The mayor’s Prop H would require collecting from Houstonians $90 million over and above any charter revenue limitations, every year from now on, to be spent on public safety, so long as the fiscal year 2007 total property tax rate does not exceed the fiscal 2006 property tax rate.

Prop H conveniently neglects to say where the extra $90 million will come from this fiscal year 2007, that we are already in, or in any future years, the budgets of which would be encumbered by Prop H compliance requirements. Nor does Prop H say anything about restraining property tax rate increases in future years relative to compliance with Prop H funding requirements. So Houstonians are being greatly misled.

Prop H appears to be illegal upon its face, because it attempts to encumber more than one year’s general fund operations. The encumbering of future years’ general fund budgets is not permitted by state law or by the Houston city charter.

Prop H also seeks to change the Prop 2 TABOR amendment to the City charter. Yet Prop H is not presented to the voters as a charter amendment, thus apparently making Prop H a null and void ballot proposal!

The $90 million supplemental revenues and expenditures are not needed, because:

1. Mayor Bill White talks out of both sides of his mouth on crime and a need for more cops. He wants the $90 million to hire more cops, etc. Yet he claims that the increase in murders, the only crime category with a very large increase, is essentially confined to two hot spots in Southwest Houston and he and HPD have the necessary approaches in place to combat the problem. Which of his two versions is correct? Does he need $90 million more on top of an already greatly increased public safety budget or not?
2. Let’s first examine the true basic functioning of policing. HPD will be the first to tell you that a cop is present less than 2% of the time when a crime is committed. Therefore, policing is at least as much an arrest function as a visible deterrent function. Crime study after crime study has shown that there is little correlation between the number of incidences of crime and the number of cops on the force. There is, however, consistent proof that repeat-offenders commit the majority of crimes. The reduction in Houston crime in the 1990s was primarily due to the building of more state prison beds and thus fewer repeat offenders on Houston streets, more so than due to just increasing the number of Houston cops.
3. Houston crime is not raging out of control. Houston’s monthly Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs), that HPD is required by federal law to submit to the FBI, show the following comparative numbers of reported crimes for the first 7 months of 2006 (post-Katrina) versus the first 7 months of 2005 (pre-Katrina). UCRs for August and September 2006 were not available at the time of this open records request to HPD.




	2006	2005	Percent Inc./Dec.
Major crimes:
Murder	232	173	34.1%
Forcible rape	529	525	1.0%
Robbery	6,690	6,151	8.8%
Assault	29,994	29,489	1.7%
Lesser crimes:
Burglary	14,966	15,428	3.0%
Larceny-theft	42,408	41,867	1.3%
Motor vehicle theft	12,128	11,359	6.8%
Grand Total	106,947	104,992	1.9%




4. Based on the above numbers, Houston can expect an increase of roughly 100 more murders in 2006 and roughly 1,000 more robberies. Doesn’t another $90 million in operating expenditures seem greatly disproportionate to the problem, when the public safety budget already has been increased 9.3% in fiscal 2006 and 8.6% in fiscal 2007? The $90 million would represent another 9.6% increase in fiscal 2007, bringing the 2007 increase to a whopping 18.2%.
5. Discussing this in such cold numbers is little solace to those grieving the loss of loved ones. But the mayor is trying to use that grief and the medias’ buy in with nightly and daily sensationalizing to create an hysteria to simply gain more money for the City and, even more critically, to wrest control of City spending away from the people and return control to the politicians and their supporters.
6. The Chronicle reported that the mayor says that the murder increase is basically confined to two Southwest Houston hot spots and that HPD is combating the problem with the proper tactical measures, but with overtime hours, rather than moving police officers in from other command stations. According to the Chronicle, the mayor states that it “would not be fair” to move police officers from elsewhere in the city to combat crime in these two hot spots. One would think that in fighting crime, as in war, you divert your forces to points where they are most needed and can be most effective.

This is but one example of mayoral and HPD poor management, read on. Certainly, this is a very serious matter for those living in those hot spots in southwest Houston. But it is hardly a cause for calling for an additional annual funding of $90 million, particularly in light of the following information.
7. Fiscal 2006 public safety expenditures increased 9.3% over fiscal 2005 and an increase of 8.6% is already budgeted for fiscal 2007 and is covered by existing revenues. The $90 million would represent an additional 9.6% increase, or a total 18.2% increase, in the fiscal 2007 public safety budget.
8. Reading the HPD fiscal 2007 budget is mind-blowing! The mayor is increasing the total HPD civilian base salary cost by 28.1% compared to fiscal 2005, while increasing the base pay cost of police officers by just a cumulative 5.7% over the two years, and increasing police officer total pension cost by 59.0%! Why is the mayor giving all the money to HPD civilians and police officer pensioners instead of to active police officers? Who is running the asylum?
9. According to the 4/4/06 Chronicle, the City received $20 million from the Department of Justice for police overtime and cadet training through April 2007, plus a $3.8 million FEMA grant just for handling Katrina evacuee-related crimes, with another $2.5 million to follow from FEMA. According to the Chronicle, the City’s new red light camera program should bring in $20-$24 million of additional annual revenues. When is enough revenue ever enough?
10. Contrary to mayoral and HPD propaganda, HPD is not understaffed, compared to its peers, regarding both police officers and civilian employees. Per the 4/4/06 Chronicle, HPD has 1.2 patrol officers per 1,000 inhabitants. That is a gross underestimate. Fact is Houston has approximately 2.25 police officers per 1,000 inhabitants, and 0.52 civilians, computed as follows.
    The City’s fiscal 2007 budget provides for 4,808.4 full-time equivalent police officers and 230.5 cadets, for a total of 5,038.9 officers, plus 1,147.4 full-time equivalent civilians. The Greater Houston Partnership estimates that currently there are approximately 2.2 million people living in Houston, including Katrina evacuees. Therefore, in fiscal 2007 HPD will have 2.29 police officers per 1,000 inhabitants and 0.52 civilian employees.
    Thus, in fiscal 2007, HPD will be sufficiently staffed in both police officers and civilians, in comparison to its peer group, because, per the FBI’s web site, Houston’s (FBI assigned) peer group cities (West South Central US cities of over 150,000 population) employ in their police department 2.2 police officers and 0.5 civilians, per 1,000 inhabitants.
    HPD’s stated goal is reach 6,064 police officers by fiscal 2008, giving HPD about 2.7 officers per 1,000 inhabitants.
    When are enough police officers ever enough, and at what point does better management of already available resources take priority?
11. The City has suppressed a 1991 Cresap Consulting report that said HPD had more than enough police officers, and that HPD made poor allocation of its manpower. Cresap said that HPD did an inadequate job of allocating manpower to shifts, days, weeks and months of higher crime. Before seeking more funds for HPD, an outside study should be made to see if those same conditions still exist.
12. Research has shown that both police officers and HPD civilians take most of their vacation time off during the summer months and the Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year holiday periods, the very times that crime peaks. Seasonal companies in the private sector would never tolerate this vacation approach. HPD’s response to inquiry on this practice has been not to worry because the manpower shortage in those periods is covered by overtime. That is poor policy---both from the added cost standpoint and, more importantly, from the operational standpoint.
13. A short time back, the mayor replaced the city jailers with police officers. Apparently the mayor wasn’t all that worried a short time ago about too few police officers on the streets. Now about 100 of those officers are being returned to street duty. Many of the former jailers are still available to be returned to their positions as, rather than being terminated, they were merely moved to the airport fund and elsewhere. HPD should also move its many desk bound officers to street duty before seeking additional funding.
14. HPD and HFD classified personnel officers suffer from the same bloated upper and middle management staffing as the civilian work force. For example, the fiscal 2007 HFD budget calls for about 800 captains and above.