Comments (0) The San Carlos Police Department
Welcomes You To The
2nd Annual Town Hall Meeting
Hosted by Chief Greg Rothaus
Come Learn About Your Police Department
March 9th, 7:00pm to 8:30pm
City Council Chambers
600 Elm Street
I keep seeing letters and press comments from San Carlos residents who feel that years of budget cutbacks have not compromised our police and fire departments, and that these agencies may have been “overstaffed.”
To anyone who believes that, here are the facts:
• The San Carlos Police Department is so thinly staffed that it must frequently call for outside assistance from neighboring police agencies. This happens regularly when we have weekend bar brawls as well as shootings and armed robberies. Serious crimes in this city, by the way, increased 25 percent in 2009, according to a recent report to the City Council from Police Chief Greg Rothaus.
• Successive cutbacks in the number of sworn officers, combined with unfilled vacancies, illnesses and court appearances, mean that 12-hour shifts and compulsory overtime are frequently the norm. Tired officers are too often faced with stopping suspicious vehicles late at night without the availability of a second officer as backup, and when is that going to lead to disaster?
• If you compare San Carlos Police Department with its counterparts in four other comparably-sized cities — Burlingame, Belmont, Foster City and Los Gatos — San Carlos has the lowest number of officers per capita: 1.1 per thousand residents. In Burlingame and Foster City, it’s 1.4 officers per thousand.
• In the Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department, the combined staffing of the city’s only two fire stations is six for each shift. There can be situations, as in a recent fatal residential fire, when this is not enough, especially if people need to be rescued. Thus, precious minutes are wasted waiting for reinforcements to come from Belmont or Redwood City.
• Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department Chief Doug Fry confirms that Station No. 13 on Laurel Street downtown has no firefighting capability this year, and thus there is no first-response protection to the entire north and central part of the city from this station — a truly worrisome state of affairs. That’s because the station has only one large ladder truck that carries no water, no hose and no pumps. Although it was never designed to be a first-response vehicle — but to work in tandem with a pump engine — in fact the ladder truck is all that’s available for this section of town. The truck is rotated each year between Belmont and San Carlos, and this year it’s San Carlos’ turn to man the vehicle.
• Our present reduced staffing of three firefighters per vehicle is not enough for any first-response team to enter a burning building, even if the structure could be saved in the initial minutes of the blaze. That’s because state safety regulations require the presence of four firefighters — two to go in and two to remain outside as backup. So the first company to arrive has to wait for a second company and, in that time, even if it’s just 30 seconds or a minute, it may be too late to save a building.
Make no mistake about it, we are playing a dangerous game of Russian Roulette with our public safety agencies by thinking that we can continue to chop with impunity.
Ken Castle is the organizer of White Oaks Neighborhood Watch in San Carlos.
KGO-TV (Channel 7) covered a meeting of the the San Carlos Transportation and Circulation Commission last night when the commission discussed the Public Works department’s proposal of turning off half of San Carlos’s street lights to save money.
Residents featured in the video segment are against the proposal, as is the White Oaks Neighborhood Organization. Councilman Matt Grocott also expressed that he does not approve of the proposal, and he suggested seeking other areas to cut, such as City employees’ salaries. Thank you, Matt.
Sources at the meeting tell us that the commissioners blamed the residents of San Carlos for not passing Measure U (as if newcomers aren’t already paying very high property taxes to begin with), and that they took issue with our blog “disparaging” them. (Note to commissioner: On Google, search for “US Constitution, First Amendment.” And we don’t disparage anyway.)
February 15, 2010, 03:30 AM By Michelle Durand
Nearly half the streetlights in San Carlos could darken and traffic safety requests deferred indefinitely under a list of proposed cuts by the Public Works Department meant to meet its share of a $3.5 million shortfall.
“It’s going to be a very different form of city government if these cuts go through. It will be a real radical change,” said Public Works Director Robert Weil.
Weil needs to cut $125,000 from his budget to meet the target set by City Manager Mark Weiss of all city departments. While the chop is far from the hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially coming from other areas, such as parks and public safety, public works is challenged by not having as many places to cut, Weil said.
But like its departmental counterparts, public works also contributes to the quality of life by keeping streets lit, sewers flowing and both pedestrians and motorists safe.
The biggest proposed cut is turning off 45 percent of the city’s street lights for a cost savings of $75,000 annually. Ironically, flipping the power will first cost the city $60,000 but the savings will begin the second year.
No specific locations are suggested; the proposal is just a figure used to reach the required number, Weil said.
“Why can’t city government operate like a business?”
This is a question we’ve heard a lot lately, especially with cities struggling to make ends meet. In San Carlos, the severity of a projected $3.5 million budget shortfall is prompting the city council to look at fundamental changes. Proposals include shutting down one of two fire stations and replacing the San Carlos police force with hired guns from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department.
Maybe there’s another way. Maybe the council might consider the reverse option: Keeping the fire and police departments intact — and outsourcing city hall.
That’s already being done in Georgia, where several cities have hired a for-profit private company to run everything – and I mean everything – except public safety departments. One city, Sandy Springs, population 85,000, has operated in this fashion since 2005. According to the city’s website, “the result of this unique partnership has been a significantly higher level of customer service along with a focus on quality, increased responsiveness to individual needs, and dramatically lower operating costs with a total savings of approximately $20 million per year.”
Sandy Springs has an annual budget of $98.8 million and 380 employees. Even though San Carlos is just under one-third that size, with a $28.4 million budget and 110 staff, the prospect of saving millions might well provide an ongoing solution to the chronic financial problems that have plagued San Carlos for a decade.
The contractor for these services is an Englewood, Colorado-based company with a name that sounds like a Secret Service code: CH2M Hill. This firm operates everything from city wastewater treatment plants to public works departments. But, recently it began managing entire cities, mostly smaller municipalities with a population of 100,000 or less. Apart from Sandy Springs, it also runs Milton and Johns Creek which, like Sandy Springs, are suburbs of Atlanta. In Colorado, two places with private management are Centennial (population: 103,000) and Castle Pines North, a new residential community.
Continue reading 'Keep Police and Fire, Outsource City Hall'»
A White Oaks block captain passed this article to us, and it’s worth reading if you carry a cell phone or use a GPS navigation device in your vehicle.
GPS: IS IT A ROADMAP TO YOUR HOUSE?
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard.
When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.
The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.
Something to consider if you have a GPS — don’t put your home address in it. Put a nearby address (like a store or gas station or police department) so you can still find your way home if you need to, but no one else would know where you live if your GPS were stolen.
MOBILE PHONES — A GOLD MINE OF INFORMATION FOR CROOKS
This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet… etc…was stolen.
Twenty minutes later when she called her hubby from a pay phone telling him what had happened, hubby says “I received your text asking about our PIN number and I’ve replied a little while ago.”
When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to text “hubby” in the contact list and got ahold of the pin number. Within 20 minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.
Moral of the lesson:
– Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact list.
– Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc….
– Very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts, CONFIRM by calling back.
Also, when your friends or family members are texting you to meet them somewhere, be sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don’t reach them, be very careful about going places to meet “family and friends” who text you.
The San Carlos Police Department has released its 2009 Dashboard, a report that benchmarks types of crimes, such as violent crimes, property crimes, and burglary crimes, against other local cities’ results for the same time period.
For 2009, violent crimes had a much higher likelihood of being solved than did burglary or property crimes.
See the full report here.
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