I agree completely with Mike Cullen's remarks regarding "public safety" <posted
at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnowingNewport/message/512 >

We are a City Manager form of government, although the media constantly
exaggerates the importance of the Mayor's role. The City Manager should know
better than any councilor the impact of staffing on "public safety". The
City Manager is correct in recommending that the fire and police positions
not be replaced and similar future decisions will eventually bring staffing
in line with where it should be. In the process the city will save millions
in benefit expenses. "Instead, the council voted unanimously to substitute
those cuts with reductions in Fire Department overtime, contract services,
consultant fees and the council's own contingency fund (Newport Daily News
6/23/04)." The Council is incapable of controlling those expenses as
virtually every audit in the last seven years amply demonstrates. In effect,
there are no real budget cuts and city surplus money will inevitably be
tapped again. No recent council has demonstrated any ability to control
expenses. These councilors have proven they can't read financial information
even if it was presented accurately because they can't even tell the
difference.

There is no one on the Council qualified to evaluate staffing in either the
police or fire departments.They wouldn't know what questions to ask of those
department heads. On what basis would they evaluate staffing requirements?
Would it be because Department heads and unions say we need the current
staffing levels versus independent outside "professional" evaluation?
Has there ever been a department head who hasn't said he/she needs more staff?

As Cranston did, the city of Newport requires a professional study
preferably by the same consulting firm whose president is a retired police
chief and whose consulting staff is all retired police and fire
professionals. One of the remarks made in that consulting study was to the
effect that they had never seen fire departments larger than a
municipality's police department. Newport is another one, however. Part of
the solution to the overstaffing is not replacing retirees as the City
Manager recommends. As has been suggested many times by many people the
summer police staffing should have been augmented with auxiliary police as
they do on the Cape and in many other resort communities. Instead, we have
millions of dollars of unfunded pensions and benefits Newport taxpayers have
to pay for stupid decisions.

Fred Faerber

======= Moderator comment =======
I attended a 2003 budget workshop and was shocked to watch the council
spend less than two minutes discussing both the police and fire budget
requests. Since neither department was asking for additional headcount, the
councilors opted to grill the city manager over his request for new headcount
in the human resources and planning areas. I left the workshop wondering
"just when does the council conduct oversight of performance at the department
level?"
======= Moderator comment =======