Modesto Area leaders focus on safety, water in 2015

Public safety and water are on the minds of several government leaders heading into the new year.

Asked to reflect on challenges anticipated for 2015, Modesto and Stanislaus County officials reflected on the difficulty attracting and training law enforcement officers. Authorities also face added pressure from California’s shifting incarceration landscape.

Despite a wet December, water issues are expected to continue driving headlines. County supervisors will confront more groundwater regulation ideas, while the Modesto Irrigation District starts sorting out fair prices for its water and power services and various cities look to the Tuolumne River as a tap water source.

The Modesto Bee asked some prominent local leaders to share thoughts as they look forward.

Sheriff’s Department

“It’s fun to come to work again,” Sheriff Adam Christianson said. After several years of difficult cuts, his department has started to rebuild.

In 2015, “We’re going to continue to be challenged in finding well-qualified men and women,” Christianson said, pointing out that it takes roughly a year from hiring a deputy to get him or her through the academy and onto the streets.

“We only hire 1 percent of our applicants.”

He said the salary Stanislaus County offers doesn’t attract officers from other agencies, but he credited the Board of Supervisors with taking steps to address that problem.

Christianson, who issued a year-end letter to the community citing concerns about negative media attention nationally following high-profile officer-involved deaths in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City, said he worries that those incidents might have a local impact.

“To some degree, given what’s happening with all of the scrutiny involving the law enforcement incidents, it could cause young people to look perhaps to a different profession,” he said. “It could have a chilling effect on some of our recruiting efforts.”

He said “99.9999 percent of all law enforcement interaction with the community is positive.”

Other challenges include the continuing impacts of Assembly Bill 109, the public safety realignment that sends more inmates to local jails instead of state prison to serve time, and voter-approved Proposition 47, which reduces penalties for some crimes.

At the same time, his department is undergoing $160 million worth of construction projects, with new jail facilities underway and a badly needed coroner’s facility that Christianson said will be finished by the end of the year.

All in all, the sheriff said, he’s optimistic.

“It won’t get us back to where we were in 2006,” he said. “But we have a pretty solid five-year plan to start down the path of public safety.”

Modesto Police Department

“Our biggest challenge is just low staffing levels,” Modesto police Chief Galen Carroll said. “We’re trying to recover from having a bunch of officers go to other departments and the time it takes to train new officers.”

Carroll said it likely will be November or December when changes become apparent.

“As you get a lot of brand-new officers out on the street, it’s a double-edged sword,” Carroll said. “They’re eager to go out and take care of problems and work hard. But they also need mentoring.”

Carroll echoed Christianson’s concerns about challenges brought on by realignment and Proposition 47.

“For people who have showed time and time again that they can’t stop stealing or committing crimes, now there’s not the accountability there was,” he said.

The answer, he said, starts with changing the public’s opinion on drug use, which many see as a crime with no innocent victims.

“If you want to put that stuff in your own body, knock yourself out,” Carroll said. “But they’re generally stealing from you to do it.”

The chief hopes that a recent decline in crime will continue.

Modesto City Hall

Modesto Mayor Garrad Marsh says the continued shortage of police officers will remain a concern in 2015.

The city has been losing officers to retirement and better-paying Bay Area agencies faster than it can replace them. And it has had to hire more new officers straight from the police academy than in past years. These officers take longer to train than veteran officers hired from other agencies.

“This is our most pressing issue and will continue to be so,” Marsh said.

The Police Department is allocated 209 sworn officers but Marsh said he believes 300 are needed.

He said Modesto can point to two projects with pride in the new year: the upgrade of the Modesto Irrigation District water treatment plant and the city’s effort to sell treated wastewater to farms on the county’s west side.

MID is doubling the capacity of its Modesto Regional Water Treatment Plant at Modesto Reservoir and the city is paying for the work. The project has been mired in litigation over poor work, but those issues have been resolved. Marsh said he expects the expansion should come online this year, or testing should start.

He said 2015 also is critical for Modesto to get federal permission to send highly treated wastewater along the Delta-Mendota Canal to West Side farmers. Modesto is working with the Del Puerto Water District on the project. If approved, water could start flowing in 2018 after needed infrastructure is built.

County administration

Stanislaus County government will launch “Focus on Prevention” in 2015, a two-year effort to work on the root causes of homelessness, family dysfunction, gangs and repeat criminal offenders.

Officials say the county spends 75percent of its budget dealing with the symptoms of these social ills but needs to work on the causes.

In the spring, people from education, nonprofit groups, churches, businesses, the arts, sports, neighborhoods and cities will be invited to a series of forums to hear guest speakers and talk about solutions. The first topic will be homelessness.

The county hopes a game plan and prevention projects will emerge from the gatherings.

The county’s water advisory committee will keep working on groundwater issues, said Supervisor Terry Withrow, who takes over as board chairman Tuesday. The advisory panel will consider a governance structure for groundwater sustainability agencies, which is required by 2014 state legislation. One or more agencies could be responsible for managing local groundwater basins. County government’s role could be to stitch the agencies together, Withrow said.

Readers have heard this before, but the county also wants to work on its relationship with its nine cities next year. Withrow said stronger friendships can be built through monthly meetings with city representatives.

District Attorney’s Office

While the Sheriff’s Department expects to grow, District Attorney Birgit Fladager continues to struggle with a reduced staff.

Fewer bodies mean more work for prosecutors adjusting to what Fladager called “recent sea changes in the criminal justice field” – prison realignment, modifications to “three-strikes” legislation and Proposition 47. And staffing turnover requires more internal training, she said.

“We hope to continue the good work being done by our Human Trafficking Task Force and also continue working with the Stanislaus Family Justice Center in providing victims of domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse and sexual assault the support they need to rebuild their lives and hold perpetrators accountable,” Fladager said.

Modesto Irrigation District

“Probably the hottest issue on our plate is water charges and electric charges and how they impact rate payers,” said Larry Byrd, the Modesto Irrigation District’s new board chairman.

An irrigation rate hike could come as soon as this month, followed by a review of power prices in February or March. Both are subject to the board’s renewed interest in charging prices closer to the true cost of service, instead of electricity revenue subsidizing the water side.

“That’s going to be educational for board members and transparent for everyone else,” Byrd predicted.

MID and its partner on the Tuolumne River, the Turlock Irrigation District, will continue fighting to retain historic water rights jeopardized in ongoing state and federal reviews looking to revive salmon populations and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Turlock City Hall

Turlock Mayor Gary Soiseth, elected in November, said water, roads and public safety will need attention in 2015.

The city is involved in planning a TID treatment plant for Tuolumne River water, which would reduce reliance on wells in Turlock, Ceres and south Modesto.

Turlock also will have to address street repairs without money that would have been provided by a half-percentage-point increase in sales tax that was rejected by voters in November.

And the city continues to try to boost police and fire services, although they were not cut as severely as in some agencies during the economic downturn.

“I want Turlock on a path toward reliable drinking water, sound roads, and fully operational police and fire units, and to do all of that while eliminating deficit spending,” Soiseth said. He campaigned on a pledge to start his term with a 100-day look at all city operations. This will include a series of public workshops on a schedule to be announced later this month.

Modesto Metropolitan Conference

“I think it’s been an excellent year,” said Ed Felt, who took over at midyear as commissioner of the Modesto Metropolitan Conference. “Football, volleyball, soccer and cross country all had playoff representation this year.”

Felt said 2015 will bring its share of challenges, particularly with trying to maintain enrollment so each of the Modesto City high schools remains in the athletic league. Davis and Johansen high schools are on a “watch list” by the Sac-Joaquin Section because of declining enrollment.

It’s not just an enrollment matter. “Some of our better student athletes are leaving schools for other campuses,” Felt said. “We have to maintain competitive equity.”

Another big issue is familiar: attracting and retaining quality coaches.

“If you look at what coaches got paid 10, 20 years ago and what they make today, there’s not a lot of difference,” Felt said. “It’s demanding. There’s a tremendous amount of time they put into it, and there’s a high burnout rate.”

This story was originally published January 3, 2015 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Modesto Area leaders focus on safety, water in 2015."