West County Issue / Public Safety...

Bedford Pinkard, City councilman , Oxnard

I would have to say that I would support the tax because the way we’re going with the budget, we can’t meet all the demands of the residents in the city. I feel that a special tax would be appropriate to ensure the public safety of the people of Oxnard. But when it gets to the point where we have to hire more police officers, it makes me feel like we’ve neglected other areas (such as) social services and socialization-type programs. People have failed to learn how to get along and socialize with each other and that’s the reason that I feel we have increasing crime in Oxnard. I feel that Proposition 13 meant that people would pay a larger portion of the way. We need more policemen on the streets and I would support (hiring) the street-type police officer rather than the administrative level. When we cut, I think we should cut as far away from the public as possible.

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Andres Herrera, City councilman, Oxnard

I really don’t think that we should retax the electorate. I think it’s a matter of the city establishing its own priority to maintain adequate service levels for police protection, and I think all efforts should be made to make sure that we don’t go below those minimum levels. A tax on the residents should be something of a last resort. I think for the 1993-94 fiscal year, the council will have to explore our operations relative to our priorities and what we can direct from our scant resources to make sure we maintain those services. We have yet to do that for this fiscal year. I don’t think this burden on the residents is appropriate at this time. We need to do some more searching within the confines of our ability and our budget constraints and see how we address providing both police and fire services.

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Manuel Lopez, Mayor, Oxnard

I think that it is the responsibility of the citizens to fund basic services. Money doesn’t materialize from some magic place; it’s our responsibility to fund basic services. I think it’s a very appropriate thing. I don’t know whether we will have success because we tried a tax two years ago that was not successful, and with the economy, it is very difficult to ask citizens to pay. We have a very, very dire situation right now because our theoretical or historical sources of funding--the federal and state governments--for the last few years have been drying up, and as they dry up, we need to look to ourselves to provide the resources. Common sense tells me that we’re very short (on officers). We have a very lean situation. I think one of the things that people are generally not aware of is that in some critical times of the 24-hour period, we have seven or eight officers on duty, and that really is not appropriate for the size of our city.

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Harold Hurtt, Police chief, Oxnard

I think that traditionally what citizens do through paying taxes is help fund or totally fund the services that a city provides. The only other revenues that a city’s able to get are through fees it charges for services or revenue generated by certain departments. The residents determine what level of service they want from a city and whether they are willing to pay for it. The only concern that I have is that I hope the residents understand the financial situation that the city is in and how revenue is generated and how it is accounted for before they come to a conclusion on whether this is an appropriate thing or not. I would ask them, “How safe do you feel in your community as far as we being able to respond to you in a timely manner?” It’s an unfortunate thing and I’m sure that we would not be going to the public with this if it were not truly needed and if we didn’t feel this was what we had to do.

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Tom Cady, Oxnard police lieutenant; president, Oxnard Public Safety Management Assn.

It is appropriate. In the spirit of Proposition 13, the emphasis was placed on going to the voters to approve additional taxing authority for additional services, and that’s what we’re attempting to accomplish with this measure. We have the lowest ratio of officers per population of any city our size in the country and we have increasing problems with drugs and gangs. We need the revenue to put extra officers on the street. The funds from this measure would be dedicated to additional safety services and would not be used for any other purpose. I think that’s the spirit of Proposition 13, which is if the citizens want to tax themselves for the additional service, then they’ll do that. Our response time to emergency calls has gone to almost six minutes. That’s an average, so there are some that we get to sooner, but there are some that take much longer. Officers are running from call to call instead of having the opportunity to do any intervention. Some of the lower level calls we’ve stopped going to.