The October 27, 2025, meeting marked the final session of the session for Stanford's Fiscal Committee. Co-Chairs Mary Fidelity and Sean Boger led the committee through a series of appropriation requests and grant authorizations. While several routine items were approved via consent calendar, the meeting was dominated by a heated exchange regarding the status of police funding, where Representative Boger expressed strong opposition to the Board of Finance's decision to withhold approval for new officer positions pending further data. Technical difficulties and a late arrival by a key staff member required a brief recess and a reallocation of remaining agenda items to the following session.
Okay. The time is 6 01. And this is a meeting of the fiscal committee meeting. I am Mary Fidelity, co-chair of the fiscal committee. And with me this evening are my co-chair, Representative Sean Boger. Other members present are representative Karen Camparelli, Representative Morrison, Representative Carmine Famas, Representative Pierre Louis, Representative Graham, Representative Vanderport. And I don't see I missed anyone. And this is our last meeting of our session. And we have a few items on the agenda. This evening, the first item is F 31 604 for $743, $900, $743,941, which is an additional appropriation for operating, which was police administration request for additional funding to increase budgeted police officer positions from 217 to 230 for 300 total sworn as the department is now fully staffed and plans to fill the 13 new positions in the upcoming spring um academy class. I know this was held but by the Board of Finance, but I know there are some members who would like to make some comments. So I'm asking this if someone could please move this item. I think Representative Danderworth, you are muted. So moved. So move second second. Okay. Representative Boger. Thank you, Chair. Um, you know, I'm I'm I'm very displeased that we're not going to be able to vote on this, and this board is not going to be able to this committee is not going to be able to meet again since this is our last meeting. I'm not sure if any of the other members had watched the the uh Board of Finance meeting, but I just have to say, and and again, unfortunately I always have to preface just to make sure nobody isn't is uh unclear. These are these are this is my opinion. I am not speaking as a member of your police department. I'm speaking as your fellow elected official who happens to be a police officer, um with uh 28 years of experience of of working in that particular department in and the hiring of more officers um does not impact me as far as a benefit or anything like that. Having said all that, and um the only the only word I can say is disgusted. Um I listened to the meeting, the amount of of data that is being requested uh of the police department to produce in order to fund this, and mind you, these are the positions that we we told as a total financial leg of the uh of the city. We told the chief of police that we're not gonna fund these positions right now. These are those is the bird board of finance, but come back when you're ready to, and we will. Well, the police department is the academy's been going full blast. We're trying to catch up. And just for those of you that that may be on this committee for the next board, I want you to understand something. Almost 30 years ago, this police department had 315 officers. We were able to fulfill things that the public wanted, like foot posts, bicycle patrol, SROs. As you know, um in this country, school incidents, shootings, all these horrible, terrible things have gone nothing but up, while the population of our police department has gone down, while the population of our city has skyrocketed. And how those members of the Board of Finance, and I'm just gonna say in their in their in their ivory white towers are sitting there without any direct professional knowledge of how a police part department functions or the tactical or strategic decisions that have to be made. Um and make this decision to to hold these positions in my opinion, hostage at this point until they get certain information, is is just it's disgusting to me. Um I know they made mention of the fact that they're not pleased with how the pension plan is performing. Well, the police administration has nothing to do with the in with the administration of the pension plan. That's that's the the that that's the pension board. They have their own trustees, two appointed by the city, two appointed by the union, and one neutral. The the police administration has no power or control over that, but because they're not happy with that, they want to see this data and that data. They want to see data spanning back years and years and years that that covers a landscape of this department in this city that doesn't even exist anymore. They want to know where the the police officers are actually going to be allocated, what positions are they going to be in? Um as if they know better than the chief of police where to put certain people and and whether or not that those things are actually needed. And the only other thing that I would point out is if I I pay particular attention to uh a lot of the social media that uh involves Stanford directly. Um and if you go onto any of those platforms, you will see the number the the top gripes of our citizenry are all the same. And you guys already know this because of the same phone calls that we get from our constituents. Uh traffic enforcement, because people in the city drive like animals. They drive with total there's time they just drive with total disregard for only what they need to do and nobody else. Um it's hard to police a city of a hundred and thirty uh a hundred and thirty uh five plus thousand people when we only have I believe it's four officers assigned traffic enforcement because our patrol demand is so high. That's ridiculous.