Council Blows Opportunity to Fund More Police

Even though Antioch has 30 fewer officers than approved – and will still be down 25 officers after the five are hired using the three-year, $1.5 million federal grant – based on the inability of the City’s budget to afford them, the Council still chose to not give the public the opportunity to vote for a parcel tax for police in November.

Instead, Councilman Kalinowski opposed holding a special meeting, even though it was necessary to move the matter forward. What’s worse is that Mayor Pro Tem Harper also opposed the meeting.

Here’s the most interesting and frustrating part. At the June 26th council meeting, Kalinowski asked staff to put a police tax on the agenda for a July meeting and even provided some ballot language, as well. Click here for the details.

You’d think Kalinowski and Harper – who are both sworn peace officers – would do everything they could to make sure Antioch has the additional police we need to make our city safe.

But, Harper who is now running for Mayor against Councilman Gary Agopian (who voluntarily took the lead on the tax effort), conveniently avoided taking a stand on a tax increase. Then he said he couldn’t have made the meeting, anyway? How does he plan to pay for those much needed cops?

They all sure got that last-minute, rotated Mayor measure done in time for this year’s June ballot. Yet, they’ve had two years to get this done – since Measure P, the half-cent sales tax failed in 2010 – and still couldn’t do it?


2 Comments to “Council Blows Opportunity to Fund More Police”

  1. Bill Cook says:

    Allen thanks for bring this to the attention of Antioch residents. Something on November’s election ballot to get APD back to 126 Police Officers and 20 CSO’s and let the Residents of Antioch decide is better than nothing. Mr. Kalinowski isn’t running again. But Mr Harper is running for Mayor and Mrs. Rocha is running for re-election on the City Council. Both should answer why the Resident of Antioch aren’t being allowed to vote on this important issue. WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH POLICE OFFICERS for a population of 103,000.

  2. Judy Pence says:

    Antioch is in dire straights! We need to increase our Police Force so that they can DO THEIR JOBS! It is ridiculous to think that these poor officers can do their jobs effectively when they are stretched so thin. Perhaps Kalinowski and Harper will change their tune when an officer is unable to respond in time to help them in their time of need! I have had a couple of occasions over this past week to interact with these fine officers on calls where we needed their assistance. They are all fine, caring and polite men (and women) but WE need to enable them to do their jobs of protecting US the citizens.

Leave a Reply