Santa Ana’s new overpaid millionaire City Manager, Dave Cavazos, was hired in part, if you believe what the Council Members are saying, because he cut the budget at his last job, in Phoenix. But how is he going to cut Santa Ana’s budget when it has already been cut to the bone?
Our last City Manager, Paul Walters, saved the city from its last budget crisis, by outsourcing the Santa Ana Fire Department, to the Orange County Fire Authority. Will Cavazos have the cojones to outsource the Santa Ana Police Department to the Orange County Sheriff?
What else can he cut? Well here are a few items he should cut right away:
- Outsource the SAPD. Other cities have done this and saved millions. Time for us to do it too. This will mean more cops on the street. They will be happier and will make more and there will be less waste. The Sheriff is already here in Santa Ana. They police all the federal and county buildings.
- Sell the Santa Ana Zoo. Now this one might be tough to spin off as there are certain stipulations in the agreement with the Prentice Family, whose progenitor deeded the land to the City of Santa Ana. So give it up to the County Zoo and be done with it.
- Stop donating to the Bowers. They are run by rich people who should be paying their bills without our help. And charge them rent for the public land they are sitting on.
- Stop underwriting the Neighborhood Associations. They can meet at private homes and the city should not be spending a dime on them.
- Get rid of the Council Members’ Health Benefits and Car Allowance – and their pension too. These are part time jobs! If they don’t like it they can quit and let someone else serve who is more interested in the public good.
- Stop paying to send the Council Members to conferences! They blew ten thousand dollars at this year’S NALEO Conference in Chicago, where they stayed in the finest hotels and ate gourmet meals – at our expense. Enough! If they want to go to such events let them pay their own way!
- Lower our business license fees. They are outrageous compared to other OC cities and are a disincentive for businesses who may want to come here.
- Get rid of the stupid ban on big box stores. Why would you want to keep big retailers out of our city? Ridiculous! We need the tax revenue and jobs.
- Sell the city jail to the county if indeed we don’t need it.
- Sell every piece of land owned by the city that is not currently in use.
- Allow garage sales each month on the first weekend of the month and charge ten bucks for a garage sale permit. Residents will get one free permit a year.
- Announce a Planning Holiday for one month. Let home owners fix up their homes without paying Planning fees if they hire local contractors and buy their supplies locally.
- Put solar panels on every single city building that doesn’t already have them.
- Fire the city manager as soon as we can and hire someone for half the money.
There you go. What say you?
I like that you offered REAL suggestions that can make a difference. You cut to the chase … NICE!
Thanks Rick! I hope our readers will offer up a few ideas too…
Maybe I’m out of touch because I come from the IT world, but it seems to me David Cavazos has a very sweet deal for himself from S.A. He made his bones in the City of Phoenix starting in 1987. I found it very difficult to get any specifics on exactly what terrific changes that had been credited to him. Safe to say he’s a career politician. Just once wouldn’t it be nice if someone said “Let me do what I do best and turn things around first. Then only when you see the positive change from what I’ve done, then sign my check for 315,000”. IT guys do things similar to that. I wish him and hope the very best for S.A.
Well said Rick. We can only hope and pray that this works out…
What do we say? WE FOUND THE NEXT CITY MANAGER!!! Real problems, real discovery, and real solutions! When can you start?
TN
I would have cost a lot less!
Another clueless article! First you can’t replace the police department with the sheriffs department because they have 0 knowledge how police crime in Santa Ana, this is not mission viejo. It would take the sheriffs department 10 years to figure out the gangs and organized criminals operating in the city, let alone establish a relationship with the community.
For those of you who have delt with the recent Orange County fire authority and sheriffs helicopter service…..Worthless!
I’m sure it’s easy to sit behind your computer and hide in your office with your smart phone making these GREAT ideas; sell the zoo, sell all off city property….why don’t we just give up the city to county????! I’m sure that will save a dime or two.
You have zero clue what is going in the city and all of the cuts and sacrafices that have already been Mande.
The sheriffs department will say they need at least 600 deputies to patrol the streets….currently being done with 120…..yes 120!
The city manager salary is high because they got ride of 3 assistant city managers….do the math….is it making sense now?
Yard sales and solar panels?????? Your a genius!!! You should be working for the Obama administration…..there is a future opening for the FED chairman…..with these bright ideas we can turn the country around too…..nation wide garage sales….excellent idea.
I bet you don’t even own a home or support a family….I’m sure you have a nice apartment in orange or Tustin.
Another great example why are country is failing…..this type of mentality ruins this one great country!
I’m going to go get a garage sake permit and help the city recover…..
Really? Perhaps you are not aware that when a police department is outsourced to the Sheriff, most of the cops end up going to the Sheriff’s Department. Same cops, different uniforms. This has happened many times and as I have pointed out in my article the Sheriff’s Department is already here in Santa Ana. They provide security for all the county buildings and courthouses. They also provide mutual aid to our city police.
That “worthless” fire department was very capably able to put out a four alarm fire just this week, at a commercial warehouse in our city. Perhaps you missed that although we did report on it. And of course the Santa Ana firefighters were hired by the OC Fire Authority. Same guys, different uni.
I did actually reference in my article the fact that the city budget has been cut to the bone. Perhaps you missed that too. That is in fact the main point of this article – that we hired an overpaid city manager who is supposed to be great at cutting budgets, but ours is already pretty lean.
You can scoff at those garage sales but allowing residents to get rid of their belongings more frequently will create more spending money for them, that they will hopefully spend here in town. Unless of course they want to go bowling or see a new movie.
This country is in trouble for the most part because both Democratic and Republican Presidents have mired us in wars we had no business getting involved in. Federal spending is out of control. And here in Santa Ana we are going to have to deal with a public employee pension crisis and a city manager who we have now made a millionaire.
The problem is not me – it is the City Council that apparently counts you among its supporters.
Jasper Newton said: “The city manager salary is high because they got ride of 3 assistant city managers….do the math….is it making sense now?”
Well, I’d like to know where you got that information because Michele Martinez and David Benavides have said the opposite, that they needed to spend that money to recruit the “best”. David said something about deserving the best. Nobody has mentioned assistants. And remember we dropped a song on O’Rourke for what??????NADA.
Why can’t you let the garage sale issue go admin? The quarterly garage sale schedule is fine the way it is. Nobody wants to live in a city that looks like a low income flea market every month. Gross. Easy for you to say since you do not own a home in Santa Ana.
I am not sure where you are getting that I don’t own a home in Santa Ana. I have lived in the Park Santiago neighborhood for some time in a home we own, with my wife and kids.
We previously owned a home in the Artesia Pilar Neighborhood, where we lived for about ten years.
As for the garage sale issue, you are entitled to your opinion. I disagree. I don’t think that having one garage sale weekend per month would hurt anyone.
That was your past living situation. You don’t own a home in SA now. Yes, a garage sale a month would hurt. Hurt residents that want to keep the values of our homes up and on the rise. Many of us live in nice neighborhoods and do not want to see a flea market every month. I’m sure people trying sell their home would not like it. Quarterly is enough. You know the small amounts of money actually made on garage sale weekends does not get put back into our economy. Please. Most likely the lines are tripled in size to send money home to the family. Not spent in SA.
You are undermining your own credibility with this insane insistence that I don’t live here. What exactly are you basing this on? Why don’t you ask Don Cribb? We live on the same street and I pass his house every night when I walk my dog.
Thoughtful Recommendations Mr. Pedroza. Thanks for the insight!