Police Budgets Targeted for More Cuts : Law enforcement: Port Hueneme may dissolve its department and then contract with the sheriff. Other cities are looking at trims.

As Ventura County cities skimp to balance budgets, officials are scrutinizing their most costly public service--police protection. And police are under growing pressure to justify every dollar.

Few topics, in fact, are more touchy among local police chiefs than questions about which department’s services cost the most, and why.

In Ventura, Police Chief Richard Thomas said, some residents have asked why Thousand Oaks’ police service is so much cheaper than their city’s.

“Well, they’re getting what they pay for,” Thomas said. “Services (there) are significantly different in terms of staffing levels, patrol and the programs they offer.”

Ventura, an older beach community with tourist traffic, also has nearly twice the crime to fight as Thousand Oaks, an affluent new suburb, Thomas said.

He could pencil out cuts to reduce costs. “That’s the easy thing to do on paper,” Thomas said. “But it might affect a lot of lives.”

In this testy budget season--as cities prepare for sharp funding cuts from the state--police budgets are prime targets. Top cops and the rank-and-file are trying just to maintain the status quo.

For example, sheriff’s deputies distributed 1,000 postcards last weekend for supporters to mail to the county Board of Supervisors. “We’re not asking for more money. We’re just asking to be left alone,” Deputy Patti Dreyer said at a union-sponsored rodeo.

Assuming a more confrontational posture, a police union posted this message on two billboards last week: “Oxnard, where crime pays and the city doesn’t. . . . Call your city councilman and demand more.”

Some municipal officials are finding there is no more money for law enforcement, the service that often is at the top of voter priority lists.

Moved by cost concerns, the city of Port Hueneme will consider this summer whether to dissolve its 19-officer Police Department and contract with the Sheriff’s Department--a step two other small cities, Fillmore and Ojai, took to save money years ago, and Santa Paula rejected.

Meanwhile, Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Port Hueneme are studying a proposal to put police dispatchers at a single location and possibly consolidate record-keeping.

And Moorpark officials are resigning themselves to police cuts if anticipated state reductions do occur, since law enforcement now consumes 60% of the city’s $3.7-million budget for basic services.

“We’re talking (cuts of) anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 and that would have to come out of police or require the general fund to be cut by 30%,” said Deputy City Manager Richard Hare.

As final budgets are approved this summer, city councils across the county will have much to consider when analyzing police costs, a Times survey shows.

Compared to the statewide norm, every police agency in Ventura County is understaffed, with only half as many employees and uniformed officers per capita on average.

Correspondingly, the county’s crime rate is among the lowest for any non-rural area in the West and is one-third below the statewide average.

The rule of thumb that law enforcement costs increase with the crime rate helps explain some of the differences among local police agencies. And crime is often tied to factors out of law enforcement’s control, such as poverty, education, out-of-town traffic and street alignment, police chiefs said.

Those factors favor the low-crime, white-collar east county over the older west county, where the demographic characteristics reflect California as a whole. Violent crime is 2 1/2 times higher in the west county than in the east, and property crime is 1 1/2 times greater.

Even when those elements are considered, however, police costs in some local cities stand out.

The Times survey shows that Ventura’s costs per capita are easily the highest in the county and that Oxnard’s are not as low as its officer total would indicate. It also shows that Ojai pays a premium for its police service and that the four cities with the county’s lowest per capita costs--Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Fillmore--all are served through contract by the Sheriff’s Department.

At $155 per resident, Ventura’s police expenses are more than a third higher than the county average of $114. The city also has a higher ratio of police employees than any other, even though it has proportionately less crime than Oxnard or Santa Paula.

Despite its relatively high costs, Ventura’s department has absorbed its own cuts--losing 8 1/2 employees in three years--and will be down to 194 workers by July 1, Chief Thomas said.

And Thomas said some Fire Department costs--including about $650,000 for fire dispatchers--are in his budget but are not police costs.

“It’s not that we have buckets of money sitting around here in some fat fund,” he said. “Those employees are busy.”

An essential difference between Ventura’s department and others is that Ventura’s offers more services at higher levels, Thomas said.

Ventura emphasizes traffic patrol more than other cities, he said, because “traffic problems have been a priority in this city for years.”

Unlike new east county cities such as Thousand Oaks, Ventura must police many through-streets designed decades ago before cul-de-sacs and dead-ends were included in city plans as crime-prevention measures, he said.

Ventura also assigns four officers to its anti-drug education program in middle schools, the largest such program in the county, Thomas said.

“We’re an entirely different type of community than Thousand Oaks,” he said. “It’s predominantly a bedroom community. It is almost all brand new, whereas Ventura is hundreds of years old. We have problems you don’t have in more affluent planned communities that are gated.”

A better comparison, Thomas said, is between Ventura and older beach cities such as Santa Barbara and Oxnard, which all have lots of tourist traffic.

Santa Barbara’s department has a higher employee ratio than his, and Oxnard is “terribly understaffed” with an employee ratio 19% below Ventura’s, Thomas said.

Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt has repeatedly made the same point, maintaining during a brief 1992 campaign for a public-safety tax that his department was the worst staffed in the nation for a city with 100,000 to 250,000 residents.

But, Oxnard Lt. Tom Cady said last week such a contention may no longer be true. He said the nationwide comparison was made several years ago when his department had numerous vacancies and only 130 sworn employees. It now has 148 officers.

Nevertheless, Cady insisted that Oxnard still is among the lowest-staffed cities for its size in the state, ranking last out of 18 California cities in a 1991 study. The city had 150 sworn officers at the time, he said.

Oxnard’s staffing, however, is not even the worst in the county among cities with at least 100,000 residents. Thousand Oaks has employee and officer ratios far below Oxnard’s, according to data provided by the cities.

While statistics show that Oxnard does have a sworn-officer ratio below the countywide average, its total staff, which includes 99 civilians, is above the county norm. So are its costs per capita.

Cady said that $500,000 and four employees included in the Oxnard police budget should be deducted, because they are for animal control, a duty not usually performed by city police.

Much like Ventura, the ratio of sworn officers to total police employees is low in Oxnard. Both Ventura’s Thomas and Cady said that is by design, partly because civilian employees generally cost less than officers.

Policing is also more efficient when officers hand off such duties as writing reports to civilians, Cady said.

“Instead of sitting and writing reports, our officers are out on the street,” the lieutenant said. With civilian assistance, he said, “we’re able to have seven or eight do the same work as 10 (once did).”

Staff levels may be reduced further with anticipated cuts of about $400,000 in a budget of $18.8 million next fiscal year--about 30% of Oxnard’s total general fund, Cady said.

Despite cost comparisons, a number of local police officials said Oxnard is clearly understaffed given its high crime rate. The city had one-third of all serious county crime last year, but only 21% of its population.

“The point is that the crime rate is a significant cost factor,” Cady said. “It’s costing us to handle all of those (serious) crimes.”

In low-crime Ojai, the policing is costly because of a city policy to keep two cruisers available at all times in the small city spread out over a large area, officials said.

The Ojai Valley’s allure to weekend tourists also brings with it a need for more police, City Manager Andrew Belknap said.

“We have lots of people in town that you would not normally see in a town of 8,000 residents,” he said. “So we have more of a need for police service.”

Ojai, one of five local cities to use the Sheriff’s Department as its police, is the only one whose costs per resident are not far below the county average.

Police costs in Fillmore, Moorpark, Thousand Oaks and Camarillo range from 23% to 37% below the norm. Ojai’s costs are 27% above the average, and sheriff’s costs to police far-flung unincorporated areas is 12% higher, according to the department.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Bill Wade said that low costs result from an “economy of scale. The secret of our contracting is that we can spread those overhead costs over a larger base.”

City officials who hire sheriff’s deputies said they like both the price and the service.

“It’s very good, outstanding,” said MaryJane Lazz, assistant city manager in Thousand Oaks. “It’s just like having our own police department.”

But Moorpark, which has the county’s lowest crime rate, is chafing a bit as its sense of security is eroded by the fact that less than half of its theft cases are solved, according to the city’s Hare.

“I still think that in a community this size, those things shouldn’t happen,” Hare said. “And if they do, they should be solved.”

Whether cities that contract with the Sheriff’s Department get the good service for less money is an on-going debate among local police officials.

Ventura’s Thomas, for one, said some sheriff’s costs are not fully charged to cities.

But Wade said that the sheriff passes along “all costs that are appropriate.”

Such services as the operation of the County Jail, crime laboratory, police academy and court services are not passed through to contract cities because they are provided without extra fees to cities with their own departments, Wade said.

The sheriff’s reputation for streamlined operations prompted Santa Paula to look at junking its own Police Department three years ago, Chief Walter Adair Jr. said.

Officials eventually decided that Santa Paula’s homespun approach to policing could be lost because, unlike city officers, most sheriff’s deputies probably would not live in town, Adair said.

“We also recognized that once you give up that kind of control, you never get it back,” Adair said. “We all love the sheriff now, but who’s going to be the sheriff in five or 10 years?”

Port Hueneme is now considering eliminating its 19-officer Police Department. Both Oxnard and the Sheriff’s Department are studying how much it would cost them to police the port city.

John C. Hopkins, a 27-year Port Hueneme officer and chief since March, said he would not welcome the change.

“I would really hate to see it,” he said. “When you bring in an outside agency, I don’t think you have the same family touch. We respond to dog bites. We help old people out of bed when they can’t get up in the morning. I don’t think those kinds of things would be covered in our contract with the sheriff.”

Hopkins said he thinks the issue will be resolved as a November ballot measure, when he suspects voters will be asked to approve a small public-safety tax or lose their department.

“The issue isn’t going to be who can do the better job,” Hopkins said. “It’s just money. If the city can save a few hundred thousand dollars, (voters) may have to take a good hard look at whether they love us or not.”

Police Costs

Employees Officers Budget Cost Per Per 1,000 Per 1,000 (millions) Population Resident Residents Residents Camarillo* $4.04 56,100 $72.03 .74 .64 Thousand Oaks* $8.26 109,200 $75.61 .79 .71 Moorpark* $2.21 26,700 $82.59 .81 .71 Fillmore* $1.13 12,800 $88.40 .94 .86 Port Hueneme $2.18 20,450 $106.65 1.32 .93 Santa Paula $2.93 26,750 $109.71 1.53 1.08 Simi Valley $12.32 103,000 $119.64 1.63 1.10 Unincorporated $11.72 91,500 $128.09 1.99 1.92 county areas* Oxnard $19.22 149,600 $128.45 1.65 .99 Ojai* $1.14 7,850 $144.83 1.53 1.27 Ventura $14.91 96,100 $155.16 2.04 1.27 County** $80.06 700,100 $114.35 1.63 1.09 average**

Crimes Per 1,000 Residents Camarillo* 23.5 Thousand Oaks* 31.3 Moorpark* 21.2 Fillmore* 40.9 Port Hueneme 46.0 Santa Paula 60.2 Simi Valley 34.5 Unincorporated 21.5 county areas* Oxnard 67.3 Ojai* 40.4 Ventura 56.8 County** 42.6 average**

* The Sheriff’s Department provides police service for unincorporated county areas and for Ojai, Fillmore, Moorpark, Camarillo and Thousand Oaks.

** Not counted in these cost totals are Sheriff’s Department expenses for such countywide services as the county jail, crime laboratory, court services, police academy, bomb squad and a specialty SWAT team. Those and other services add another $40.5 million to total police costs in the county.