argument to keep the city from cutting his office's budget: He claimed hiring
private attorneys to represent the clients would end up costing the
city more than simply maintaining funding for the public ones (Adachi lost this quarrel with the powers that be, incidentally).
Boccellari is likely to make the same pitch regarding the 14-employee Trauma Recovery Center, which provides mental health services to more than 700 clients, and helps them to assist law enforcement in
prosecuting those who victimized them. It remains to be seen whether she will be more successful.
A survey conducted by a San Jose State professor indicates that many customers of the Patrol Special Police, a quasi-public security service whose officers have been walking the streets of San Francisco since the days of the Gold Rush, prefer the specials to their counterparts in the San Francisco Police Department.
The survey, conducted by economics professor Edward Stringham, reveals that many who hire the Specials do so because of what they perceive as a slow response time and lack of emphasis on community policing from the SFPD. "The main thing that I learned from this that was really a common theme is that the SFPD does not have the time or the resources to respond in a quick way to a lot of concerns," Stringham said in a telephone interview from Hartford, Conn., where he is currently a visiting professor at Trinity College.
Stringham said that he sent a printed questionnaire to 146 customers of the Patrol Specials, and received 53 responses. "I just wanted to get an idea of why people would spend more money on a Patrol Special Police when they could rely on the government police for free," he said. Those who responded praised the specials for their familiarity with specific neighborhoods and overall responsiveness to concerns about specific types of crimes. Stringham said he plans to incorporate the survey results in an academic paper on how the specials operate in San Francisco.
Monday, January 4, 10 a.m. - Public Safety Committee
I'm curious: Have the Board of Supervisors ever voted to turn down grant money?
I ask because the city gets grant money all the time for various projects -- most of which involve helping poor and oppressed people help well off progressives feel good about how much they're doing to help poor and oppressed people -- and the Board of Supervisors has to vote to accept the money each time.
Today, for instance, four out of seven items on the agenda for the Public Safety Committee involve accepting money to fund programs for things like outreach to victims of domestic who don't speak English and supporting former prisoners attempting re-entry into society.
So I'm wondering: Has the city ever turned down grant money? Because if this really is just the pro-forma item that it always seems to be, couldn't we just amend the city charter to read: "Section 1(a): The City and County of San Francisco is a black hole where money goes. If offered, we accept it. Automatically. Receipts are available from the Board Clerk upon request."
Because it would really streamline city business.
After going through our 5,000-word story with a fine-toothed comb, it appears the Guardian has found ... an erroneous total in an accompanying chart.
So, yes, the correct budget for the city and county of Philadelphia is actually $7.1 billion. We got that wrong, period. And that is regrettable (They claim we got Denver's budget wrong, too, but we dispute that). But -- not to minimize the error -- if this is what the Guardian hopes to use to nail us to the wall, then that's bizarre and even desperate. Because, unwittingly, the Guardian has helped us prove our point even more thoroughly.
As demonstrated below, even when you plug in the new, higher budget numbers for Philly and Denver, it becomes even more apparent that San Francisco is still spending vastly more per-capita than other city-county systems in the United States -- to achieve the unsatisfactory results highlighted in our article (If San Francisco was getting more bang from the many bucks it spends, that'd be different. But every index we've seen indicates the city is coming up short on results -- and, as we noted in our article, it's shocking how little the city even attempts to validate the worth of its spending).
In any event, the pat excuse for San Francisco's astronomical spending -- that we are a both a city and county -- has been lamely offered by the mayor's office, city officials, and, naturally, the Guardian. Now no one ought to take it seriously again:
The Medical Examiner's office has not yet released the name of the man found dead in the Excelsior in the wee hours on Sunday. The victim of the city's first homicide case of 2010 was discovered at around 2:30 a.m. yesterday on the 500 block of Naples.
Moments ago the Medical Examiner's office told SF Weekly that there is no identity to release as of yet -- or anything else. "I got nothing," said the voice on the other end of the phone.
City officials were pleased to note that homicides dropped precipitously in San Francisco in 2009. This year, sadly, is off to a rougher start.
