Santa Cruz spends more on police than comparable cities : Indybay

An expose written by Good Times staff (apparently inspired by my Sentinel editorial), and then deep-sixed by editors and never published in the print edition. This is the question I want to see asked more often: We are clearly spending through the nose for police -- are they making the streets safer or more dangerous?

Recent incidents in Oakland (nearly commonplace in cities with large minority populations) would suggest an answer.

When will we be courageous enough to stand up to powerful forces and start taking cops off of our streets locally?

Santa Cruz spends more on police, more on parks than comparable cities

Written by Chris J. Magyar, Good Times Staff
Monday, 15 December 2008

GT has conducted a study of the 10 California cities (and, UPDATE, Davis) with the nearest total population to the city of Santa Cruz, comparing each municipality's general fund expenditures by department to see how Surf City stacks up in budgetary priorities. While comparing city budgets is no simple task -- it's red apples to green apples to apple blossoms -- every effort was made to examine the cities' line items to group budgetary expenditures in a way similar to Santa Cruz's categories. When some cities with close populations (such as Rosemead and Paramount) had radically different spending patterns (in both cases due to contracting with their counties for police service), their budgets were ignored. After the jump, there are tables comparing where Santa Cruz ranks in expenditures with each of the 10 study cities, and pie charts for a visual look at our city's priorities.

Our city's numbers are from the budget currently posted on the Santa Cruz site, and do not reflect the proposed cuts made at the Dec. 9 city council meeting, nor the Phase 8 cuts made a few months ago.

The most obvious difference is that Santa Cruz spends a higher percentage of its General Fund on parks and recreation than any other city with approximately 50,000 to 60,000 residents except for Palo Alto, which happens to be the richest city in this group. It is also near the top in police spending, matching Gardena and Fountain Valley, and trailing only National City in San Diego County. However, most cities spend in the 30 percent to 40 percent range on police services, with only Palo Alto underneath that range.

The category of Public Works (general fund expenditures on infrastructure, which often do not include water and sewer, since those are usually enterprise funds) was the most difficult to compare across cities, as each government had a slightly different structure for infrastructure, and different cooperations with water and trash agencies. However, Santa Cruz spends very little on this category compared to all the study cities except for Woodland in Yolo County.

Some cities included library services in their Parks & Recreation budget, some did not, and some had no library funding. We decided to put library costs in with that budget. City Core encompasses expenses for administrative departments, city executives, city councils, and miscellaneous expenditures.

All numbers were pulled from the respective city's public websites. In a purely subjective measure, GT found that Santa Cruz is about middle-of-the-pack in terms of crafting budget PDFs that are easy to understand and graphically pleasing. Also, Palo Alto has one awesome website ... go figure.

Here are the charts:

Size of General Fund, and list of study cities

Palo Alto (Santa Clara County), $132,009,000, pop. 58,246
Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz County), $57,132,249, pop. 55,332
San Rafael (Marin County), $55,945,917, pop. 55,649
Gardena (Los Angeles County), $45,835,664, pop. 58,717
Woodland (Yolo County), $43,538,222, pop. 53,690
Davis (Yolo County), $41,969,842, pop. 62,724
Petaluma (Sonoma County), $40,047,600, pop. 54,496
La Mesa (San Diego County), $39,290,170, pop. 53,990
National City (San Diego County), $38,030,304, pop. 58,761
Fountain Valley (Orange County), $33,073,377, pop. 55,471
Perris (Riverside County), $28,769,651, pop. 53,594
Tulare (Tulare County), $25,409,850, pop. 55,308

Populations are based on 2007 estimates.

Percentage spent on police

National City, 54.3%
Gardena, 40.5%
Santa Cruz, 39.9%
Fountain Valley, 39.8%
Perris, 39.4%
Petaluma, 38.7%
Tulare, 35.9%
Woodland, 34.0%
La Mesa, 33.0%
Davis, 32.9%
San Rafael, 29.5%
Palo Alto, 22.6%

Percentage spent on fire and emergency

Fountain Valley, 26.5%
San Rafael, 21.6%
Davis, 20.1%
Petaluma, 19.9%
Woodland, 19.8%
La Mesa, 19.6%
Santa Cruz, 19.3%
Gardena, 19.1%
National City, 18.9%
Palo Alto, 18.4%
Tulare, 17.4%
Perris, 11.2%

Percentage spent on parks and recreation, including library

Palo Alto, 21.3%
Davis, 17.5%
Santa Cruz, 16.9%
Woodland, 14.3%
Tulare, 12.1%
Petaluma, 11.6%
Gardena, 7.5%
Perris, 7.0%
Fountain Valley, 4.7%
National City, 4.7%
La Mesa, 4.6%
San Rafael, 3.9%

Percentage spent on public works

San Rafael, 24.2%
Fountain Valley, 19.7%
Tulare, 18.9%
La Mesa, 18.1%
Petaluma, 14.4%
Gardena, 11.4%
Perris, 11.0%
Palo Alto, 10.5%
National City, 7.7%
Santa Cruz, 4.3%
Woodland, 3.1%
Davis, 2.7%

Percentage spent on planning and community development

Perris, 11.9%
Woodland, 10.5%
San Rafael, 8.4%
Palo Alto, 7.9%
Petaluma, 4.7%
Davis, 4.6%
La Mesa, 4.4%
National City, 4.4%
Gardena, 3.0%
Santa Cruz, 2.9%
Tulare, 1.8%
Fountain Valley, 0%*

*Fountain Valley has rolled its planning expenses into the city core functions, and it's too difficult to split them back out. The expenses seem to be minimal.