Sacramento City Council approves $228M police budget — an all-time high. Three members voted no
The Sacramento City Council Tuesday approved a new city budget, rejecting a proposal from three members who wanted to redirect $6 million from the police budget toward homeless response.
The $1.5 billion budget, which the council approved 6-3, includes an all-time-high $228 million for the police department, including 769 sworn positions — $3.5 million higher than last year. The Department of Community Response (DCR), which provides a non-police response to noncriminal homeless 311 calls, has a budget of about $25 million, including 37 employees.
Councilwoman Caity Maple Tuesday proposed the council shift about $6 million from the police budget to DCR so the department can provide “real-time response.” Currently, the department is only staffed Monday through Friday, and not overnight.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt the human and public health crisis of unsheltered homelessness is the most important issue facing our city,” Maple, who represents Oak Park and parts of south Sacramento, said during the meeting. “I believe if we polled our residents, many would agree a real time response to this crisis is needed.”
Council members Katie Valenzuela and Mai Vang agreed.
“This to me is a moment of vision,” Valenzuela said during the meeting. “It’s scary to say we’re going to do something different. But we have been talking about this since the summer of 2020 … $6 million is not gonna break PD’s budget.”
Ultimately the motion failed 6-3. Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who led the creation of DCR, said he supports the idea but Maple presented it too late in the monthslong budget process and he needed more data.
“Be on notice here you do have a new council,” Steinberg said during the meeting. “They’re not afraid to put forward their provocative ideas.”
Steinberg created DCR in response to the Minneapolis George Floyd police killing and the racial reckoning that followed in the summer of 2020. At the time he said the city would over time shift at least $10 million from the police department to DCR, but that has not happened. DCR was also supposed to respond to all noncriminal 911 calls, but has just responded to homeless 311 calls, sometimes days later than they came in. They also move people into the city’s 1,100 shelter beds, but all are typically full.
The approved budget cuts 25 vacant police positions. Maple’s motion would have cut more. City Manager Howard Chan said that would have negatively impacted calls for service because the department uses that money for overtime, which often tops $10 million.
Currently, the average 911 police response time citywide is about nine and a half minutes, Police Chief Kathy Lester said.
“We are woefully understaffed,” said Lester, making the case to the council not to cut the budget.
The police had a “very delayed response” on a recent night when a Grant High School student was fatally shot the same night as 11 people were injured in a Northgate crash, Lester said.
The department plans to cancel contracts with Kaiser, Sutter and Regional Transit to move those officers back into patrol, but the department still needs more officers, Lester said.
Tuesday’s meeting showed what could be a budding alliance between the council’s most liberal members, Maple, Vang and Valenzuela. When the new council was sworn in in December, including Maple, Vang said it was going to take “progressive” actions.
But then at one of her first meetings, Maple voted in favor of the police department receiving a grant so it could receive a piece of military equipment called a Rook. Valenzuela criticized her for it in an opinion piece in The Sacramento Bee, and it was unclear what their relationship would be like.
Vang, Valenzuela and Maple all have pledged not to accept campaign donations from the city police union.
The city spends about $42 million on homelessness per year, mostly from outside contracts to run its 1,100 shelter beds, Chan said.
The new budget will take effect for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
