cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19641276
That does include parking enforcement. Which is done through that half of Townhall. Oh yeah, that’s the other part. They get literally half the real estate of town hall which is delightfully unsubtle.
But yeah, remember specifically that freaking the cops taking on all of these duties, or having these duties thrust upon them outside of their control whatever version of this that you buy into,. Having a whole bunch of unrelated social functions being addressed under the regions of the police forces is the criticism, it’s not some separate part. Why, does parking enforcement or local security or non union road crews get organized and paid from the police department instead of the local government?
It's 31% of my city's entire budget. Our parks service gets over 5 times less and we have a crazy number of parks here.
But hey, the police needed a new station! The old one was all of 7 years old! And it only had a regular 50 inch TV, not a 4k one!
Meanwhile the best playground in the city has had all it's mulch piled to the side for months, with nobody, including several city and county officials I've spoken to, knowing why.
Fun thing: that police budget is actually down percentage wise. Money wise it's up by a million, but our wonderful mayor decided it would be brilliant to not renew our garbage pickup without another option on the table. Now we have trash pickup that's twice as expensive and won't pick up trash in the back yard for the elderly without them paying almost $150 a month for the service.
I hate this town