NO ME MIETAS (Don't Lie To Me!)
Summary
Every council person proclaims the following:- Over the last six years there has been insufficient money to hire even a single additional deputy.
- There has been and there is now a critical need to hire additional deputies.
- Because of 1 and 2, there are no other options but to raise taxes.
As a result the city paid a company $29,000 to survey 400 residents to determine if there was support to add to the November 8, 2016 ballot an initiative for a parcel tax increase (add a tax to the property taxes). This initiative was to be called the "Highland Police Neighborhood Public Safety Measure," and its goal was to raise $1.9M by placing a $113 parcel tax on every parcel in the city. This would be a 22% tax increase over the amount the city currently receives in property taxes. The survey also asked if the respondent would support a lesser amount or a utility tax. On February 6, 2016, the council decided not to place the initiative on the ballot even though the firm hired to do the survey claimed 65% of the respondents supported the tax increase. Since this was to be a property tax increase, proposition 13 required a 2/3 majority.
On the surface everything seems on the up and up. We have a concerned council that has run out of options and we as citizens must simply face the economic realities that a tax increase is needed. OK. But on second thought is not the most important role of a city government to provide public safety services? Should not the 1st dollar of taxes collected be used for public safety? Clearly in the City of Highland, public safety takes a back seat to other more pressing needs, e.g. giving government employees raises and funding their pension plans. But to try to pass a tax to fund pensions and sloth city employee's raises would not fly. So the council resorted to what is in the final analysis a "SHAKE DOWN." If you don't support this tax increase we cannot ensure your protection. There is another well know organization that uses this technique (StandardOperatingProcedure) and here is one of their prior famous leaders:
In reality was there no money to add officers over the last six years? That is the question, so let's look at the facts. Annually the city's financial information is audited by a CPA firm and the results are published in a report call the "Comprehensive Annual Financial Report" (CAFR). In this report a statement called the "Statement of Activities" is published. It is same statement as a business' profit and loss statement but the city doesn't make profits (aka "filthy lucre"). It shows the amount of money the city took in and the expenses it incurred. The profit and loss is called "Change In Net Position." Here is this amount for the fiscal years ending 6/30/2010- 6/30/2015:
Per the contracts with county for Sheriff's service for 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 the city employs 22 deputies. For the 2014-2015 the total cost of these deputies per the contract was $3,451,410 or $156,882 per deputy. For 2015-2015 the total cost of the 22 deputies was $3,573,110 or $162,414 for each deputy. This amount is for each year and doesn't include overtime. "Obviously" we don't have the financial acumen of a Joe Hughes, Chuck Dantuono, Betty Hughes, Larry McCallon, Jody Scott, Sam Racadio, or Penny Lilburn. Lets not be pretentious. But we can use simple arithmetic. Lets assume the cost of one additional deputy is $175K per year and lets assume that we added two additional deputies at the beginning of 2010. This would be an additional cost of $350,000. For the full six years the cost of these two deputies the cost would be $2,100,000. This would have left a surplus of "only" $18,789,973.
Maybe they really wanted to hire an army. But what can easily be seen is that there was plenty of money to add additional deputies. This makes their statement a LIE!!!!
But We Are Done Yet. It Only Gets Worse!
Is it possible the citizen's money is being spent unwisely? It's possible. In fact, it is fact. We compared the expenditures for Highland with those of Yucaipa. (It is not really necessary to know but there is difference between an "expense" and an "expenditure": Expense_Vs_Expenditure.) Both cities have roughly the same populations, between 50-55K, and we know our top law enforcement official lives in that city. Yucaipa has 227.82 miles of road and 874 acres of parks. Highland has 142.5 miles of roads and 37.25 acres of parks. You can see Yucaipa's CAFR for 2014 and 2015 as well as its Sheriff's contracts on "City, Employee, Pension Info" tab.
We compared expenditures for general government, i.e. the overhead needed to run the city, and expenditures for maintaining roads. These are easy to compare. We didn't compare public safety costs since we are trying to compare the cost of government other than public safety costs, and we didn't compare capital expenditures which are very dependent on grants and other funding sources and they tend to "spike" in particular years. What we found is this that for the average year, Highland's expenditures for General Government is $913,355 more than Yucaipa's and expenditures for roads is $1,013,191 more than Yucaipa's after adjusting for the number of miles. It cost Highland $7,110 more per mile to maintain its road than it costs Yucaipa. Here is the analysis:
It maybe too far into the "weeds" to fully explain this but it leaves no doubt that Highland is badly wasting tax payer's money, to the tune of about $1,926,545 per year and $9,632,726 over the last five years. That is nothing to sneeze at.
Conclusion
The city had surplus of over $20.5M in revenue and wasted about $9.6M over last five years for a total of a $30.1M. The city had total revenue of $36,707,174 in fiscal year 2015. Couldn't the city be adequately run with this amount? Surely a couple of more deputies could have been hired during the last 6 years. It is time to send these frauds packing!!DOCUMENTS
On page 17 is the party breakdown and we compared this to our voter data and it closely matched. We requested the actual names of the individuals surveyed but the city refused. We feel very confident we would have prevailed in court since the city owns the work product and the names are public information under the California Public Records Act.
Based on the results of this survey, the council elected to not put the initiative on the ballot. We speculate the support was not high enough even with the blatant lies it contains, lies that will be explained below, and probably none of the council who may run wants to run a tax increase.
Notice this line on the first page:
Now why would they recommend to put $100K for additional overtime? We obtained the overtime reports from the Sheriff's department and found that overtime for deputies has decreased 35% since 2011! For Yucaipa for the same period, overtime increased by 86% since 2011 and Yucaipa, as far as we know, is not asking for a tax increase. Here is the analysis which shows the overtime reports obtained form the Sheriff's department: OTAnalysis.
This $100K is a red herring and is a flat lie. The city is NOT incurring an additional $100K per year. They just make them up folks.
This $100K is a red herring and is a flat lie. The city is NOT incurring an additional $100K per year. They just make them up folks.
Contract
The company hired by the city to do the survey is Fairbank, Maulin, Metz, and Associates (FM3). Here there contract:
FM3_Contact_Main
FM3_Attachement_A
What we found this interesting is this section in Attachment A:
FM3 BRAGS they have a 95% win rate. One would think the purpose of the survey was to determine the true support for a tax increase. Respondents would be given adequate background information and the survey would be short. NOT! This questions was asked three times Question #6, # 12, and #14):
Why does the same question needed to be asked three times? To justify the $29,000 paid to the FM3? It's crazy.
EMails.
We asked for all the emails related to the survey and the two attached files was what was provided. Note how many are involved from FM3 and from the city in "wordsmithing" the survey. But in the end, Joe Hughes approved the survey content including all the lies in the survey (see the first page of group 1)
The company hired by the city to do the survey is Fairbank, Maulin, Metz, and Associates (FM3). Here there contract:
FM3_Contact_Main
FM3_Attachement_A
What we found this interesting is this section in Attachment A:
Why does the same question needed to be asked three times? To justify the $29,000 paid to the FM3? It's crazy.
EMails.
We asked for all the emails related to the survey and the two attached files was what was provided. Note how many are involved from FM3 and from the city in "wordsmithing" the survey. But in the end, Joe Hughes approved the survey content including all the lies in the survey (see the first page of group 1)
Here are the city individuals involved: Joe Hughes, Chuck "the cheese" Dantuono, Craig Steele (City Attorney), Tony DeCecio, Todd Cole, and Jim Rissmiller. Penny Lilburn email appeared a couple of times, but the rest of the council was not involved. We guess tax increases are not that important to them. We don't know who Jim Rissmiller is but we think he is a friend of John Timmer. He did most of the work. Mr DeCecio was very involved but he told us during one of the "Coffee with a Cop" tax promotion events that he had nothing to do with the tax increase and he was ONLY concerned with public safety. Ya OK. Once the tax increase initiative was tabled, there has not been any more "Coffee with a Cop" events. Just a coincidence we guess (LOL!).
THE SALES JOB
What is called a "Ad Hoc" committee was form on July 24, 2014 after Larry McCallon stated there is a needed for additional officers on the street. Here is the official notice: AdHocCommittee.This committee consisted of John Timmer and Penny Lilburn. It is funny that an Ad Hoc Committee was formed since Ad Hoc committees are not subject to the Brown Act (BrownActAdHocCommittees) meaning all activities are conducted in secret. They don't require minutes be taken and announcements be made when the meetings occur. The public is not allowed to attend. All activities are done behind close doors. They are suppose to be advisory, but in this case would not it be a good idea to let the public in on how it was to be decide if a tax increase was to be pushed?
We asked for the all documents produced or used by this committee but we were told there was none.
Here is what we would of like to think happened next:
So after this Ad Hoc committee was created we can only assume that Timmer and Lilburn embarked on a massive analysis using spreadsheets, crime data, financial data, etc. They must have conducted many interviews with various "knowledgeable" parties and conducted community focus groups, etc. They probably had many a sleepless nights, many heated debates, one would make a point then the other would make a counter point. It is hard to believe they even speak to each other to this day. But what is best for the tax payer was at stake and ones personal needs were irrelevant. Timmer and Lilburn are selfless WARRIORS for the tax payers and over their dead bodies will anything but what is best will be allowed for the tax payer. Yea Right!
Then it was time to announce the results and that job was given to Mr. Timmer.
"We pay 75 to 80 percent of our city budget for police and fire protection"
There it is. The reason a tax increase was needed is because the cost of police and fire protection is eating the city alive! He condensed all the information he and Lilburn reviewed and analyzed into this brief statement so even the citizens could understand the severity of the situation.
FACT CHECK
We checked Timmer's statement by referring to the 2013-2015 budget. The total budgeted expenditures was $40,095,955 (page 101). On page 103 of the same budget the budged amount for police was $7,753,580 and for fire was $3,574,185. Therefore the percentage of the entire budget that fire and police represent is 28.2% ($7,753,580 + $3,574,18 / $40,095,955). Huh? We must have made a mistake since if Timmer says something you can take it to the bank it is true. We checked again and sure enough we were right and Timmer was wrong. He was not even close. This means the stated purpose for a tax increase is incorrect.
We asked Mr. Timmer in a council meeting in June 2015 about this difference and he said he was misquoted and Ms Lilburn backed up him up (FollowUpComments (Community News)). The reporter stated that Mr. Timmer was not misquoted. Also, check out how ridiculous the other statements are about how much public safety takes from the city budget. McCallon is clearly lost in space.
So to conclude either Lilburn and Timmer are just liars or they are idiots and liars. It really doesn't make any difference.
Coffee With A Cop
To sell the tax increase the city elected to use its police force. Why not! The money had to be obtained by "hook or crook." From November 2014 - July 2015 there was a series events called "Coffee with Cop" where groups of officers would meet in coffee shops and restaurants to, in theory, allow the public to have a discussion with them. These were coordinated with the Highland City News. Here is the articles for these:
CoffeeWithCop_1
CoffeeWtihCop_2
CoffeeWithCop_3
CoffeeWithCop_4
CoffeeWithCop_5
At one of them Mr DeCesio was ask if these were all about the tax increase. Of course his answer was they are only about public safety and of course this doesn't "sink" to the emails (see above) where Mr. Decesio was part of the development of survey that contained the lies. There have been NO Coffee with a Cop events that we know of in 2016. Does that have anything to do that there will be no tax initiative on the ballot for 2016? Just MAYBE!
