We Get Letters: May 4 Political Gumbo Short on Facts and Fairness

Dear Editor:

Last week, community members came together to attend a Pasadena Budget Teach-In webinar presented by volunteer community members who had devoted months of time researching the Fiscal Year 2022 Operating Budget in order to prepare the community for the upcoming discussions on the proposed Fiscal Year 2023 Operating Budget. The Managing Editor of Pasadena Now, Mr. Coleman, was personally invited to the webinar, but did not attend. Sixty people attended the webinar including Councilmember Hampton.

Had Mr. Coleman attended, he would have heard about the research we had conducted on the topics of the Police Budget, the Housing budget, the Public Health budget, the Parks, Rec & Community Services budget, the enormous problem of the City covering the debt on the Rose Bowl, and the $26 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds coming to this City shortly. What the community heard in about 90 minutes is some of what community members would say at City Council meetings on the budget if we were given more than two minutes to speak.

At the webinar, Mr. Coleman would have heard that, in the adopted FY 2022 Operating Budget, the Police Department received almost $85 million from the General Fund (which funds our daily operations) while the Housing Department received $1.475 million and the Public Health Department received none. He would have heard how the Police Department’s own statistics for fiscal year 2021 show that the PPD responded to 5,766 calls for service related to unhoused people and 1,994 calls for service related to mental health. He would have heard the presenters ask whether we need appropriate mental health responders and social workers, instead of police officers, for these calls so we can focus our Police Department on actual crimes.

Mr. Coleman would also have heard at the webinar that the City has sorely depleted its reserves paying toward the $197.72 million outstanding debt on the Rose Bowl (as of May 2021) to the tune of $21.5 million (total) in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 and that the reason the City doesn’t have to pay this coming year is because the federal government gave the Rose Bowl Operating Company a one-time $10 million grant.

Speaking of the Rose Bowl, did anyone from Pasadena Now read my two detailed letters on the enormous problem of the City paying the Rose Bowl debt that were posted and available for last Monday’s Finance Committee meeting and City Council meeting? I guess not, because Mr. Coleman states “It’s time to dig deeper on the budget” and “Deep discussion of the budget requires homework and reading through some documents.” He would have found my research there and seen it during the Budget Teach-In. Had he attended the Budget Teach-In, he would know that community members have already begun to dig deeper and have reviewed numerous documents in our efforts to understand, and help the community understand, some of the problems with Pasadena’s operating budget.

While Mr. Coleman complains that “the public portion of the conversation has to be deeper,” he fails to explain how we can do that in the two minutes Mayor Gordo gives each speaker at City Council meetings.

But the good news is that Mr. Coleman and Pasadena community members can take advantage of the countless hours of budget research that went into the Pasadena Budget Teach-In, via the in-depth Toolkit containing the presentation videos, slides, demands, budget schedule and more: https://bit.ly/3Fdx3tK . There you will learn about the budgets of the departments I mentioned, the unmet needs of residents in our City, and how you can voice your opinions and ideas for meeting community needs at the upcoming committee discussions and at City Council meetings.

Community members will continue to do their part to stand up for marginalized, struggling, and voiceless Pasadenans. Community-member bashing won’t deter us.

Sonja K. Berndt
Pasadena

Got something to say, email Managing Editor André Coleman, at andrec@pasadenanowmagazine.com