Santa Rosa City Council adopts $437 million budget after hearings focused on police spending

Santa Rosa’s newly adopted budget maintains a baseline increase on police spending, one of several sticking points raised in a two-day hearing this week on city spending as hundreds of residents pushed City Hall for a stronger response on police reform and racial injustice.

Still, the $1.6 million bump in the Police Department’s budget — the minimum required under a voter-approved 2016-year tax measure — is lower than the $2.5 million increase City Manager Sean McGlynn proposed before the hearings Tuesday and Wednesday, when almost all public comment focused on police spending.

Hundreds of people, commenting via phone and email, called for less spending on police and more funding for homelessness, housing and other community services.

“People think that defunding the police is a crazy idea, but when you think about it, we’ve been defunding mental health, education — the important areas of our community that actually need funds — and it’s hurting the public,” said Anandi Jimenez, who identified herself as a longtime Black resident of Santa Rosa. She also called for the council to “take immediate and extreme action and back your words with what’s right.”

Council members, after the extraordinary deluge of public input, decided what they heard was primarily a request to restructure the Police Department to better serve the community’s needs and not, in fact, a literal call for steep cuts to its budget. The 260-person department, including 181 officers, accounts for more than a third of the city’s $178.7 million general fund spending for the upcoming fiscal year.

“I think what I’m hearing from the public is an overall desire to look at that and look at shifting how we handle our nonviolent calls for service,” said Councilman Chris Rogers, noting that Santa Rosa City Schools was set to consider whether to continue contracting for five police officers to serve at 10 city campuses.

In the final $437 million budget, adopted unanimously Wednesday after more than 10 hours of hearings, the council also agreed to a slate of potential changes in policing, including a pledge to transition away from dispatching sworn officers to nonviolent calls. It also committed to revisiting other policy moves during a budget review in mid-September.

The calls to slash police spending emerged locally as part of a nationwide reform movement galvanized by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in May at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

The local campaign included an online petition aimed at City Hall with more than 17,000 signatures. But it faced a procedural hurdle right out of the gate in Santa Rosa, where Measure O, a sales tax increase passed four years ago by voters, requires more than a third of the city’s general revenue to go to the police department.

The council can only overrule that provision with a sixth-sevenths majority — a high threshold on a council with two members, Mayor Tom Schwedhelm and Councilman Ernesto Olivares, who worked long careers with the Santa Rosa Police Department before retiring.

“I don’t know that I’m ready to start making big cuts to the police department because we don’t know yet what it’s going to look like,” Olivares, a former lieutenant, said Wednesday.

Schwedhelm, the former police chief, on Tuesday asked Police Chief Ray Navarro about strategies to potentially reduce the presence of armed officers on lower-priority calls.

“I believe at some point, we need to start analyzing: What are the calls for service that the Police Department is responding to?” Schwedhelm said. “And then with those numbers, the actual numbers, what types of calls for service do we think we don’t have to send a sworn officer to? I’ve heard a lot of comments about nonviolent-type calls.”

None of the other five council members expressed a strong preference for going below the Measure O funding baseline, though they reached consensus that the department needed to change how it worked.

City finances are set to languish this year, largely due to the coronavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place orders issued by state and local health officials, which have curbed economic activity, resulting in sharply lower projected tax revenues. McGlynn’s initial budget would have nearly drained city reserves over the course of the next year, prompting city officials to look for ways to curtail spending.

The budget, which outlines city revenue and expenditures from July 1 to June 30, 2021, did not include any future coronavirus stimulus packages that may emerge from the partisan gridlock of Washington, D.C. Nor does it include the $90 million payout the city expects to receive as early as this summer from PG&E as part of a $13.5 billion settlement between the bankrupt utility and victims of 2017 and 2018 wildfires and local governments.

The adopted budget is about $2 million smaller than the current one, though the general fund, which pays out much of the city’s payroll, will rise by about $7.4 million. The city has implemented a hiring freeze to save money but has not imposed any furloughs or laid off any employees.

After hearing a range of options from staffers, the City Council agreed to save more than $10 million by deferring a slew of public works projects, steering that money instead to general fund reserves.

Jason Nutt, the city’s transportation and public works director, said he was “not overly concerned” about the long-term impacts of deferring those projects, though postponing construction can lead to higher costs down the road.

The budget approval comes on the cusp of several opportunities for public comment on policing in Santa Rosa over the coming months, starting with a few public meetings next week.

The city plans to hold a community forum about public safety policies and impacts on Santa Rosa’s communities of color at noon on Tuesday, followed by a City Council study session on an outreach effort the city calls a “community empowerment plan.”

The next day, a newly formed council subcommittee will meet to review public safety policies and issues, including the vacant police auditor position, a report on the Santa Rosa Police Department’s response to the local George Floyd protests, and the city’s adherence to the “8 Can’t Wait” police reform agenda.

Before the budget hearing began Tuesday, Schwedhelm referenced a Saturday night incident — caught on video — in which a woman drove her Porche SUV through a crowd of peaceful protesters marching on Sonoma Avenue. Santa Rosa police have said they believe the driver, a nurse just getting off her shift, acted out of a sense of panic and was not trying to hit anyone.

The mayor sounded a broader note, saying city will not tolerate attacks against peaceful protesters and specifically the use of weapons or vehicles in any attacks.

“To our residents in the Black community and other communities of color, please know that we see you. We hear you,” Schwedhelm said. “You matter. Black lives matter.”

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.