The Police and The Community

Last Friday I received another anonymous letter and opened it wearily. I get letters about once a month, old fashioned snail mail ones, filled with lunatic ramblings and misspellings common to one of our less literate civic activists and I fully expected this to be the same, but it wasn't.

It was a coherent, well written copy of a letter to the City Manager pointing out that while our police chief has been given $5,000 in city funds to attend a formal banquet, the Seven Islands Chiefs Dinner on February 24, neither he nor his command staff could find the time to represent North Bay Village at the funeral last week of the two slain police officers.

Unfortunately, it was anonymous. I wish it had not been for two reasons. People have to start stepping forward and be willing to put their names to things. The second reason is that there are a number of people who will assume I wrote it. I wish I had but I didn't. I would have signed it. In any event, the letter is at the end of this post.

The City Manager replied very quickly to my inquiry about this letter and told me that the Chief was in an arbitration hearing that day, and that two officers had represented the city at the funeral.

The more I read this letter, the more I realized how much this contrast, the money to go to a social event and the no show at the funerals illustrates the problems with Chief Daniels. He doesn't seem to understand that as chief, he has a duty to the community at large.

Attending the funeral and paying the department's respects to these two slain officers is not just a "nice" thing to do. It reinforces to our own police that when bad things happen, including the very worst, that the department cares and represents. The absence speaks loudly in a way that sending lower ranking members of the PD does not. At a bare minimum, it should have been the command staff who represented.

In North Bay Village, the conspicuous absence of the chief as a member of our community has been much commented on. I am aware that our vice mayor has been hearing voices telling her that the police are doing a terrific job, but the people who have spoken to me say different things. "Why are there no community meetings?" "Isn't he supposed to present at the commission meetings?" "Six months after the Meet The Chief was cancelled, why wasn't it rescheduled?" Probably the most common question I hear is "What are we getting for our money?" and that question has never been answered by the Chief. He's never published or presented the monthly statistics from the Uniform Crime Reports and any activity reports.

Within the police department, there is growing concern over trivial investigations designed to punish perceived enemies, a lack of transparency in decision making, and unnecessary promotions. A common refrain is that the chief is tied in very closely with his perceived support base on the commission and anything that contradicts these political ends will be punished. This is not just one or two cops, almost weekly someone from the PD has a quiet conversation with me, the gist of which is "You don't know the half of it."

See, the thing is, North Bay Village really exists at all because the residents like and respect our police department, even when we get tickets or the kids get in trouble. We see our city as safer and more livable because of the police and I would venture to say that if a serious effort were proposed to eliminate local policing, the politician who supported the effort would wind up being the one eliminated. I'd probably be the one leading that charge to eliminate the politician.

We ask a lot from our police. We expect them to be vigilant about crime, quick to respond, able to use their judgment to keep our city livable. We expect them to be friendly even when they're not having the best day. And we expect them to protect us. Regardless of the strife in the police department in the past and the current climate of secrecy, the NBV PD has always come through for us.

As citizens, we owe the police a good working environment with a chief who leads by respect, with a chief who understands the difference between "gotcha" investigations and discretion, with a chief who stands proudly as his department's symbol and who stands humbly as the community's servant. Instead, it seems like we have a remote force, alienated from the community being served.

Another thing I hear from citizens is some variation of the police are paid too well or treated too generously to which I always respond, "Not true and not true." Residents need to understand that we ask a lot of these professionals, including our expectation that we will have professional and dedicated officers We will attract the kind of individuals who could work elsewhere but choose to be here. This costs. I don't want cut rate security.

As regards the salaries and benefits, a long time budget trick with all public employees was to promise future benefits against current raises. The pensions and the benefit packages grew while wages stood stagnant. The police agreed to go along with this promise. There is an issue, locally and nationwide, over the price of these deferred costs in tougher times. It's a real issue but it is not a police issue. It's our issue as taxpayers and voters. We are the ones who agreed to this and we are the ones who need to find a way to live up to our commitments. The social contract demands this. In the future, we have to be more prudent but these are promises we made, and like an individual, a community is only as good as its word.

Finally, I would remind the chief, a newcomer to this town, that the same group loudly praising him now are the same people who cut the pensions, cut the benefits, voted to lay off cops rather than dip into the red light funds, praised and defended Roland Pandolfi and are now disparaging him. This is not a support base you want to cultivate.

Kevin Vericker
February 1, 2011

Police Chief Complaint About the Funeral

City Government By The Numbers

Numbers matter. Numbers quantify how organizations plan to execute, how well the plan has worked and where to form a new plan. The most obvious quantification of desired results is the amount of money set aside in a budget for activities and goals. This is not exactly rocket science or complex mathematical reasoning. Everyone does it, whether with detailed financial plans or a casual look at the wallet to see if there is money for basic needs and then some left over for optional purchases.

Individual consumers exchange money for goods and services. At the supermarket, the customer hands money to the cashier in exchange for the items in the cart or at the movies for the right to sit in a seat and view the film. Companies exchange money for employee services, for new computers, for accounting services and so forth. Again, this is not complex.

Our city is no different. Residents are taxed and pay taxes in exchange for basic services and how that tax money is apportioned is the clearest indication of what the community values. In North Bay Village, close to 70% of our budget has been dedicated to police services. This is a clear indication of the high value that North Bay Village puts on having a local police department. North Bay Village is justifiably proud of being an exceptionally safe community.

Police services are not a single entity. When a city pays for police services, the city is paying for a full package of services and part of fiscal stewardship is quantifying the services delivered and the quality of the services delivered.

For at least a year, several commissioners and citizens have been asking for the basic statistics on the police department, not just the crime reports (UCR is the acronym) but the actual activities of the police department. This is a routine and normal reporting function for most American police departments. These reports vary in what they quantify, but a typical report is attached below and it includes a good summary of the police activities.

We need this basic information to manage our money. We need to know what the police are doing. Look at the attached report below from Sunny Isles for the month of October 2010. It's simple, understandable and shows what the police did, not just crimes committed. This basic quantitative measure can be further explored for answers to critical questions such as "Are we having a new problem with traffic violations?" or "What is the cost per dispatch call? How many were duplicates?" and "What skills do our police need?" It doesn't provide the answer to these questions but brings them forward.

At the meeting on Tuesday night, the chief could not tell us the arrest stats. Vice Mayor Connie Leon-Kreps and one of the residents talked about how pleased the residents are at more visible patrols but no one can quantify how many patrols there are. A commission can't make policy based on anecdotes. The commission needs verifiable and agreed information.

It is the chief's job to provide that, regularly. The chief spoke about benchmarking, which is a qualitative measure of how one group performs compared to goal. An organization cannot get to benchmarking without first deciding what it is to be measured, measuring it and then comparing. It was a good answer but not to the question posed. A better answer would have been, "I'll provide the requested information."

I urge you to look at the Sunny Isles report. There's nothing hard in here. This is information that the North Bay Village PD have currently and it would be unimaginable if the police chief did not have these numbers. It would mean all of the PD's decisions were guess work and the NBV PD is better than that. This will continue to be an issue until the police chief makes the information public.

Kevin Vericker
January 14, 2011



Sunny Isles Police Statistics Oct-2010

Diffusion of Responsibility

The risk of bureaucratic paralysis is highest when there are needless layers of organization.

Yeah, it's about the Police Department again.

In our new structure, with a command ratio of 1.25 superiors for every 1 on the street officer, and with that command structure ensuring four layers between the patrol officer and the chief in a department smaller than the Aventura Mall Security Force, North Bay Village enters Kafka's territory.

A small example, fictional but it will happen: If a patrol officer sees a pattern emerging and has an idea of how the PD might respond, that patrol officer must first present the problem and the proposed solution to her or his immediate superior. Assuming that superior agrees, the first line supervisor then has the job of convincing her or his superior that the concept has merit. It could die there, but if it does not, the next in line is the executive officer, who must be convinced and finally the chief. I don't know about you, but if I were on patrol, I wouldn't bother.

This absurd structure actively prevents community responsiveness by diffusing responsibility and delaying decision making. If four people make the decision, who's accountable? That may be one of its purposes.

There are other reasons. In times like this, it's a political disaster to hand out raises. But by creating an unnecessary and fictitious command structure, the police chief circumvents this by asserting that the new structure requires different salary structures, not a raise but simply putting the position in line. And by doing it through the abuse of reorganization, people perceived as allies are rewarded.

So innovation is silenced, submission is rewarded, costs rise, effectiveness drops.

Finally, the further away from the execution a decision is made, the less responsibility the decision maker takes. A bad decision made at the top, communicated through four layers of command and executed on the street, does not have a clear path to accountability. Was the decision wrong? Was the communication wrong? Was the execution wrong? It provides the high ranking officials with cover. It will be the patrol officers who will bear the brunt of poor decisions and the command who claims the credit. It's the nature of the beast.

The more complicated an organization, the more difficult it is to pinpoint responsibility and accountability. Large, bloated organizations provide lots of cover for mistakes, errors in judgment, and are not able to respond quickly and effectively to new circumstances if they respond at all.

In private enterprise, especially in this era of globalization, companies have been struggling for decades to find the right balance between the traditional vertical organization, a structure optimized for performance at a single point in time which runs the risk of being inflexible, and a flat organization, which has few layers of decision making and can run the risk of being incoherent. Some organizations succeed in bridging this gap, Southwest Airlines comes to mind, while others fall miserably.

The US military spends much intellectual energy and capital moving between a traditional "command and control" centralized strategy and a more agile approach to local tactics on the ground. It's not an easy balancing act and there is ample reason to believe that getting this balance wrong made the Iraq war longer, harder and nastier than it needed to be.

For North Bay Village to take the opposite tack, to make the PD more complex, less transparent and less effective, shows a dangerous contempt to even the appearance of good management.

Kevin Vericker
January 3, 2011

Closing Out The Week

This week I've written about the worsening issues of the North Bay Village Police Department.

• Publicly paid private investigations to intimidate police officers and citizens.
• The complete lack of community outreach and involvement in public safety.
• The extra legal contract crafted for the police chief.
• The refusal to reign in costs.

There's a bit more to add. There is check sitting in city hall to pay the chief a three month bonus for his insurance transition, his COBRA. This was not part of his employment agreement, not part of his contract but a "verbal" promise made to him. It seems like the grab bag never empties when it comes to the police.

There needs to be a massive change in the police department and I have no faith that this chief will make that happen. So far, any questions from the community have been met with digging in, the chief claiming annoyance at the person trying to work with him, and intimidation. Maybe he might realize that success in North Bay Village is not just about pleasing a small group in the force but his history here, and in Buckeye, AZ, are such that if he has not learned it by now, he never will.

This week, people have been warning me that I face retaliation for criticizing the police, and I probably do. I'm neither stupid nor crazily heroic and I am well aware that the NBV PD has such a history of targeting residents who speak out. I will probably at some point find that I get a ticket for oh, I don't know, unregistered sneakers or making a legal turn. But the current situation is even less tolerable.

Don't take my word for it. Call the chief at 305 758 2626. Ask to see the crime statistics and response sheets for NBV. Ask him about the investigations. Ask him about the budget cuts. Or come to the commission meeting on Tuesday December 14 and ask him in person. Tell me if you get a real answer and I'll tell the rest of the world.

Kevin Vericker
December 10, 2010

The Budget and The Police

In 2009, then Police Chief Pandolfi was instructed by the commission to cut $350,000 from the budget. He resigned a few months later and the cuts had not yet been made. Since then, no cuts have been made. No reductions in force, no change in the pay structure, and in fact the police department has continued running over budget.

There are big examples of the costs being too high. The current police chief's contract is far too generous for the quality of service we are getting. You can see fully paid cops every morning being crossing guards at the school, an expensive deployment. The new contract protected most of the benefits and we have not gone to any furloughs. The command structure has been slightly reduced but not significantly. A detective was demoted as a cost cutting procedure but another was promptly put in. An outside investigator was brought in for no serious reason.

Dispatch became a sacred cow in the North Bay Village mostly due to the alarm that changing local dispatch caused a few citizens who call frequently for no apparent reason. This one really sticks out since $250,000 goes to maintaining local dispatch. Ask your neighbors, how many even know that there is a local dispatch to call besides 911? My guess is that about half won't know there is such a number. The police department does not advertise the service and has never conducted a simple survey to find out if the public even knows about the service.

The last month we have statistics on dispatch is March 2009 where we averaged 8 calls per day, about 2.5 per shift. That's a pretty expensive dispatch especially since we are paying Miami-Dade County 911 as well. There are options besides eliminating - we could combine with other cities, we could staff only during peak hours and use 911 for other calls, we could sell out dispatch services to other cities or even condos. But none of those have been explored and we are sitting with a large white elephant of a service.

And so we pay, about $80 per call for just in case dispatch. That's a pretty high price.

The PD is not participating in the community as a whole, not being a partner in the budget crisis, not reaching out where it matters and isolating itself from the community. I have never liked the idea of going to county or another city for police services, but seriously if our return on the amount of money we spend is this poor, why are we even paying it?

We need a police chief who remembers that he works for us, not the other way around.

Kevin Vericker
December 9, 2010

Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste" is a quote attributed to presidential advisor Rahm Emanuel in 2009. He was talking about the financial meltdown in the United States and was referring to the opportunity to make long term structural changes in response to the crisis.

North Bay Village is doing the same tonight with the budget presentation. There is a crisis. The projected revenue for next year cannot stretch to meet the demand for services. There's no serious question that spending has to be cut and revenue has to be enhanced.

The problem is that the cuts, a response to a current situation, have long term impact.

During the month of August, and throughout the year, the attempt to match revenue with the spend had several components, a key one being the furloughs, whereby all city employees, police and civilian, would have one unpaid day per pay period. Both August budget workshops included this.

In September, the interim city manager said that since the unions would not support the furloughs, they were no longer on the table and the cuts would be found elsewhere.

Before we go to those cuts, there is an important point here. Union support is not the critical factor here. In March of 2010, then City Manager Matthew Schwartz sought and received a legal opinion from our labor counsel, Atty. Crosslin, that clearly explained that the furloughs were legal if applied to all. In other words, it's our city management, not the unions, who have made the decision to take this off the table. That should be very clear and it's not.

Instead of the furloughs, the cost cutting will mostly come from privatizing the sanitation services. There is an agenda item tonight to outsource the sanitation to Waste Management Systems. This will be a three year contract and includes selling two of the three trucks as part of the savings. It will also end side yard pickup and city control of the employees, three of whom will face layoffs.

This is deeply unpopular. Residents like the current service and it creates a long term change to a short term problem.

Another part of the cost cuts involves the police. The new budget will most likely mean the permanent layoff of three sworn officers.

Both of these are fundamental restructures of our city governance and their effect is permanent.

I've posted about the devastating effects of the unnecessary spending this year - we are paying two police chiefs, two city managers, two city attorneys, replacing the code enforcement office and laying out money for excessive advertising.

All of these are permanent structural changes to the current crisis. Our city administration should be concentrating on recovering the tax base, eliminating waste, involving the citizens and building up our business community.

Instead, the administration is using the revenue shortfall as an excuse to create long term, fundamental change in our city governance and still leaves us near broke with little hope of recovery. But it does serve the narrow interest of consolidating power.

Three commission members tonight, vice mayor George Kane, former vice mayor Rey Trujillo and commissioner Pasul Vogel, will vote in lockstep once more to effect these changes. There will be no meaningful discussion on the subject from them. The decisions have already been made.

Kevin Vericker
September 28, 2010

Moral Obligations and Ethical Execution

That's a heavy title, isn't it? I played around with some other titles but this one seems to sum it up.

This post is a continuation of the topic from Tuesday, which dealt with the ongoing furloughs in the city staff and the consequent reduction in salaries. These sacrifices are real and necessary, and should not be done lightly.

We ask a lot of our civic employees. As easy as it is to find examples of bureaucrats obstructing citizen's desires, in general we demand a higher level of responsiveness and expect the employees to both serve the citizen individually while ensuring that the laws are upheld and fairly applied. Pay ranges for government employees are almost always somewhat lower than an equivalent private sector position and the deal the government enters into is to provide more security and better benefits in exchange for the lower pay and job restrictions. The military does the same.

This has been true in the United States since the mid-20th century. Before that, in many municipalities, government pay was shockingly low and the employee was expected to make up the difference through his own initiative. In many US cities, the difference between the police force and the mob was a uniform and this continues in many underdeveloped countries. The US made the decision across all levels of governments slowly throughout the 1930's through the 1950's that these practices were not just a moral wrong but a practical failure and the philosophy changed.

If we take for example the police, we expect a lot more from the police than most other positions demand. The major requirement is that the police respond quickly, wisely and well to emergencies and crises, using just the right amount of imposed authority to resolve the situation. In direct contradiction to this, the truth about police work is that most of the time, it's boring. It's staying in a state of readiness while managing routine work. This causes stress and the high rate of health issues among public safety workers are well documented.

The police need their health care. These people have planned their financial lives around an agreement to be paid and insured at certain rates and now we are changing the deal. This might be inevitable, scratch that, it is inevitable, but it shouldn't be done cavalierly.

The public wants a police force, and for that matter all municipal employees, concentrating on the job at hand, not on how they are going to pay the medical bills or avoid foreclosure. We need to ask carefully and respond gratefully for the give backs being proposed.

Public pension plans are a different matter. For years, politicians have staved off short term problems by over-promising on the long term and the Florida Retirement Systems reflects this. Combined with empty political promises, unions have negotiated highly favorable retirement packages. Now that bill is coming due.

Ethically, it's a bill we agreed to pay and there may not be much we can do about it, but the whole system needs change from top to bottom, so the problem doesn't get worse. If you think you might be around in the year 2050, have kids who will be, or young people you are fond of, now is a good time to start asking politicians at the state level, for this is a state problem, what they propose to do today so that it doesn't sink future generations. For ours, we may just have to suck it up. We agreed to the current promise and now the bill is coming due. We have the right to complain but not the right to renege.

This is a complicated matter and as citizens and stakeholders in North Bay Village, we need to be very aware that we are asking for substantial monetary contributions from our employees while simultaneously asking for their continued trust and commitment. Let's not act like this anything other than a failure on our part and add insult to injury by treating the cuts as insignificant by stating "You should be grateful to have a job." That's nasty.

Kevin Vericker
August 19, 2010

Trujillo Stands Against North Bay Village Police

Let's jump right into the most exciting part of last night's meeting - the mayor introduced a resolution directing the city manager to use $260,000 of the moneys collected on the red light traffic cameras to prevent the layoff of sworn officers. The resolution passed 3 to 1 or 3 to 2 depending on whether former vice mayor Rey Trujillo, author of the North Bay Village Trujillo Tax, was counted or not.

The breakdown was Alfonso, Rodriguez and Kane voted Yes, while Vogel voted No and Trujillo

Rey Trujillo was so enraged by this audacity that he claimed a "No Vote" since he said he wasn't there. I'm not making this up. When it was pointed out to him that others could see him, he toddled off the stage. We could still see him so I don't know how that works when his vote is counted.

Connie Leon-Kreps, self declared candidate for commission, was also so outraged by this resolution that when Fane Lozman decided to storm the microphone, she joined him at the podium to protest. (This brings to mind the old Spanish proverb Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres roughly translating as "You are known by the company you keep.") When her Rosa Parks moment failed, she managed to regain her composure long enough to shriek at Dr. Paul Vogel to vote "No", which he obliged.

Has there been a time when it was clearer that the whole agenda of this group of citizens and Rey Trujillo is "If Oscar likes it, we don't."?

The money from the red light fund is there. The city in the past used anticipated revenues to balance the budget and failed, but this money is not anticipated. It's there. One concern voiced is that because of a lawsuit filed by citizens unhappy with having to stop at red lights, we may have to return the money. Well, it's hard to see how but assuming that this lawsuit does prevail, we still keep enough money in reserve to cover it. In addition to the over a quarter of a million dollars we already have, revenues are coming in at between $10,000 and $13,000 per week.

Just as we could see former vice mayor Rey Trujillo last night, we can see this money.

Now just in case this wasn't crazy enough, Trujillo at one point actually said, "if we fund the cops, they won't look at cuts." Okay. That was the point.

There's a lot more to cover about the commission meeting, and I will. Right now though, I am still shaking my head over the alternate universe last night. When we had a clear opportunity to prevent layoffs in public safety, Trujillo walked off the dais.

Kevin Vericker
August 11, 2010

The Budget Workshop That Wasn't

This should have been a long thoughtful post on the implications of the proposed budgets as presented last night. It can't be. We didn't learn much.

The presentation last night was not worthy of the subject at hand.

The interim city manager was apparently ill and the presentation was handed off to the new police chief, Robert Daniels, on short notice. Chief Daniels acquitted himself admirably. He did not attempt to speak to what he did not know, spoke clearly and precisely to what he did know which was the important part about the impact of the cuts on the police, and forbore the obnoxious and ignorant stream of consciousness speechifying put forth by one of our long term residents.

From the commission, neither the former vice mayor, Rey Trujillo, nor the current vice mayor, George Kane, were there to listen to the concerns of the assembled citizens. Now that was probably to the good, since Rey Trujillo likely would have introduced more positions to double pay as the North Bay Village Trujillo Tax continues to consume our dwindling resources and George Kane, like the cast of the Jersey Shore, prefers to be paid for his public appearances. But still the absence was notable.

From the police side, the news does not look good. If the current tax rate is maintained, there will be a layoff of 5 police officers and dispatch will be eliminated. With a .5 increase in the millage, that number should drop to 3 police officers with dispatch maintained.

If the tax rate millage is increased from 4.2772 to 4.7772, then the layoffs are less severe. But the effect of the tax increase will be felt exclusively by the longer term homeowners. Cliff Friedland (aka Mr. Penelope Friedland) summed it up well when he commented that a millage rate increase is "against the spirit of the Homestead law."

Now beyond the fact that two of the architects of the cash crisis, Trujillo and Kane, did not show up, there were some critical pieces of information missing.

• There was no revenue sheet included. That is there was no clear statement that showed the anticipated revenue and the assumptions for next year. You can't present a budget without that. Every household knows that you need to see the income before you can decide the spending.
  
  
• The budget is not expressed in services. If the police are cut, what can we expect for response time? What is the response time now? How does response time differ between local dispatch and county 911? We need to know this and I hope this information is available to us for the next workshop.
  
  William Bratton, former police chief of NYC and widely credited with the crime reductions of the 1990's there, famously said that every manager at McDonald's knows what the workload will look like for each shift and can immediately show the statistics supporting the staffing decisions. Our police department can do the same.
  
  
• There was nothing quantifiable about the non police layoffs and personnel changes. We don't know what services will be cut in operations and planning. There was a discussion of outsourcing the sanitation. What if we outsourced finance and code instead? These are scenarios that have to be presented.

The citizens who showed up last night were ill served. The crisis resolution should not depend on one man; every experienced city professional should be able to discuss these questions; Chief Daniels two weeks into his new position did better than we could have reasonably expected but the people around him, who brought him in, left him hanging out there.

The next budget discussions are:

August 12 at 4:30 PM in City Hall with the Citizens Budget and Oversight Commission. It's a public meeting.

Probably August 28 for the second budget discussion which I hope will be done seriously.

Then the two commission meetings in September to agree the final budget.

Kevin Vericker
July 29, 2010

New Police Chief for North Bay Village

A key item on the Commission Agenda was a resolution "confirming the appointment of Robert J. Daniels as Chief of Police". It passed 3 - 2.

Quick summary of the arguments for and against.

Supporting the resolution, Commissioners Trujillo, Kane and Vogel argued and prevailed that the NBV PD needs strong, professional leadership to resolve the existing problems and to negotiate the difficult times ahead with the budget.

Against the resolution, Commissioner Rodriguez and Mayor Alfonso argued that until we are clear on the current financial status of the city, no further hires should be made.

Citizens who spoke fell into the same general categories.

My view is that is no one should be hired until we know the financial status of the city.

Fane Lozman made an interesting point during the public comment section that he supported the hiring of a new police chief, but reminded the commission that the police take up a disproportionate share of our budget and suggested that the new chief's contract include specific performance goals and indicators. Not a bad idea.

The resolution passed and the interim City Manager has begun discussing and structuring the contract with Daniels.

If the contract is finalized, Daniels is faced with a slew of problems.

Budget

Property tax collections are going to fall somewhere between $500 thousand and $1 million, depending on whether the commission raises millage rates or not. A detailed plan by the city to cut police officers, furlough the remaining police officers 26 days per year, go to 12 hour shifts, change the take home car policy, and reduce insurance payments for family coverage, can't be implemented without the union contracts signed. They are still not signed and without union cooperation, these won't happen.

Daniels resume reads like a budget wonk's dream. He has extensive academic and practical financial background and I'm sure he is aware how difficult this task will be.

Human Resources Issues

The disputes in our police department are obvious. Some of them are union disputes, others are personality issues, and even others are differing views on the role of the department. They have reached fever pitch, with physical altercations, accusations of tainted internal investigations and complaints about officers harassing citizens. The truth is always difficult to get at but that's the challenge that the new chief faces.

My view The NBV PD needs a top to bottom HR action plan. Clear policies with consequences about acceptable behavior need to be put in place immediately and consistently enforced, including restrictions of active politicking while on duty.

I have consistently proposed and supported a Citizen's Advisory Commission to work with the police chief to ensure that police policy meet the community goals. (Note: not a Civilian Review Board. That's a discredited good idea that quickly fell into bad company.)

This is urgent.

Politics

Our last police chief, Roland Pandolfi, resigned amicably. That the resignation was with regret, I have no doubt, but he told me and the public at large that it was clear to him for personal and professional reasons that it was time to move on.

Yet Commissioner Trujillo continues to trash talk Pandolfi from the dais, stating with false sympathy that Roland Pandolfi was cowered into resigning by former city manager Schwartz. Chief Pandolfi is a stand up guy and if he was forced into the resignation, I have no doubt he would have told everybody where to stick it. Well, he would have been more polite than I am, but the message would be the same. But former Vice Mayor Rey Trujillo continues to lower his reputation by painting him as weak and without backbone.

This is going to be a problem for whoever is chief. The past predicts the future and when the political situation changes, the new chief will be up against an inconstant group of politicos with a public platform and a fungible sense of the truth.

Final note: I mentioned during public comment that I admire the academic and professional qualifications and I do. The Masters in Public Administration degree alone and when combined with the host of well respected professional organizations and his post graduate training, this speaks well of Daniels' grasp of the complexities of running even a small department. If the contract is finalized, I hope he quickly and consistently begins to execute.

Kevin Vericker
July 16, 2010

How The Money Gets Spent

In simple terms, the city budget shows the amount of money dedicated to each department or functional area and then tracks expenses by each. For example, we can see in the financial report for April 30, 2010, the Police Department's numbers:

Total 2010 Budget	$3,474,119.00
Expected Spend by April 30, 2010	$2,026,569.00
Actual Amount Spent	$2,150,887.00
Percent of Planned	106.10%

Now here's the problem. This does not explain usefully how the money is spent. There are breakdowns Salaries $xxxx or Benefits $xxx or Facilities $xxxx but these breakdowns again don't explain what is being done with the money.

To understand that, you have to look deeper. A good question to ask is "What does a department actually do and how can we measure what gets done?" Using the PD as an example, they do certain things:

Respond to Crime Reports
Respond to Emergencies
Respond to Non Emergencies
Patrol the City Streets
Educate the Community
Investigate Property Crimes
Support Prosecutions
etc.

Getting an idea of how many of each of these outcomes are done and figuring the cost of each one starts to give a new view of what the cost of maintaining a police department is and what the effects of cuts will look like.

It's called Outcome Based Costing and it is a discipline designed to uncover the actual per unit costs of work and services. When it gets more complex, it also includes the cost per unit of activity to support the outcomes. This is known as Activity Based Costing. The Federal Government has been using this approach since the early 1990's, across administrations and congresses to understand the budget and spend.

It's huge and complex when you are talking about organizations the size of the Federal Government or even at the County level, but at the small municipal level, the complexity is far lower and is a question of dedicating time and not getting too involved in precision.

The big advantage of course is that properly done, it clarifies for the final stakeholders, the citizens, what services cost. This is critical to understand when cutting services.

At the Community Forum and in previous meetings, several people spoke for example of Dispatch as being essential to their sense of well being in North Bay Village. Let's take a look at that.

In the City Budget, the annual cost of dispatch is around $250,000. The function of dispatch is to quickly answer response calls and direct the issue quickly to the right resources, sort of a local 911.

In April, 2010, dispatch handled 226 calls plus 21 walk-ins. So here's some math:

247 Dispatches (includes both call-in and walk-in.)
Approximately $20,833 for April (Annual Budget divided by 365 days times 30 days in April.)

Cost Per Dispatch Response: $84
Average Dispatch Response Per Day: 8.23
Average Dispatch Per Eight Hour Shift: 2.74 Calls per shift.

On the surface, that doesn't look like a very good investment. It's clear that to some local dispatch matters, but maybe there are ways to add local dispatch with the existing force. Maybe NBV Dispatch could handle more calls, say 3 per hour, and we could sell the service to other cities that are also facing shortfalls. The impression that 911 in Miami-Dade is a horror show is wrong. Miami-Dade, along with Los Angeles, provides training to cities across the US on how to do it right.

I am not arguing that these numbers above are finally defensible. Dispatch has other duties and sometimes a perceived luxury is well worth buying, but you always must know the cost.

In the city's current budget crisis, this information is missing. We are facing dramatic cuts, across the board but mostly with the PD as our ad valorem tax revenue falls and it's time to take every serious effort to understand what we are cutting.

Kevin Vericker
June 6, 2010

Four Days Later

What does NBV look like four days after the commission voted to fire the City Manager?

The Police - Sgt. Beatty has been reinstated. You might have forgotten the story as there are so many about the police in our little town, but his stands out. He conducted an unauthorized Internal Affairs investigation by dressing up in a combat vest complete with a recording device, and conducted the investigation at 3 AM. When he was reprimanded on this, he decided the thing to do was to pull over the same citizens he was interviewing at 3 AM, and harass them after being instructed to have no further conversations with them.

In 2009, the commission instructed the police to find $350,000 in permanent cuts owing to the budget crisis and set a deadline of March. Well March came and went, with no such cuts.

Next week, the rumor is that Roland Pandolfi will be hired back to be police chief. Pandolfi resigned earlier this month and the commission action to fire Schwartz was provoked by his resignation.

The Projects-In their condescending lock step speeches, both our new vice mayor George Kane and the man he replaced former vice mayor Rey Trujillo took great pains to praise Schwartz for his ability to construct, promote and find revenue for the project from outside sources. In fact, out of a total bond indebtedness of $35 million, the taxpayers have saved $11 million in one year.

Well, now our grant writer Arleen Weintraub, the one who does all the boring work like making sure the money is available and able to be used for the purpose intended has resigned.

Maybe we'll get the further grant money we are seeking. We no longer have the experience, the connections or the high level of professional grant writing available, but still maybe it will rain money.

The Budget - It's shot. Gone. As of March 1, our revenue shortfall was $200,000. Plus the planned cuts of $350,000 never materialized. We are at high risk to lose a $400,000 lawsuit that could have been settled for $16,000 and we are now facing the legal bills to defend ourselves against new lawsuits, in particular one about the commission violating section 3.06.8 of the City Charter in this week's coup.

We have a reserve of $1.2 million, about a 1/3 of the reserve we need if we get hit by a hurricane, which happens from time to time in Florida, and that will be spent to cover the budget shortfall.

Just a reminder, we run on a balanced budget system in NBV, so we are out of money, that's it.

Review - In one fell swoop on Tuesday, our commission ended our long civic nightmare of development, transparency, fiscal discipline and police restraint.


Kevin Vericker

Police Reinstatement

From: "Bob Pushkin"
Date: April 15, 2010 4:10:53 PM EDT

Subject: Sgt. Kevin Beatty



Today Sgt. K. Beatty was instructed by me to return to active duty. This decision was based on the findings of the Interim Police Chief investigation that there was not substantial evidence to the charges against him. Mr. Jim Crossland agreed and advised me to advise the Interim Chief to re-instate Sgt. Beatty. Mr. Crossland will be forwarding me an e-mail so stating this.



Bob Pushkin

Robert "Bob" Pushkin

Cell: 786-877-1678

Fax: 305-756-7722

Email: bob.pushkin@nbvillage.com

My prediction: This is the first of many rollbacks to ensure that the police exert an inappropriate influence on the city.

Corrections -

1.) I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had misunderstood how the demotion of former Vice Mayor Trujillo came about. Just to be clear, he did not propose it or vote for it. It was proposed by Frank Rodriguez and our new vice mayor cheerfully accepted the post.

I have learned from this mistake. When I am tired and at a meeting, I will in future always check the official record before I write anything. I've removed the posting as errors have a way of sticking around.

I wonder if Mr. Trujillo learned from his mistake regarding with whom he allies?

2.) An odd email went out from ADIOSALFONSO@HOTMAIL.COM, an address associated with Fane Lozman's site. I spoke to Lozman at the meeting and he explained that his email had been compromised, apparently he had shared it with others.

I have been the object of the childish "dog on the internet" fraud myself so I am not surprised.

Remember, I only send signed emails, as I believe in disclosure.

3.) Finally, I am removing the "anonymous" comments from the blog. Some have been good, most have been illiterate rants, but some have threatened violence. I won't be party to it. If you want to comment, you need to open a Google account and provide your contact information. Or email me.

I am in New Jersey again this week. I probably won't catch up until Monday or so.

Kevin Vericker

Miami New Times Article April 8, 2010

A local advertising circular for real estate, restaurants and adult services, The Miami New Times, squeezed another article in about North Bay Village and our police. Click here for the article. The purple prose intro by Francisco Alvarado (a Jacobean drama? Seriously?) starts the story with "It all began about a year and half ago..." and then jumps back six years to 2004.

The story itself is a rehash of the ongoing argument in the NBVPD between the two unions, the FOP and the PBA. Some don't like the other union. Alvarado deserves some credit here, for the first time, he decided to talk to the City Manager, from whom he learned that the complaint about promotions was taken seriously and the plan was dropped, the CM took action on cops initiating an informal internal affairs investigation without proper authority, suspended a cop who was witnessed assaulting another cop, suspended the assault victim for not reporting the fight and suspended a cop for inappropriate behavior towards a citizen.

Now all of this stuff is troubling. It points to a department that needs major changes, but Alvarado still tries to spin this like it was somehow a problem with the city administration and not with the police. Armando Aguilar's statement, "It is total mayhem over there.", is near true but the issue is with the unions fighting, not the city.

Years ago, I was involved with a program for homeless teens. The first lesson I had to learn in dealing with these kids, who had real problems, was not to get drawn into the teen drama. They may have even been right in their complaints but required adult supervision. Our police department has reached this point. The next chief has to be able to say, "I don't care who started it. It stops now. Let's get back to work."

Unions are valid. They are needed to protect civil and police employees from the vagaries of political processes and poor management. The unions however are not the business of the citizens and they don't run the city. We don't need or even care about the drama.

It looks to me like the cops have too much time on their hands here. You know, time they might spend patrolling, stopping cars as they roll through stop signs, catching speeders on the causeway, checking the place out, getting out on the bicycles and seeing what's going on. You remember, police work.

Kevin Vericker

Politics, Class and Reality

The Commission Meeting on Tuesday, March 9, was so different than I had expected it to be. I had heard and repeated the rumors that the city manager was to be fired, an outcome I believe would have disastrous for us, and it didn't happen. Two commissioners did express their strong viewpoints that the CM needed a different approach with the PD and this is what we expect from commissioners. I don't agree with them on this subject, but their criticism was clear and fairly stated. This is how it is supposed to work.

In the past, Good & Welfare, the opportunity for citizens to pose questions and state opinions, has turned into a scream fest, with the CM taking most of the heat. The shouters have managed to create the appearance that they stand for the citizenry when they don't. This meeting was different, strikingly so, and I want to cover the high and the low points.

High Points -

Luis Torrego, who is not shy about his opinions, discussed the uncomfortable reality that to maintain police services, taxes may have to rise. This is not a popular view but Luis stated his position well and forcefully. Luis also makes no secret that he believes the park was a waste of money and often says so, rationally and without getting nasty.

Bob Fleischman, former commissioner, took the commission to task for zoning issues and problems. No doubt about his concerns and he laid his reasoning out well.

A gentleman whose name I forget, but he is a well dressed, well presented, resident originally from Michigan I believe, criticized the lack of code enforcement in the city and provided specific examples. He is a strong advocate for code enforcement and a civil voice demanding to be heard.

Nancy Sonnett-Selwyn, a lifelong resident wins the Classy Lady Award by not responding to the scurrilous, gratuitous personal attack by Fane Lozman. (More about that below.)

A resident of South Treasure Drive, (Jeanette? I didn't note the name.) spoke about a coding nightmare next door, a huge house rising on So. Treasure Drive and an intrusive dock which it turned out never got the right commission approval. She was clearly wronged and passionate but never insulting.

And there were a group speaking in defense of the Matthew Schwartz. I was one, Jean Pankey, Ann Bakst and Nancy Sonnett-Selwyn each spoke about the value we believe Schwartz has brought to the city, trying hard to make it not about the city manager personally because a good guy is nice to know but we need a hard nosed pro to manage us through and I'm pretty proud of how that went.

This is how discussions are supposed to go, vigorous, differing viewpoints (I've grown to like the park, I hope Jeanette (?) gets satisfaction as the commission did her wrong and think the city is finally taking the right actions on code enforcement) combining facts, reasoning and even emotions.

Midpoint -

I know I said High and Low points, but this one kind of deserves its own category. Doris Hurst spoke passionately about her concerns regarding the negative publicity about Oscar Alfonso's personal situation. Now I believe firmly that Alfonso's personal business is just that, personal, and I have not seen how Oscar's alleged personal problems have caused any disruption to his official position.

Ms. Hurst does not agree and once something is in the press like this is, it's a fair subject. She could have even gotten a "high point" if she had not demanded a debate. There are governing rules to the commission meetings and one is that the commission can choose to listen and not respond immediately.

Low Points -

The FOP was a disgrace to union members and their own uniforms on Tuesday. Their spokesman and their members were way out of line.

They have no right to come to our city and tell us to fire the city manager. None. The threats were thuggish, crude and out of line.

How are the final arbiters, the citizens, supposed to react when confronted by our own police force with a demand to change our government? There is never a time or a place for a police junta in America.

Let's be real clear. The Florida Constitution, the State Laws and the city historically and correctly protect the right of police to form and be represented by unions. We may not like the particular choice but no government has the right to arbitrarily dissolve or interfere with the duly elected union, in this case the FOP. Neither does that union have right to overrule the political will of the citizens and demand that the city government follow its dictates.

And for the hysterical commenters to follow, I will answer you in advance. All the whining about how the city protects the PBA but attacks the FOP, and the fey concern that Matthew Schwartz may have used foul language in a discussion with a cop who has apparently never heard foul language before, save it.

I am not talking about issues here, nor were the FOP. I am talking about behavior. And the FOP's behavior was neither right nor righteous.

Fane Lozman - Fane disagreed with my defense of the CM and said that I would have a different opinion of the CM if what happened to Fane, happened to me. Then Fane launched into the usual recitation of his perceived persecution by Matthew Schwartz. NBV'ers are accustomed to these rants and even after several of them, I'm still not sure what his complaint is.

Then he took the low road. He attacked another resident, citing as his source a now deceased commissioner, over a 30 year old rumor about her private life, a subject that is not and never should be part of a commission meeting. She did not respond nor was she intimidated by this but that was low. Lozman is a former marine who seems to have forgotten the rules of conduct.

Fane increasingly bizarre refusal to state where he lives, his misspelled web rants (Schwartz is not a "slimster". That's not even a word.) and his apparent attempt to have a "Harper Valley PTA" moment in front of the city Tuesday, are sad when they are not malicious. But sad, bizarre or malicious, it is clear that his purpose is to disrupt and destroy. We can't let this happen.

What's next? -

There's a lot to face in this city.

The revenues are coming in at less than 24% of last year and we are in new territory regarding the financial freefall. It's going to be hard.

My opinion is that the FOP is not going to negotiate in good faith based on their performances at the meetings and some tough police decisions will have to be made.

Code enforcement is lax to nonexistent. I hope the permanent code officer will begin to fix this.

Two of the commissioners are moving closer to firing the CM. I hope these guys can work this out. We need unity, not a circular firing squad.

An election is coming up and I hope that the issues are laid out strongly, clearly and without the personal malice that has permeated the discussion.

The highest point of this week was the commission meeting, dominated for once by people concerned with the issues. I think even the commissioners noted the difference. Please, let's keep going and speaking and arguing. It's not our city or their city and certainly not the FOP's city, it's all of ours and it's time to own it.

Kevin Vericker

Rumors and Conspiracies

There's a new rumor going around regarding Matt Schwartz and the police. Here is a quote from the police bulletin board

1- Get Commish Frank to threaten the City Manager that he will vote with Commish Kane & Commish Ray and fire him IF he doesn't fire the Chief by Tuesday
2- Roland will cower and resign
3- Put ... in as Acting Puppet ( I mean Chief) till things quiet down a bit.
4- Get ... in as Chief before next election
5- The City Attorney gets PBA support for replacing Pluto as the ninth planet
Ain't happening! The Chief will never resign and the City Manager knows if he does fire the Chief, he's gone 10 sec later. So the Chief called your bluff and your still stuck with them both..Did you bother to tell Matt that this was a bluff from the begining, or did he really think Commish Frank would pull the trigger.

LEO Affairs Here

Now since LEO Affairs is a place for anonymous postings like the above: slanderous, poorly written and personal, I wouldn't normally repeat their stuff but this rumor is one I have heard before and from others.

True or not, I am very concerned that next week's commission meeting will be a repeat of last year when George Kane introduced a resolution to fire Schwartz over the police matters and I believe it's set to happen again.

Look, we can't afford to lose Matt. Like him or not, agree with him or not, he has brought a level of transparency to the city government that we never had before. He's brought in almost $11 million bucks that came right off our bond indebtedness and is aggressively looking to involve the community in getting the police situation fixed. I am very afraid that next week will be the end of that and we will be back to the same old crap and the city will choke.

Please pass this along to anyone and everyone you think might be concerned with this situation. Urge them to attend the commission meeting on Tuesday March 9 and not allow the city to be dragged back to the bad old days.

Kevin Vericker