RON DAVIS -- Through my Eyes

At last week’s Huntington Beach City Council meeting, by a 6-1 vote,

the council fired up the city’s reverse alchemy machine.

That’s the kind of machine where the City Council puts taxpayer money

in at one end and gets little or nothing from the other. Let me give you

an example of how this baby works.

Suppose you spent the last several years putting a pot of vinegar in

your backyard in an effort to attract bees. Having failed to attract any

bees from Southern California, you decide to hire a consultant, at

$20,000 no less, to tell you how to attract bees, using your same pot of

vinegar, from the Midwest.

Now, unless I’m missing something, bees from the Midwest are no more

likely to be attracted by vinegar than the bees in Southern California.

Do I hear “waste of money” here?

For years, the Huntington Beach Police Department has had a great deal

of difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified recruit and

lateral-transfer police officers.

Personally, I think it’s kind of important to have officers who can

shoot straight and who understand that Miranda’s an advisement, not a

belly dancer.

But for some reason, the best of the best are avoiding Huntington

Beach like a politician avoids a straight answer. The police have long

claimed that the salary and benefit package provided by the city -- which

ought to be some incentive for the best of the best to come here -- is

more consistent with vinegar than honey.

Lately, it appears the city agrees with this statement, admitting that

our salary package is second to last in the county.

Qualified cops aren’t willing to come to work in Huntington Beach

despite our reputation for being a safe community, our wonderful climate

and our beaches. So, the council decided to hire a consultant, at

$20,000, to advise them on how to attract qualified officers from the

Midwest.

Now, I admit to not getting paid $20,000 as a consultant, but it would

be my guess that a salary and benefit package that ranks close to dead

last in the county might have just a little something to do with the

city’s inability to recruit and retain police officers. Of course, I’m

handicapped, I have to rely on my own common sense and don’t have the

luxury of using $20,000 of the taxpayers’ money to hear common-sense

answers from a paid consultant.

I imagine that the City Council’s premise is that the recruits in the

Midwest are stupid and won’t realize that other Southern California

jurisdictions have better pay and benefits than Huntington Beach; that

those dummies from the Midwest won’t understand that they won’t be living

in the community they police but probably an hour’s drive away; and that

they won’t realize that housing costs a small fortune here compared to

where they live now.

After we’ve wasted the money on a consultant, we’ll probably waste a

lot of money on training and relocation expenses, only to have one of two

things happen. Either the recruited officer will hate Southern California

and return to the Midwest, or he or she will go to another city that pays

more and is also comparatively safe. Guess who gets to pay for this

exercise?

Our cops’ salary and benefit package isn’t vinegar because either I

label it as such or the police do. Nor is it honey, because the City

Council says it is.

It’s either vinegar or honey because the marketplace either responds

or doesn’t respond.

And based on the evidence, it ain’t honey, honey.

It seems pretty fundamental to me that you probably can’t catch fish

with an unbaited hook regardless of whether the fishing hole is in

Southern California or the Midwest. I’m just a little surprised that the

City Council finds it necessary to spend $20,000 of our money to find

that out.* RON DAVIS is a private attorney who lives in Huntington Beach.

He can be reached by e-mail at o7 [email protected]