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Community Corner

In Redding, he who fights and runs away … gets the Redding Pilot to fight for him.

There is a vacancy at Redding Police Academy, Sgt. Anthony Signore has resigned.  This fortunate event represents an opportunity for Redding’s taxpayers.

Sgt. Anthony Signore is not only one of the highest paid employees in Redding but he is also one of the SROs assigned to one of Redding’s schools.

A bit of resent history might be very helpful here.

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On February 13, 2013, Doug Fuchs, took shamelessly advantage of the catastrophe in Newtown and, together with the board of education and Natalie Ketcham, bamboozled Redding into incurring the expense of two new cops, a strategy which no other town including Newtown has followed.  At that time Sgt. Anthony Signore, who was already a trained SRO, and Chris Vadas who was already a Redding cop, were moved to SRO assignment.  And soon after Chris Vadas, who did not have the training, went to SRO school.  Never the less Doug Fuchs, almost instantaneously, hired two more cops to bring his ever-growing empire to 17 cops.

Consider that in 1990, Redding had 12 cops, 8000 residents and a police budget of $550K.  When Doug Fuchs took control, the police budget was just under $1M.  Since then, Redding’s population has grown to only 9200, no new housing has been constructed, no new roads have been built and crime has remained non-existent while inflation has been under 4%.  Yet, Doug Fuchs has increased the police staff to 17 and his budget is now $2.2M.  He has added cops to serve the future Georgetown development, which has never happened and probably never will, and he has added huge capital expenses in equipment and facility construction.  All along forgetting to maintain critical infrastructure like the municipal antenna which now needs to be replaced at a cost of $275K soon to be followed by new radio equipment no doubt and the list goes on and on.

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For almost one decade now, Redding’s police department has been overstaffed and it’s costing Redding an exorbitant amount of tax dollars.

So now, while Redding has an opportunity to curtail some of this irresponsible spending, Doug Fichs as expected, as soon as he learned that there may be opposition to his determination to replace Anthony Signore to keep his empire intact, quickly enlisted the help of The Redding Pilot, which is always ready to intervene into Redding’s finances and politics, and gets Kaitlin Bradshaw to write an article entitled “School safety program affirms measures taken at town schools” published on July 10, which falsely and intentionally misinforms its readers.  The article gives the false impression that if the vacancy is not filled the schools will lose one of the SRO.

Redding police department is already overstaffed.  Even if we accept that 12 cops, which server Redding just fine in the 90s is the right staffing level, and if we add the two SRO, Redding police department should have no more than 14 cops.  Not 17, not 16, not 15 … just 14, including its management.

Just as he did last year, when he moved two cops already in his staff to SRO assignment, Doug Fuchs must assign one of the Redding’s cops to the vacant SRO assignment and not hire yet another new cop.

And let’s be clear, contrary to what The Redding Pilot and Doug Fuchs are falsely communicating to the community, nobody is asking to eliminate the SROs from the schools.  And we are not demanding of Doug Fuchs to reduce the staff by eliminating anyone from the payroll, which he or his replacement, will ultimately have to do if he insists on the current course.  We are simply asking to reduce expenses and our taxes without the painful task of eliminating anyone’s employment.

If Doug Fuchs wants to spend $275K on a new communication tower than, he needs to reduce the expenses and not burden Redding’s taxpayers with yet another huge expenditure.

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