Budget Proposes Unfreezing 2 Police Positions

The City Council gets a look at a fully assembled, tentative two-year budget at its meeting Tuesday.

The council begins at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday with a closed session to discuss labor negotiations and performance evaluations of top managers. It is due to open the public session at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 1666 N. Main St.

The budget document accompanying the council agenda proposes that the police department fill two vacant positions — a lieutenant in 2012-13 and a police officer position in 2013-14. This unfreezes a sixth lieutenant position; the department has 76 sworn officers. The moves should improve consistency in detective work and service to crime victims, and potentially enable an officer to work with school staff on the Character Counts program, the budget document reports.

From the budget document:

"The sixth Lieutenant position has been unfrozen to meet critical needs and complete projects such as the installation of the new radio system and the transition to new policies and procedures, and to have the capacity to mentor, train and lead officers and first line supervisors.

"The unfreezing of one Police Officer position will allow the Police Department to better staff the field, allow for more traffic enforcement and possibly enable an officer to work with the middle and senior high schools pro-actively, as well as support our Character Counts program. The addition of a sworn member will also help with staffing in investigations by allowing Detectives to remain in their assignment instead of having to backfill in patrol when injuries occur to patrol officers. This will allow crime victims to receive better service from investigators."

In other departments

The budget shows projected revenues of $67.4 million in fiscal year 2012-13 and $68.0 million the next year. Projected expenditures match those numbers.

Some excerpts, starting on Page 4 of the budget report on the City Council agenda:

• Sales tax revenue is back on the rise but well below the peak in 2006; property tax revenues continue to be flat as they have since 2009-10.
• The city plans to move its Information Technology Strategic Plan forward, with reorganization that includes creating an IT analyst position. The IT enhancements add $100,000 to the project budget for the city's IT Division.
• There are plans for belt-tightening in Arts, Recreation and Community Services, including a move away from scheduling rental of two meeting rooms at the downtown library, closing Clarke Swim Center on Sundays between October and April, and reducing the cost of the Guide to Arts + Rec via reducing pages, using less color and/or selling ads.
• The city plans to achieve savings in Community Development through the consolidation of code enforcement and zoning inspector functions, and by closing the Community Development front counter to the public one day a week.

The budget contemplates setting the city's emergency reserves at 5 percent of the budget, cutting it in half from past practice.

The council has been conducting budget workshops in recent months with discussions of priorities and direction given to staff on administrative decisions. The budget is scheduled for formal adoption by June 19.

Also on the council agenda is a second reading of an ordinance to standardize regulation of the 103 establishments that serve alcohol in the city of Walnut Creek. The council unanimously approved the controversial law on May 2, pending the second reading May 15. Barring any action taken at the second reading, the ordinance would go into effect 30 days after the second reading.