As pandemic causes budget to crater, Modesto looks to cut 30 open police jobs
UPDATE: Comments can be emailed to ccmeetings@modestogov.com. An incorrect email address was originally included in this story. Comments can be emailed before and during the City Council meeting.
Modesto’s proposed budget for its new fiscal year includes eliminating 30 open police officer positions and eliminating or freezing about 18 open firefighter positions as the city has seen its tax revenue nose-dive in the new coronavirus recession.
The City Council on Tuesday is expected to adopt the city’s proposed $447.5 million operating budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year, which starts Wednesday.
Most of the attention is on the budget’s $140.3 million general fund. That is because it has taken the biggest hit from the measures taken to slow the spread of the virus and which have crippled the economy and because the fund pays for public safety. Slightly more than three quarters of the general fund goes to the police and fire departments.
The proposed budget reduces the number of allocated police officer positions from 240 to 210. Police Chief Galen Carroll said that would bring the number of positions to where it was a few years ago. And he said this does not mean the Police Department would lose 30 officers.
Carroll said his department has 195 to 215 working officers at any given time. (A working officer is one who is not a rookie in the police academy or paired with a field training officer or an officer who is off work because of an injury.) Carroll expects he’d have 190 to 200 working officers under the proposed budget.
He said his department will adjust to fewer officers through several measures, including hiring five more community service officers and five more police cadets, who will take on routine duties now performed by officers. He said that is a cost effective and efficient way to free up officers to do the police work that only they can do.
‘We will make it work. We always have’
“It will be a challenge,” he said. “I’d love to have more cops, but you go with what the city can afford. And we will make it work. We always have.”
Fire Chief Alan Ernst could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon regarding the proposed budget’s impact to his department.
Mayor Ted Brandvold in his budget modifications letter to the City Council said while acknowledging the difficult economic times the city faces, he could not support eliminating the 30 police positions. He does not want staffing to fall below 218 officers and would like City Manager Joe Lopez to report back to the council in 60 days on how the city can do that.
Brandvold, who is running for re-election in November, claims Modesto and its residents would be at risk during a time of social upheaval and civil unrest if the city has fewer police officers.
“It is a time of looting, property destruction, and mayhem across the country,” Brandvold wrote. “While we have been spared the worst of it, part of our good fortune certainly has been the current staffing level of our police force.
More workers than city can afford
“Cutting our actual, current numbers is short sighted and puts our citizens and police officers in harm’s way and invites an explosion of unrest, provocation, and crime. Our most important responsibility to our citizens is providing for their safety.”
Brandvold has advocated hiring more officers during his tenure. The City Council in 2016 approved his request to increase police staffing from 218 to 240 officers. But Modesto has never been able to get to that number for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty recruiting and keeping good officers, their cost and the city’s finances.
May’s budget hearings included a long-range forecast of the general fund, which showed that even before the pandemic, Modesto’s general fund faced increasing annual shortfalls primarily because of rising pension costs and “unsustainable staffing levels.”
The city has had roughly 1,200 full-time employees for at least several years, but the cost of those employees, including wages and pensions, has grown faster than the city’s revenues. The 695 full-time general fund employees will cost Modesto $103.8 million in 2020 dollars, according to the forecast put together by the consulting firm Management Partners.
The proposed budget includes eliminating 60 vacant general fund positions (which includes the 30 police positions), 15 retirements through a $10,000 per retirement incentive program and four layoffs. City spokesman Thomas Reeves said no police officers or firefighters are among the proposed layoffs. More information about the layoffs was not available.
Budget Manager Steve Christensen said the Modesto Police Officers Association, Modesto Police Non-Sworn Association, Modesto Confidential and Management Association, and department directors and others not represented by a labor group have agreed to 96 hours in furloughs, which he said is the equivalent of a 4.6 percent pay reduction.
He said the Modesto City FireFighters Association will take a similar reduction but not through furloughs. He said the details still were being completed as of Friday. He said the Modesto City Employees Association did not agree to concessions.
Mayor: City’s unions won’t defer raises
Brandvold appeared to fault the city’s labor groups in his budget letter.
“We asked our labor bargaining units for help,” he wrote. “With most of our labor bargaining units under 4-year contracts, they are not required to ‘open’ their contracts for negotiation. Unfortunately, any solution that would actually cut the City’s cost structure like deferring next year’s scheduled raises was rejected by the labor groups.”
While the general fund is under stress, the city’s other funds, such as the water fund, that make up its operating budget are in better shape. That is in part because they rely on fees from ratepayers and not sales and other taxes.
The city also faces challenges balancing its current general fund. A city report says Modesto expects to lose $9 million in sales taxes and other general fund revenue because of the pandemic. City officials have talked about using Modesto’s $18.4 million in general fund reserves to close that deficit.
$7.5M from CARES Act for Modesto
Christensen, the budget manager, repeated that Modesto faces many unknowns regarding its finances, including how soon the economy will recover and how much financial help Modesto will receive from the state and federal governments.
Some good news is Stanislaus County is allocating $15 million of the $96 million it received through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act among its nine cities. Modesto’s share is $7.5 million. But the money cannot be used to make up for lost tax revenue. It can be used for pandemic-related expenses, such as overtime.
“City staff is continuing to work on identifying eligible expenditures for use of the CARES Act funds,” states a city report. “These funds will impact the General Fund in a way that could free up some funds to remain in the reserves at fiscal year end.”
The council meeting is 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. Modesto still is not letting the public attend council meetings because of the pandemic. But they can watch a livestream of the meeting at http://media.modestogov.com. The public also can send emails of up to 250 words before and during the meeting at ccmeetings@modestogov.com.
This story was originally published June 29, 2020 at 12:00 AM.
