Walnut Creek Budget

My home town, like many communities around the country is having budget problems. Walnut Creek, California is a generally an affluent community but the reduction in property tax revenue due to lower house prices has had an impact. Property and sales taxes together make up more than half of the city income. Of the sales taxes a majority comes from vehicle sales that are also down this year.

So the city has been crying poor and talking about layoffs and reduced services and higher fees. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your views, the city has also committed to building a $35 million library which isn't helping. So I've been looking through the budget proposed and adopted for the next two years. And I've looked at some other local city's budgets too. Concentrating on my town, since they are nice enough to put the whole thing on their web site, I am struck by one thing. Why is it that the police personnel budget went up $5 million when the number of officers has remained the same? That's about a 15% increase.

Check out the details. Looking at the police department table A we see that the "personnel services" went from $33.175M in 2006-2008 to $38.975M for 2008-2010. Scroll down to the next chart and you see the staffing level has remained the same at 119 FTE.

That $5M would certainly come in handy in some other departments. The posted budget documents do not break out this increase. But one may suppose it's salary and benefits. These days police salaries and benefits are all set by collective bargaining agreements. I would say these unions are doing well for their members. And these unions have made police compensation off limits to budget cutting efforts. A concerted public relations campaign emphasizing the dangers of police work and other scare tactics keep city officials at bay. A steady diet of lawsuits keeps the unions on top.

Valuable as the police may be, I think it's time they became part of the real world. I haven't gotten any 15% raises in a long while and I don't see why they should either. Sorry guys, but the party has got to be over.