Lourdes Santiago wants more police not signs...

Toledo City Council candidate Lourdes Santiago as stated in this article by Tom Troy of the Toledo Blade, and on local news yesterday points out that rather than spending over $6,000 on Toledo pride type signs she'd rather see spending on adding more police officers be a priority. She made the call for more police officers back on September 13th before the "9 murders in 9 days" that was a large public focus. That press release was covered here and by some of the media but no mention in the Blade.

Lourdes is quoted in the Toledo Blade article:

"I say no more signs. No more rah-rah until our citizens feel safe," she said. "Police presence in our neighborhoods must be increased."


None of the other candidates for the Toledo City Council seat disagree with her on this though both in the Blade and on Fox 36 Dave Schulz suggests there were other items of less priority that also should have not been supported.

The Mayor suggests:

"While I appreciate the desire of councilmen and council candidates to impress the voters with their concern for public safety, I would suggest they walk the streets and encourage more citizens to participate in Block Watch,"

Here's my problem, and it's not directed at just Lourdes, I do agree with her that over $6,000 (when you factor in the cost of the city workers it's well over $7,000) on big Red letters isn't exactly something we need right now. The problem is from what I have been told more than once is that money budgeted to one department can not just be easily transferred to another one and in some cases when it involves certain types of federal or state funds it can only be used for specific purposes.

I agree 100% that each department should be spending their budget money wisely. I agree that public safety should come before signage. I agree that the department of streets, bridges, and harbor could have used that money and the workers time much more wisely. Yet, all of our candidates and our elected officials and our media could do a better job at clearly presenting how the City budget works. I wasn't sent the press release for this so I don't know at this point if that aspect was not mentioned by the media coverage.

I think this issue also points out that we do need to focus on a outcome-based or performance-based budget. It's very troubling to me that given the condition of our Toledo streets that David Welch felt this was a justifiable expense and that the Mayor's office wasn't aware of it. If Mr. Welch is limited to the same $10,000 amount without needing approval, you'd still think something like this would be something that the Mayor should be aware of before it's done.