An unhoused person crossing Green Street (Photo – ColoradoBlvd.net)
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
By Sonja Berndt
I am a long-time resident of Pasadena and a longtime advocate for the unsheltered residents of our city. This letter is to express my deep concern about the FY 2026 Recommended Police Department Operating Budget. Year after year, the Pasadena Police Department (PPD) receives a grossly disproportionate level of General Fund appropriations as compared to other vital departments in this city. Critical services for our unhoused and especially our unsheltered residents are vastly underfunded because PPD, with its escalating salaries and pension costs, continues to swallow up our General Fund, leaving insufficient crumbs for departments that serve our most vulnerable residents.
The Recommended FY 2026 Operating Budget shows the following appropriations from the General Fund:
- Police Department: $111,285,954 (91.7% of its total proposed FY2026 appropriations)
- Housing Department: $2,638,887 (2.4% of its total proposed FY2026 appropriations)
A look back at the adopted FY2022 Operating Budget reveals the huge escalation in General Fund appropriations to PPD over the last four years:
- Police Department: $84,605,000
- Housing Department: $1,475,000
While the Housing Department receives grant funding from county, state, and federal governments, city staff members recognize that federal grant funding is currently substantially at risk due to proposed cuts in the federal budget and the policies of the T. administration. At the City Council meeting May 5, 2025, City Manager Marquez specifically referenced the draconian cuts currently in the proposed federal budget for services for our most vulnerable residents. YET, the proposed FY2026 Housing Department Operating Budget notes 76% of its $48,814,656 Operating Budget as coming from the federal government! This shows a clear lack of planning and preparation for anticipated challenges.
The January 2024 homeless “point in time” count, noted over 500 unhoused persons, 321 of which had no shelter at all. Year after year our city fails to move the needle in the right direction because it fails to provide any meaningful interim and permanent housing to end homelessness in our city.
The very substantial increases in General Fund appropriations to PPD year after year are unsustainable. Personnel expenses are unsustainable. Pension costs are unsustainable. But cost savings can be achieved by decreasing the number of PPD officers while maintaining public safety in our city. In FY 2021, there were 5,766 PPD calls for service listed as “transient-related.” I once asked former Chief of Police John Perez how many calls for service PPD received from Centennial Place, a city housing site that houses formerly unhoused individuals. He said, “almost none.”
Instead of incurring the huge expense of responding to calls for service related to unhoused individuals, PROVIDE HOUSING FOR THEM. This would decrease PPD salary and pension costs and at the same time alleviate suffering and promote health and wellbeing.
Finally, the idea of a “Homeless Court,” which has been raised at previous Public Safety Committee meetings is not sensible. It would be costly in both staff and court time and money and, more importantly, it would require the “defendant/participant,” who may have simply been sleeping on public property, to go through a court process in order to obtain housing. Instead, simply provide the housing sorely needed by our unsheltered residents without the court process.
In conclusion, the enormous General Fund appropriations for PPD and the huge increases in those appropriations year after year leaves other critical departments of our city chronically and severely underfunded. The City Council as a whole needs to undertake a serious examination of the proposed FY2026 PPD Operating Budget to look for ways to decrease PPD’s General Fund appropriations. Further, the City Council needs to direct PPD to seriously look for greater grant funding opportunities through its Grant Procurement Unit. I urge the City Council to decrease the amount of General Fund appropriations to PPD for FY2026 and to use those funds to provide housing for our unhoused residents.
Sonja Berndt, a Pasadena resident, is a retired State Prosecutor.
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