Nick Jimenez

Pete Alvarez's longest day

Tuesday was a long day for Police Chief Pete Alvarez. It may have been tougher than any day he ever spent in his long career of chasing down criminals and wrongdoers.
   No one relishes being called on the carpet by the boss. But it is even worse if your boss happens to be a City Council made up of nine politicians who have to face the public at election time and who probably feel no restraint in lighting into an overspending bureaucrat.
   Which is exactly what Alvarez represented on Tuesday, trying to answer why his department, the most lavishly funded of any function in city government, had overspent its budget by $1.1 million.
   A red ink reminder
   The police department's red ink comes at a bad time. It was only recently that there were signs that perhaps the city coffers might be less bleak for the coming budget year than they've been in the past.
   Then, too, there is the bad history of surprises at City Hall.
   The city administration has mostly recovered from the 1997 "dam bulge" surprise, the discovery that a flaw at Wesley Seale Dam had gone unattended and, worse in political terms, unreported by city staff, for years. The repairs were finally finished in April.
   But the uproar, as well as other surprises, tended to leave the bad taste that maybe there were too many long lunches at City Hall.
   Mayor Loyd Neal and City Manager David Garcia have tried, and mostly succeeded, in making those events seem like chapters in an old book. But Alvarez's appearance brought back the old days.
   Alvarez probably might have wished for the old days, the old days, that is, when things were simpler and he was just catching bad guys. A veteran of more than 30 years on the local force, Alvarez's appointment as chief in 1995 was the crowning point of a proud career. As a vice cop, he had a sterling record. His selection as the first Hispanic chief of the department came at the right time, and the fact that he is a local product only added to a comfortable feeling about Alvarez.
   But as City Councilman Henry Garrett, Alvarez's predecessor as chief, notes, "being a police officer gets in your blood, but there comes a point when you have to reorder your priorities."
   If you go by percentages, Alvarez didn't miss the mark by much. The $1.1 million overspent represents just over 2 percent of a $43 million budget. But in a strapped city budget in which every thousand bucks loom large and in an age where every manager, in government or in private business, has to learn how to squeeze a dollar until blood appears - and learn to love it - close is nowhere.
   Garcia notes that a lot of managers at City Hall went over-budget this past year, but when the end of the year drew near, they "had learned to adjust." That is, they cut back elsewhere to make the bottom line balance.
   If there is a flaw in a good department, Garcia says, it is the failure of the police department - and, one supposes by inference, Alvarez - to "adopt the culture of the bottom line." In fact, the police department has run over-budget four of the past five years, but nobody knew because the city's accounting practices just didn't have the capability to catch up. Alvarez's bad luck is this year the city did.
   Culprit is 'drag-up' pay
   In Alvarez's defense, let it be said that much of his trouble was due to a labor practice that is good for cops, but is bad for community priorities: "drag-up pay," that is the fat check that retirees receive representing unused vacation and sick leave. The 17 officers who retired last year drew out $757,000; that money came straight out of the city budget, the same fund that pays for parks, street repairs, and, yes, police protection.
   Put this on the city's to-do list: bargaining with police to spread those payments out and sparing the city a big hit (and themselves an even bigger hit from the taxman). Alvarez left the council chambers vowing to do a better job. He probably will, just as he did a good job as a policeman. But being a good policeman is not good enough anymore.
  
   Nick Jimenez can be reached by phone at 886-3787 or by e-mail at jimenezn@caller.com.
  
  

 
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