By Sarah Lombardo
City officials are looking into teaming up with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department's Westside substation for city code enforcement. Representatives from the Sheriff's Department and the city and members of the Saratoga City Council are expected to meet "in the near future" to discuss the matter, said Joe Oncay, Saratoga's building department manager and city codes administrator.
No plan is in the works, but the idea was suggested to city staff by City Council members at a town hall meeting last month as a possible way to save money.
"What we've been asked to do is to look at our processes and our budget and see if we can make some savings," Oncay said. "The council has asked us to look at that and come back to them with some savings, and we are going to do that."
But both sides seems to have some reservations about the idea of using sheriff's deputies for code enforcement instead of, or in addition to, city code enforcement officers, including how residents would respond to sheriff's deputies' possible new role in the city and whether the arrangement would really result in savings.
At a joint meeting with the Public Safety Commission and the City Council Mar. 11, Councilman Paul Jacobs said that residents might feel offended if a sheriff's deputy showed up to respond to a complaint about a barking dog. To send out a sheriff's deputy would not be appropriate, Jacobs said.
Oncay agreed, citing the difference in interaction between deputies, code enforcement officers and residents. "[A code enforcement officer] approaches you differently. He doesn't write you a citation immediately, and you don't have to go to court," Oncay said.
In a first step to determine if savings could be provided by contracting with the Sheriff's Department, the city asked the Sheriff's Department what kind of code enforcement it could provide if allotted $100,000, and how much 1,500 hours of code-enforcement services would cost. In a memorandum to the city, Lt. Bill Slack said the Sheriff's Department could provide 1,432 hours for $100,000; 1,500 hours of service would cost $104,715. According to Oncay, the city last year spent 4,634.7 hours resolving code enforcement complaints.
In addition, the memo states that the contract hourly rate for a sheriff's office technician is $68.71; a city code enforcement officer's hourly rate is about $50. "Where are the savings?" asked Jacobs.
"It really boils down to the cost associated with providing the service," Oncay said, adding that for the sheriff's deputies to provide the same level of service, it would cost the city the same amount to contract with them. "[The Sheriff's Department] can't provide it any less expensively than it is already being done," he said. But he also said not all the ideas, including contracting out only some code enforcement responsibilities, have been exhausted yet.
"I think the Sheriff's Department will try to accommodate the city of Saratoga with whatever we ask them to do," he said. "If the sheriffs can do this as effectively and with less money, I'm sure the City Council is going to entertain that idea."
In the meantime, Oncay said his department is working on other ways to cut costs, including trying to reduce the number of cases the code enforcement office responds to by getting residents involved in follow-up checks of compliance and not accepting anonymous complaints.
City code enforcement includes responding to possible violations of city codes, such as abandoned vehicles, tree-cutting, excess garage sales and building code violations. Oncay said that although voluntary compliance with the codes is the department's ultimate goal, some cases do end up in court. Currently the city has only one code enforcement officer who works three days a week.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, March 26, 1997.
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