By Henry K. Lee
The San Francisco Chronicle
MILLBRAE, Calif. — The Millbrae City Council has voted to disband the city’s police force and move toward outsourcing law enforcement to the San Mateo County sheriff’s office as a cost-cutting measure.
The City Council voted 3-2 Tuesday night to disband the 63-year-old Police Department to save an estimated $1.1 million a year. The council directed city staff to begin negotiating with the sheriff’s office, which took over police operations within the past year in San Carlos and Half Moon Bay after those cities dissolved their forces.
The sheriff’s office has agreed to offer full-time jobs to all of Millbrae’s 21 sworn and eight civilian police employees, said Undersheriff Carlos Bolanos.
“I think the citizens will not notice a difference,” said Mayor Dan Quigg, who voted along with Vice Mayor Marge Colapietro and Councilwoman Gina Papan to disband the police force.
Millbrae’s Police Department is “dysfunctional,” Quigg said, citing staffing reductions and the use of part-time command staff. Turning over policing to the sheriff “is the way to go financially,” he said. “I don’t think there’s going to be a loss of identity.”
Colapietro, due to become mayor next month, said, “I was the councilmember who made that motion. I would have never made that motion unless I had every confidence that the Millbrae community would have good, professional law enforcement.”
Council members Paul Seto and Nadia Holober voted against outsourcing.
Seto, who is leaving the council in December, said the city should hold off on the decision until two new members replace him and Quigg. He said the city of 21,000 has been considering outsourcing since 2003.
“It took us eight years to get to this point. Why are we rushing through this?” Seto said. “To make a sudden decision is just not appropriate. I figured another one to two months wouldn’t make much difference.”
Holober said, “We had a lot of reasons for why people wanted to keep police services local. It’s an integral part of the community.”
She said a number of financial details weren’t ironed out yet and that every time the council has discussed the issue at recent hearings, “it seems like the numbers change. There were a lot of questions that weren’t answered.”
Millbrae has reduced the size of its police force by 26 percent over the past decade. The city had considered consolidating its department with the San Bruno force, but determined that it wouldn’t do much to save money or improve policing.
The two cities have shared one police chief, Neil Telford, since August, but he is returning to San Bruno full time this week.
Copyright 2011 San Francisco Chronicle