Sunnyside Council Committed To Public Safety
March 9, 2010 6 Comments
This week’s meeting of the Sunnyside City Council included an item that was added to the agenda at the last minute: a report from the newly formed Public Safety Committee.
The Public Safety Committee should not be confused with the Committee of Public Safety of French fame. This is the committee that ruled France during the “Reign of Terror”.
In Sunnyside, the “Reign of Terror” is from criminals striking fear into the hearts of law-abiding citizens. Burglaries, drug dealing, vandalism, and disruption of businesses are some of the concerns that motivated the City Council to form its own Public Safety Committee.
The committee is chaired by former Mayor and current Councilmember Pablo Garcia. Councilmembers Don Vlieger and Mike Farmer are on the committee as well. Sunnyside Police Chief Ed Radder, and Assistant Police Chief Phil Schenck are city staff on the committee.
Last week, the committee met, and Mr. Garcia presented a report of its initial recommendations to the entire City Council.
Some recommendations made by the committee to improve the situation in the city are:
- revise scheduling of officers to ensure a minimum of four officers are on duty during the night shift
- authorize pay for adult and juvenile probation/parole officers to ride along with regular patrols. They have additional powers to search individuals that have been assigned to their case load.
- Use Explorers or other volunteers to help pass out police contact information cards within specific, identified, neighborhoods in the Sunnyside city limits
- have police develop partnerships with private property owners to enable police to act as agents to prevent loitering
- purchase additional license plate reading devices for use in patrol cars, or in static locations on high traffic thoroughfares
- implement zero tolerance car tow policy for violators
- share intelligence with the school district through task force meetings about drugs and other issues
- provide timely notification to the City Manager, and City Council of significant police calls and actions
- create partnerships with residents/businesses to clearly have address numbers marked on each building. This will also help the fire and ambulance crews to respond more effectively.
- fill the budgeted information technology position as soon as possible. Additional reliance on technology is putting a strain on current staff time. New services to send emails and text messages to landlords can be implemented to notify them whenever an incident occurs on their property. Also, domestic violence call information can be automatically sent to local crisis centers.
- hire the budgeted code enforcement officer as soon as possible. Quality of life issues need to be addressed immediately. It is also recommended by the committee to have the code enforcement officer work out of the police department for more effective coordination of efforts in the community.
- consider the purchase of video cameras to be used as loaners to citizens in order to record suspicious activity in their neighborhoods.
- implement Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) in the city’s planning process. Crime can be reduced through street design, engineering features, and other techniques.
- increase street lighting to eliminate dark areas in the city
The City Council unanimously approved receiving the report, and directed the City Manager to work with the Police Chief to bring back additional information on actionable items at the April 12, 2010 meeting. Some of the recommendations need to have their costs identified before a decision can be made on them.
The Public Safety Committee will continue to hold meetings in the meantime.
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In addition to costs, other issued to be weighed should be legality, liability and common sense. There are several enormous problems with some of the items listed above.
However, putting easily readable addresses on each and every building is something that should be done as soon as possible. It is a special kind of purgatory an emergency responder finds themselves in when looking for an address among a cluster of unmarked, unlabeled structures.
I would like to know who is on the safety committee? Because there is no mention of who is going to pay for all this.
names please,
The Public Safety Committee is the first of several City Council Committees which will focus on different areas of interest for our local elected officials. Three council members as well as members of the city staff will be on each committee. They will report back to the entire City Council with information and actionable items for consideration.
Other committees the Council may consider forming will focus on Public Works, Finance, or other areas to be determined.
It is also important to note that the current Public Safety Committee is an informal, ad hoc, committee established by the Council to determine some immediate items that can be acted on. A permanent Public Safety Committee will still need to be established if the Council wishes to continue to utilize specialized committees in this fashion.
The City of Yakima, and other municipalities in Yakima County also utilize Council Committees to allow a deeper look into certain areas of operation they are interested in.
Actually, “names please” has a point. While these people do not have direct decision making authority, they have a much louder voice in policy then the average person off the street.
Their names should be public. In fact, I think he and everyone else have a right to that knowledge.
I would hate to think we have reached the point where government forms “secret committees.” Talk about shades of George Orwell.
Leland,
I agree with the point. That is why I named the members of the Public Safety Committee in my original post:
“The committee is chaired by former Mayor and current Councilmember Pablo Garcia. Councilmembers Don Vlieger and Mike Farmer are on the committee as well. Sunnyside Police Chief Ed Radder, and Assistant Police Chief Phil Schenck are city staff on the committee.”
I thought I read that somewhere, but I was thinking it was in the paper.