Fremont adopts annual budget to shrink current one

Police Department’s budget accounts for nearly half of the city’s general fund

FREMONT >> As a wave of continuing protests against police brutality sweeps the nation, the Fremont City Council has voted unanimously to adopt its annual budget, including $96.5 million for police, despite dozens of residents demanding city leaders redirect police funds to community services.

During a budget hearing process that in past years has drawn only mild community interest, nearly 100 people called into a virtual meeting Tuesday night to speak on the city’s budget priorities — a spike in political engagement to match groundbreaking protests in Fremont, touched off by the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.

The large majority of those calling into the City Council meeting told the council to “defund” the Police Department — which commands roughly 48% of the city’s general fund — and use some of that money to invest more in mental health, social and homeless services, as well as affordable housing.

“If you want to protect residents of this city, you should really be protecting your constituents from poverty, racism and the effects of structural oppression,” Kelsey Ichikawa, a resident, said to the council.

“Crime is a direct result of lack of access to resources, so why is the vital resource which promotes public safety at the root cause without any weapons only getting a measly $4.3 million?” a resident named Annette said of the city’s general fund allocation to human services.

Others strongly supported the police and want it fully funded to help tackle crimes, especially property crimes and burglaries.

Xinmiao Tan, a resident, said those pushing for defunding the department are the “radical left” and don’t represent the city’s majority.

But even as some council members said they see a need for changes in policing and support the idea of a bolstered safety net, they said there isn’t enough time to drastically rework the city’s $214 million general fund budget and asked that residents continue to engage over time to make changes.

“To come here and say that we just want to defund the Police Department, I just think it’s unrealistic to expect massive change like that,” Councilman Vinnie Bacon said.

“And I don’t know what we would do, go back to our budget director and say, ‘Completely redo things in the next couple of weeks,’ ” said Bacon, who began his comments on the budget by stating, “Black Lives Matter.”

“We’ve seen some examples of how horribly people are treated, often because of their race; however, I don’t think that that is a reason to not vote on the budget tonight,” Councilwoman Jenny Kassan said.

People speaking on the need for “radical change” to policing is “not based on anything that happened in Fremont,” Kassan said.

“It’s based on things that happened in other parts of the country, and I honestly believe that we are blessed with a much better situation in Fremont than many of these other places,” she added.

Some who called in disagreed, referring to a 2019 Police Scorecard from Campaign Zero, which analyzed data about 100 of California’s largest police agencies, and issued Fremont Police Department a grade of F.

Based on population and use-of-force data, the scorecard asserts “a Black person was 12.9x as likely and a Latinx person was 3.3x as likely to have deadly force used on them than a White person in Fremont from 2016-18.”

A resident called Jae V, who said he is a Black man, told Mayor Lily Mei redirecting police funds into mental health services would help ease pressure on police and back up words of solidarity she offered to protesters recently, “rather than making it look as if you just simply don’t care what is going on in the lives of Black and Latino citizens in your city just as well as the other ones.”

Helen Zhang, another Fremont residents who called in, told the council she has experienced a house break-in in recent years and wants police around.

“All the brave young people, can I count on you when someone with a gun comes to my house? Can any of you volunteer to protect my house?” Zhang said.

Councilwoman Teresa Keng said she wants the city staff to look at adding more “services that would positively benefit our community members,” such as mental health counselors and social workers to lift some burdens from the Police Department.

“Year after year we try to solve our problems by adding more police and more weapons … instead of adding more resources to the marginalized groups,” Keng said.

The fiscal 2021 budget includes projections that Fremont will see a total revenue drop of about $22 million over the current fiscal year and the upcoming one, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and taps about $8.6 million in reserves to help avoid layoffs or deep cuts for at least several months, officials said.

The city’s budget report says a combination of cutbacks will help tide the city over until later in the year, when assessments about the economic impact of the pandemic can be made with more data.

Fremont has a hiring freeze in place for nonessential vacant positions and will delay recruitment on some fire and police positions, as well as hold off on sending about $5 million in general fund money to capital improvement projects like street repairs.

The city also will cut back on overtime to the tune of $2.3 million, among other expense reductions.

The Police Department is adding three new positions for a planned citywide parking permit program, though Finance Director David Persselin said previously the program is expected to pay for itself with ticket revenue.

The city is set to stage a virtual town hall on policing Wednesday night, and some council members as well as the city manager encouraged people to attend and engage.

“We do need to reimagine policing as it exists; we do need to look at more support networks, but it’s a little difficult as a city by itself,” Councilman Raj Salwan said.

Salwan said cities need to partner with school districts, counties and the state to help address “social ills” and said he’d like to keep “an open dialogue” with community members about changes they want to see.

“It can’t happen overnight, but I think if we work together, we can make a change and have improvement,” he said. “We do need to do something.”