Question #1

The constituents of West Sacramento expect and should receive high quality of police services, fire services, and comfort level of a timely response with the right equipment during an emergency. What is your assessment of our current Police and Fire Departments?

West Sacramento has both an excellent, highly trained and well managed Police and Fire Department, that currently provides quality services to this community and I am committed to making them better.

We have already started by increasing staffing in both Departments over the last two years, adding 10 new staff to the police, a new engine company and staffing for fire and are currently building the first new Fire Station in 36 years, at Lake Washington Blvd.

While these recent increases are a good start, there is still more to be done so that our community receives the highest level of protection and the fastest response times to emergency calls. Several of the areas that need to be explored:

● Long term staffing levels in the Fire Department, with an immediate increase of two firefighters,

● An assessment of the Fire Departments capacity to fight high-rise fires, to support our urban development,

● Timing and phasing of a sixth Fire Station, to ensure it is on line consistent with growth,

● A plan for a new police facility,

● Assessment of when it will be necessary to add an additional patrol car, and

● Adequate staffing to handle all the new special events that are beginning to become part of our community.

While this list is not exhaustive the important issue is that we begin planning now to ensure our police and fire services grow with the community and meet the community’s public safety needs.

Jim Cahill

I believe this question was also answered more fully in Question One. I do believe we have a very professional police and firefighter force, I just do not believe we have funded them to the level they deserve.

With so much growth, it is inevitable that resources would become strained. While many people hesitate to admit a problem has arisen, for fear of being blamed, I believe that we should acknowledge our staffing shortage and take immediate corrective action.

Since, as with Code Enforcement, public safety expenses are an appropriate expenditure from the General Fund, a decision to allocate more money in this area is completely within the power of the City Council.

Mark Johannessen

The city has been slow in assuring that police and fire services keep up with growth, and as a result, our police and firefighters have been stretched thin which directly impacts critical response times and our safety. Both police and fire services need to keep pace with growth, both in terms of facilities and staffing, and keep pace in a timely manner.

Our police officers need to have the staffing and equipment needed to properly focus on those issues most important to us including traffic control, neighborhood speeding, code enforcement and crime prevention. West Sacramento police have nearly twice the number of calls for service as neighboring counties, which directly impacts the number of officers available to respond to calls. We need to be creative in finding ways to more effectively use our police staff. Currently, officers are dispatched out of Woodland and having calls prioritized by Woodland may not result in the best utilization of our officers. We can begin looking at a plan to have dispatch occur out of West Sacramento. The hiring of more Community Service Officers, who typically cost less that two-thirds than sworn officers, could allow more efficient and effective use of sworn officers time to focus on higher priority issues. Improved efficiencies may also occur through a review of the report writing system to allow reports to be written in the field, and a better system for transporting criminals to jail, which now takes a huge amount of time for our officers.

The West Sacramento Fire Department is still understaffed at the firefighter level. As our city grows with more urban and high density development, we need to be sure staffing and stations keep up in a timely manner with the service demand that development will bring. We need to be certain our policies provide the financial means for recruiting and retaining quality firefighters.

Ensuring our police and fire departments are prepared to meet the needs of a growing city is also a continuous process that should be the first priority of any city official. With a new fire station and police substation under construction, and other expansions to our fire stations, we can feel good that there is visible progress being made in expanding our public safety departments. It is important that we look at other measures to assess the performance of our departments, and I will work with our police and fire departments to do so, including the men and women who serve our city so well.

According to the Citygate Report on the City website—we should have two officers for 1000 residents. We are near 50,000 people. We should have 100 officers. Right now we only have 68. If you exclude the detectives (8) and top ranking administration (5); we only have 55 officers to patrol our city 24/7, and that’s not enough. We definitely need more police on patrol. I have asked council for more police for years.

Our fire departments should have a minimum of four people per engine and truck/ladder. This is a safety issue to protect our fire fighters. We now have only three per engine and truck/ladder. We currently need five more fire fighters. With the new high-rises coming in; our fire departments will need training and possibly new equipment in order to serve these buildings.

The rural area near Gregory doesn’t have fire hydrants. If there is a fire in that area, the water will have to be brought in.