Too little, too late?

City Councilman Joe McNamara held a press conference today to push for a ballot initiative to reallocate the monies from the 3/4% to allow for police and fire classes. Here is 13abc's report on it:

They've also put the entire press conference up on their website. View it here.

On its face, this looks good. After all, I'm all for more police in our town, but there are a couple of things that bother me...

1) McNamara says that a special election would cost $200,000, so it won't hit the ballot until September. So, even if the voters pass it, the police class won't start until the end of 2009, meaning we won't see any new police on the streets until 2010.

2) This is going to take funds away from things like road repairs. We've got so many roads that drive like bombed out airstrips now that I don't think taking away from infrastructure is such a hot idea.

3) I still stand by what I said in yesterday's blog. I feel cheated. During the campaign for the 3/4%, they sold it that if it passes, we wouldn't have to worry about things like this.

The mayor said in a press conference that there wasn't a need for the police class because crime in Toledo is down. I would beg to differ. According to a report by WSPD:

Murder-last year 4, this year 7 up 75%
Manslaughter-last year 1, this year 5 up 400%
Robbery-last year 561, this year 619 up 10%
Burglary-last year 2,565,this year 2,896 up 12.9%
Arson-last year 139, this year 188 up 35%

They also say that rape, larceny and auto theft are down. Rape is a different story, but my criminology minor in college tells me that the other two are due to underreporting. Toledo Police don't have the manpower to come out and take a report when it's just something was stolen. I know this from personal experience. With this in mind, unless someone is turning it in to his insurance, he's not going to make the effort to go make a report just for the record. If they can't turn out to take a report, they certainly aren't going to try to solve the crime, so why bother reporting it?

With these crime stats in mind, I agree with McNamara, we need a police class. However, while this seems like a good plan on its face, it's a lot like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. It's an effort and it's better than nothing, but it's not going to fix the inherent problem. The problem here is a City Administration that spends time and money planting flowers and putting up lights in the name of making the city more attractive to citizens and businesses instead of addressing the real issues. And for those of you who may have missed the meeting, the real issues are that the roads drive like bombed out airstrips, the police have a one to three day response time to crimes that don't involve shooting at the moment of the call, and the school system is on academic watch with the state. Solving those problems will attract more people to live and do business in Toledo than any amount of flowers and lights.