Inasmuch as 3 networks , the Az Star & The Explorer all had reporters at the Wed. night Study/Special session, I'll defer to them for supplying the details of the meeting from their perspective.
From my perspective, I'll start at the end. After much discussion, and what appeared to be a lack of understanding as to what was going to be voted on, it came down to this:
Once again, Al Kunisch was "hung out to dry." While Mayor Loomis & Council Member Gillaspie voted "yes" to pushing a motion through, the final tally was 6-1 to continue the issue at another Study/Special session, with the provision that the citizens would be heard----which wasn't the case tonight, come this Monday night, April 27.
Going back to the beginning, the mayor was good enough to explain his rationale in unilaterally determining that the meeting would include the "special session, allowing for votes.
Why? Well using two classic Loomis quotes, the mayor pointed out, he couldn't determine the council's intentions after a meeting. Bill Garner explained why the mayor had this dilemma. It came down to a new proposal put forth at the last meeting by the police chief that changed everything.
As to the Loomis quotes----here they are, pretty much verbatim---
"I can't read the minds of this council as I had previous councils." Quite profound, wouldn't you say?
The 2nd quote as to why he put the "Special Session" on the agenda. Alluding to the council determining that the cost for the new police substation at the OV Marketplace was too much, especially with the new proposal which had even less cuts than the earlier proposal submitted by the chief, Loomis said: "That was the straw that broke the camel's back."
Getting back to Bill Garner, with the able assistance of citizen John Musolf he presented a new proposal which would not cost any police jobs and, in fact add a full time dispatcher. Hopefully, Bill, John, Chief Sharp and the police representatives will come up with a budget that will be acceptable to all parties.
Don't forget, the next episode will be April 27 at 5:30 PM.
KOLD story below.
http://www.kold.com/global/story.asp?s=10233731
5 comments:
Art,
So far all of this appears to be a good thing.
If John Musholf can do such a nice job with cutting corners with the police budget, hey he could probably cut corners with the entire budget.
I was one of the citizens who got the poll/survey that Salette Latas sent.
Even though I supported Salette and usually agree with her, I can honestly say that I really did not know for sure how she or any of the council really felt about the police budget situation.
Happy to see the council working hard, thinking outside the box and not just voting without looking at all alternatives , unlike the congress :))
Would love to see more polls and surveys and acceptance of help from the citizens.
The federal government is pushing a volunteer program, why not Oro Valley?
OK, so now, instead of the usual Council meetings carrying the brunt of the issues, the timing and expectations of which interested citizens can secure on the OV official web site on a consistently reliable basis, now we are going to have these 'special sessions' held at the whim of Council with the public being given notification in a less than a timely manner; a few days, sporadically decided, does not make for much of an inclusion of the public in these important matters.
If the OVPD can only make weakly documented DEMANDS on the Town, instill fear by the use of anecdotal proffer, keep changing and/or masking their budgetary requirements, force this many hearings, disrupt the normalcy of public hearings, then, as I have proposed before, let the Town say to the PD 'this is what we've got for you, 'this is what you're getting, now deal with it'. All of this back and forth patter is only clouding the issues for the citizens and adding to the divisiveness that is fragmenting this Community; it is also an extremely poor public relations gaffe for the OVPD! And no, I can't just blame the PD for this fiasco, Council and Staff can't seem to get their OWN act together.
Two things that I need to give credit to Bill Gardner from the recent events;
1) Working with a private citizen was able to provide an additional course of action suitable to both tax payers and the police department.
2) Recognized the importance of this issue realizing the impromptu agenda change for Monday may not have given sufficient notice to Oro Valley residence wishing to speak on this issue. Thus rescheduling the agenda for next week.
Bill has gone out of his way to try and improve this emotional situation and allow more residence participation. On the other side the police department has run radio advertisements naming council members including Bill Gardner, loaded the meeting room with officers, all in my opinion attempts to politicize and bully a decision acceptable to them.
As a long time resident of Oro Valley and supporter of our local police who do and exceptional job, I strongly disagree with their tactics.
In my opinion we over extended our police force in 2006, part of the promise the utility tax offered adding 12 officers to our small community, a substantial increase, over 10%. Now for the emotional people out there looking at my provocative statement, how many police are enough? Typically I have seen this computed through number of police per 1,000 residence. With a population about 44,000 (the police staffing report made a wild attempt to increase Oro Valley way too much) and total police force of 126, I believe they count only the “beat” officers, 96 I believe, making the ratio about 2.2 police per 1,000 residence. Tucson, Phoenix, and Flagstaff are between 1.8 and 2.0. We are in the middle of Marana, Casa Granda, Goodyear, Sahuarita, Sierra Vista, and Avondale.
There are lots of variables to skew this data, population demographics and geological area have the most impact. I assert that Sun City doesn’t require the same amount of police intervention that Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Houston. Or the town area is so vast comparing Oro Valley to Marana.
Thank you Don Millikan
How refreshing is it to have a new blogger identify himself,and state facts WITHOUT condemning anyone or anything.
Whereas, many comments on this thread, and the previous ones, were more of a personal nature, Don saw fit to do the right thing----acknowledge the effort of Bill Garner to save police jobs while reducing our budget deficit, and discussing the heart of the matter; the necessity of having the number of police we presently employ.
Thanks Don. I hope you'll see fit and continue offering your insight for the benefit of our readers.
DMilliken, you have an exceptionally keen and perceptive view of the relative situation at hand - calm, collected, and reasoned. Yes, Bill Garner made extraordinary efforts along with Citizen Musolf in order to bring this divisive issue to a head by collective immersion, perhaps one that can hopefully mollify the cries of most of those who have had and have expressed different viewpoints (I would bet that there are still going to be those who will continue to scream bloody murder no matter what the outcome might accomplish).
My previous post on this stream was a result of a personal frustration relative to some of the back and forth processes that have been very disorienting to many of us constituents. Last minute changes to meeting definitions and veering away from the normally accepted and understood courses of procedure have only reminded many 'folk' that, by implication, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'. Many of us, in the past election, voted for a new beginning, including the belief in definitive order and transparency, and that is what we had expected to get; this past week's 'mish-mash' didn't reflect that very well and that became a bit maddening.
On the bright side I commend highly
certain members of council and Mr. Musolf in that they have exhibited extraordinary diligence in their sensitivity and determination to not only envision the big picture but to dig in and get it 'painted'.
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