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. . I . . . Council Member Ira said, "1 just know that as a number man you would think that I would love these standards and that I would wish that they would even be higher. But I do - know that numbers as Councilman Claire talked about, are easy things to manipulate, because when you are doing evaluations, the easiest thing to do is to use numbers. They are concrete and simple, and objective. The hardest thing to do is to judge all those other issues, because they are a lot harder to judge and a lot harder to evaluate, and it takes a lot more time and energy to sit down and really evaluate those issues. I would just like to encourage Carlos to keep working on that." Council Member Ira said it is easy to get caught up in a numbers game. He said, "I do a lot of evaluations and I like to go straight to the performance, look at their net and say, that's a good employee, I like it when they make me money. And I know that's the easy thing to do." Council Member Ira encouraged Chief Bolanos to keep working on all the other issues as well, and "to keep a balance so that we won't ever have to discuss this again." Mayor Howard said, "One of the advantages of having City Council people who are business people who live next door to you, rather than having politicians, is that we have an understanding of what it's like to live in the real world. In the real world performance standards are a way of life. If you are a new lawyer you are expected to put in a certain number of billable hours. If you are in real estate, there's the Million Dollar Club, or your office has a board in its office showing the highest performance of that month.... In my own profession as a nurse, we were expected to take care of a certain number of patients per shift. Performance standards have been with us since we were children: grades in school, chores at home. The issue today is not whether performance standards are - appropriate, but whether they have resulted in appropriate tickets or inappropriate arrests. To my knowledge there have been no increase in complaints from the public regarding inappropriate tickets or from the D.A.'s office regarding inappropriate arrests. This entire discussion evolved this evening not because of public complaining about inappropriate tickets or arrests. As a member of the public I can clearly understand why you have concerns about the policy. You don't want to see police officers out there giving you a ticket, you want them out there catching the bad guys. I think we have to understand that when somebody runs a red light, runs a stop sign, or makes an illegal turn, they become a bad guy in our community. If one of your loved ones is run over by someone who breaks the law, you'll be asking where was the police officer? Why wasn't he here to do his job? We must allow and encourage our police officers to do their jobs. Unfortunately, regardless of what we decide here tonight, because of the adversity surrounding this issue due to premature and misinformation, the already difficult job of being a police officer could become even more difficult. I hope that this evening's meeting with aU the information that was given, helped clarify and answer quite a few questions for all of us. I know it did for me. When we hired our Police Chief we brought him because we knew that the department needed some reorganization and needed to deal with some morale problems. We need to allow our Police Chief to do his job. We need to let him do his job the way he feels is best. I commend the Police Department, Chief Bolanos, for the clearly written and thorough report we received this evening. Because of your report we had a - very, very constructive meeting with active participation ITOm the public." REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING MINUTE BOOK NO. 56 FEBRUARY 2,1998 MINUTES Page No. 235 PAGE 20