CORRESPONDENCE - 75A-1 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Salas, Diana From: Barela, Waldo Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2020 6:16 PM To: eComment Subject: FW: Budget prioritization 2020-2021 From: Kayla Saadeh [mailto:kmsaadeh3@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2020 6:00 PM To: BudgetOffice <BudgetOffice@santa-ana.org> Subject: Budget prioritization 2020-2021 Hello, I am a concerned citizen writing in regards to the 2020-21 budget. The last month of protests have reminded us all, Black and communities of color as a whole need more support, not surveillance and suppression. We call on you to recognize the errors of the past and try out a new, more effective strategy for community recovery - start defunding the SAPD now and use those funds to invest in what our communities truly need - housing, economic and legal assistance, youth programming, and racial healing. The city was drowning in deficits for a decade after the last recession because we couldn't break our addiction to expensive, unaccountable, and ineffective policing and incarceration hoping it would deliver community safety. Measure X was an opportunity to fix this by generating revenues to rebalance our city priorities, allowing us to invest in what really makes a community safe and prosperous. Yet, much of that was squandered on more of the same -- more police officers getting bigger payouts and still incurring overtime and without any clear metrics for success. The City Council sold Measure X to voters as an opportunity to help Santa Ana finally invest in our communities to make them truly safe, stable spaces that residents can thrive in. Regrettably, our elected representatives squandered much of that opportunity long before this pandemic hit our city. Taking a page out of an old, ineffective playbook, you handed out a lavish police contract that had little to do with community safety -- leading us to the brink of yet another council -made deficit. Now we're being asked to bear the burden of "difficult choices" due to budget shortfalls while our police department skates by with a 7% budget increase -- funded by our taxes. The city was drowning in deficits for a decade after the last recession because we couldn't break our addiction to expensive, unaccountable, and ineffective policing and incarceration hoping it would deliver community safety. Measure X was an opportunity to fix this by generating revenues to rebalance our city priorities, allowing us to invest in what really makes a community safe and prosperous. Yet, much of that was squandered on more of the same -- more police officers getting bigger payouts and still incurring overtime and without any clear metrics for success. After more than a decade of this failed approach that hasn't made our communities safer all while burning through our taxes, you'd think we'd learn our lesson. But it's not too late, the lesson is this -- you can't balance the budget long term without defunding the police. Look at your projections, it simply can't be balanced by