Hi City Council,
I hope this email finds you all well. I'm reaching out to advocate in relation to the proposed city budget for 2021/22. Specifically, I'd like to advocate that the city council not approve the service level enhancements requested by the police department.
My understanding of the service level enhancements is that, at this time, none of them are included in the budget. It will be up to the city council to decide which, if any, of these items to include. There appear to be three enhancements requested by the police department, for a total of 5 positions and about $600,000 in total cost.
At the recent budget meeting, I asked staff if any evaluation has been done by city departments regarding the impact of lessened service in the past year. I was informed that no such work was done. While I recognize the burden of that work, I am wary of increasing MPPD staff when we don't know that the reduction led to any decrease in community health and safety. I think this is especially salient considering the council's recent commitment to reimagining public safety in the upcoming year.
I was so pleased to see "reimagining public safety" chosen as one of the city council's new work priorities. If we are going to make an honest commitment to this idea, I believe that has to start now with the 2021/22 budget. And I strongly believe that approving these enhancements without further discussion of whether or not they are necessary for public safety and whether or not there are viable alternatives, would be in contradiction with this work priority.
When I think about reimagining public safety, I think about what it means to be safe, and what makes us safe. For me, police officers and law enforcement are an incredibly narrow sliver of what makes a community safe. Things like daycare centers, libraries, schools, affordable housing, healthy food access, clean air, public parks, and more are what keep us safe. I am a strong believer that the best way to ensure community safety is to ensure that community members have access to the means and opportunities to live well and achieve their goals. I see a whole host of service enhancements that would better enable our community members to live well and achieve their goals. But I do not believe these service enhancements for MPPD fit that metric, and they may even be contrary to it.
As such, I urge you to not add these service enhancements to the Menlo Park Budget for 2021/22, and to focus our resources on other enhancements that will be more supportive of the health and safety of all our community members.
As always, thank you very much for your time and work.
Best,
Kevin Gallagher
