Next Tuesday, April 26th  at noon, the City Council is having a public meeting to discuss the proposed budget cuts for the Police.

All departments are being asked to  cut their budgets by 4%.

One area they have included is the termination of UNET.

Please inform your neighbors to attend and express their opinions about the need for the Police presence that UNET provides and any other issues they may have.

Since this meeting is a noon ‘workshop’, our best option is to use eComment. Send your thoughts, comments, ideas or concerns about the wisdom of this proposal.

Here’s a link to the agenda.

Police, Fire Public Utilities and Public Works are justifying their proposed budgets. Nobody wants to give up any money. Every department wants to keep operating the way they have.

Threatening to cut services to the neighborhoods is a sure fire way to drum up public comments and hopefully, public support for the departments. After all, we are talking about essential public health and safety services here.

What we don’t ever seem to talk about is how those essential services are being delivered. Take the fire department for example. Most of their calls are medical emergencies. Yet they roll the big equipment with full crews to answer calls that could be more appropriately addressed by a two man paramedic crews. Lots of unnecessary wear and tear on very specialized and expensive equipment.

I’m sure the voters don’t appreciate the prospect of a cut in services. After all, wasn’t it just a year or so ago when we were told that if we didn’t pass Measure A, an armageddon of lost public services would result?

The voters passed it and two weeks later, the Parks Department was threatening to reduce hours or close the City’s pools at the start of Summer. Fortunately, neighbors showed up and embarrassed the Council and we avoided a long hot, dry Summer.

The Police got an extra boost that year as well. We got to see really fast response times for rousting the homeless from the Blaine Street off ramp. In the meantime, the types of service calls the University Neighborhood has, are now coming from Sycamore Highlands, Canyon Crest, University Knolls, and parts of unincorporated Riverside County as well.

So maybe we should all do ourselves a favor and take a look at the budget proposals for Tuesday’s workshop. They’re easy to read. Most of them are going to be power points for the Council. Then share your thoughts via  eComment.

Everybody’s suddenly talking about fiscal responsibility. I say that starts with us. After all, we own it, don’t we?