All of the attention to the Rock Cats deal is drawing attention to the real problems at City Hall. Apparently the media hasn't figured out that Mayor Segarra placed $450.000 into a special "non-specific" account in MUNIS. MUNIS is the City's accounting and operations software program. . The money is in the "secret " account that has been used to pay a couple hundred thousand dollars so far for consultants , lawyers and other "incidentals" related to the Rock Cats deal.
Although Segarra had to sell off City assets to balance his budget, he was able to find almost half a million in Capital Improvement Project (CIP) money to stash away to work to start the crazy deal. This probably isn't even legal since reallocation of CIP money typically would require a City Council resolution to re-allocate the Bond funds.
Where is our City Council as far as addressing this violation? They are too busy holding press conferences and back pedaling now to worry about playing by the rules.
But my reason for this posting is a rather scary document I received that should have the Council scrambling to find every penny they can to avoid a huge disaster on the horizon.
The Council Has repeatedly cut money from the Hartford Police Department budget, especially for Police hiring. This year Governor Malloy and the legislature found and gave a couple million dollars to give to Segarra to once again bail him out. I am not sure they will fall for that again after $60 million was just handed to a group of real estate billionaires from a City that claims to be broke.
The money from the State that allowed the Council to re institute a Police Academy class of 20 or 30 officers is definitely a good start. Thank you Governor Malloy, shame on you Hartford City Council.
It is a good start.Unfortunately police hiring is not just a matter of placing an ad in the paper. It is almost a two year process from testing to backgrounds to hiring to academy training to FTO (street) training and evaluation. And even after that, most officers will admit that they really weren't comfortable on their own until maybe four or five years into their careers. And the statistics support that. The learning curve for problems in those first years is high. For everything from cruiser accidents, bad shootings bad arrests they are all high in the first few years and then drastically begin to dip around year seven.
The chart below, which I am sure is available to any Council person if they cared, shows that disaster on the horizon I mentioned earlier. Even though the Council will be replacing up to thirty officers, those numbers somehow seem to get cut when we really get around to it , and then typically 5 to 10 usually don't make the cut in the end. We may actually get 20 new officers if they fully fund the class.
The chart shows the 94 officers that can retire before that next class would be ready for use on the streets. Now when a Council addresses budget issues for a City that is broke and talks layoffs and tax increases and then within weeks are ready to give away $60 million they don't have, I am comfortable in saying they either can't add 2 plus 2 to get to 4 or they don't understand economics.
Here is a quick tutorial for Council President Wooden. if you have 94 Police officers that can retire and you have 20 Police Officers that complete the Police Academy how many Police Officers does that leave you? Don't bother taking off your shoes to use your toes to count,.It is a net loss potentially of 74 Officers. A "net Loss" is not a good thing Councilman. Kind of like when you are broke and selling the parking garages on the monopoly board and have no cash to pay the $200.00 to pass go.
I only posted those potential retirees that could retire over the next 2 years before a new Academy class would graduate. There are a total of 94 Officers. The first column are the officers, second column is their rank, third is their date of hire and the fourth is the year they could retire.
As with the baseball Stadium, the numbers just don't add up
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