My backgroundIn addition to corporate engagements around the world, I do a great deal of work with municipal, county and state governments on many subjects related to contemporary and ethical governmental practice and human capital efficiency/capability improvement. Our goal is that no taxpayer funds are wasted by incompetent and/or malfeasant governmental leaders.
Additionally, I am a former police officer with two separate agencies and a 100% conviction rate for misdemeanor and felony arrests over almost 7 years. I make it a practice to back up police officers throughout the USA.
I bought a home in Oro Valley exactly 3 years ago after having owned multiple homes in multiple states from Massachusetts to California and from Minnesota to Florida. Each of the 10 municipalities in which I have lived have been run highly competently and ethically except for Oro Valley.
My Oro Valley Experience ~ Group Grope
Since moving to Oro Valley in 2014, it has become directly evidenced that few persons at the elected or high appointed levels in Oro Valley have any capability whatsoever in terms of financial, spending and budget skills…or in terms of learning and citizen connection skills.
Mayor Hiremath rejected my request for a meeting, there have been no responses from Chief Sharp to my repeated emails regarding police department failures and malfeasance, and also no response to a Certified Letter that I sent to our new Town Manager, Mary Jacobs back in June.
That does not mean that they are all bad; only that some of them are poorly intended and that most them are poorly led by the current Mayor, Town Council and many current department heads. In my professional life, this is called “group grope.”
They all hire in their own image
The above trait is a common characterization that we use in our firm to describe organizations in dire trouble. Neither poor leaders nor their poorly led teams are self-correcting. In cases such as these, employees are rewarded by their leaders for learning nothing, correcting nobody, and ensuring that incompetence and/or malfeasance remain undiscovered and/or accepted. This is precisely the circumstance here in Oro Valley.
Seismic Overspending without useful outcomes
Through my interactions with Mayor Hiremath, two council members, two department heads, several dubious highly paid leaders, and through endless fact and evidence tracking (direct and publicly available documented evidence) I have observed that between $4,000,000 and $11,000,000 of taxpayer money is being wasted. We refer to that as “stranded spending;” money spent either ignorantly or criminally without positive effect to those providing the revenue. It is time to cease this financial death spiral at the expense of Oro Valley residents.
As one factual example of seismic overspending without useful outcomes, the Oro Valley Police Department is evidenced as being very significantly overstaffed, monumentally under-led, and as a result, significantly incompetent and expensive.
Oro Valley has a population of 43,000 and a low Uniform Crime Report (UCR) incidence (felony crimes of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson) and contains almost no industry and no entertainment or tourist districts.
According to population, UCR data, and best practices for similar size municipalities in Arizona (and also within 50 miles of Oro Valley), the OVPD should consist of approximately the following staff:
Total Sworn and AZPOST Certified Officers: 84
Command Staff (Lieutenant through Chief): 6
Sergeant: 9
Investigative: 6
School Resource Officer (SRO): 7 (one officer per school)
Evidence Technician: 2
Patrol/Uniformed, Non-Rank Officers: 54
All Other Staff, Non-Post Certified: 26
Includes dispatch, office services, records, systems, crime analysis, fleet, secretarial, animal control, etc.
Total Necessary OVPD Staff Count: 110
For comparison, OVPD current headcount is 133 full-time equivalents (FTE’s) including 9 Command Staff, 12 Sergeants, 10 SRO’s, and 60 Patrol Officers, with a proposed budget for 2018 of 136 employees. This indicates planned 2018 over-staffing by 26 FTE’s.
The average annualized cost of a Sworn Police Officer (including benefits and liability insurance) is $81,000 to $87,000 per year in most cases. The average annualized cost for Non-Sworn Staff is $54,000 to $59,000.
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UCR is all of the crime data in the USA that is collected by the FBI and is required to be submitted monthly by all U.S. law enforcement agencies.
AZPOST: Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training Board
SRO’s: The number 7 assumes that Oro Valley desires a police officer in each school. (The problem is that the OVPD mistakenly classifies SRO’s as a separate division with a separate Sergeant with all of the additional related expenses).
Part 2 will be published tomorrow.
