visitors and our tourists and our community members," she said, adding, "Code enforcement can write citations, and the DTSM Ambassadors, to my knowledge, cannot."
To which Negrete, thankfully, pounced upon the obvious issue with that, "So writing citations to me, if I'm being honest, just seems silly for somebody who's unhoused," she said.
Jenna Grigsby, from the City Attorney’s Office, attempted to justify this procedure by saying when citations add up, they provide support in a court of law — should a case get that far — to illustrate that previous attempts to correct an individual's behavior had been unsuccessful.
The Santa Monica Police Department is currently budgeted for 232 officers, yet there are 214 on the force now. Councilmember Gleam Davis asked Police Chief Ramon Batista when they might be able to get to 232.
"That's a complex question," Batista replied, explaining that between June 2023 and July 2024, they took in 1,331 applications that eventually resulted in 21 hires. "You've got a lot of factors going on, retirements. You've got officers in training and training takes 18 months. You've got folks that can't complete training, you've got folks that sometimes can't complete probation," he said, adding, "If we were to continue just to do what we do today, then we'd be working under the flawed belief that at some point we're going to catch up."
Batista went on to say that he had high hopes for a new piece of recruitment software that would potentially enable a faster turnaround in the screening process. However, that’s not to say that the number of applicants would increase, which is precisely why recruitment pop-ups at events like National Night Out, anniversaries at the Pier, or the recent Douglas Day celebration at the Santa Monica Airport are so critical.
He finally gave the date of sometime between 2025 and 2026 as when the department might have 232 officers on staff.
Ultimately, the discussion descended into six of one and half a dozen of the other with what felt like a rush from Mayor Phil Brock to get a motion onto the floor amid the confusion, even though this item did not actually require a vote. In the convoluted befuddlement, a shockingly vague motion was made by Negrete and seconded by Brock to add two officers to the special investigations unit, not to move forward with the downtown plan, take out the code enforcement officers and trade that up for yet another police officer. The Fire Department will also, potentially, get its APU.
Voting went along predictably political lines, with Davis, Torosis and Zwick voting no and Negrete, Parra, Brock and de la Torre, voting yes. There were no substantive budgetary changes, because that required five votes. Moreover, this decision is in no way binding and everything could change as a result of the November elections anyway. It was all, in essence, theoretical.
scott.snowden@smdp.com
