Budget Woes Threaten Cathedral City Police, Fire

CATHEDRAL CITY – Suspected felon Daniel Avila locked himself inside this church with his one year old son Tuesday night.

He surrendered three hours later.

No one got hurt, except the police department’s pocketbook.

It spent money to pay officers to direct traffic, set up a perimeter, lock down the church and an ambulance team stood by in case of injuries.

“Not only does it inconvenience the people of Cathedral City, or around this area, but .. It’s a drain of resources that unfortunately it’s not something we can easily bounce back from,” says Lt. Glen Haas with the Cathedral City Police Department.

The department is like many people and businesses in Cathedral City worried how the city will solve it’s budget problems.

But, it can’t just sit back and wait.

“Fiscal emergency or not we still have a service to provide the community for their safety even if it’s an inconvenience,” says Lt. Haas.

Cathedral City Fire Chief Bill Soqui agrees.

He’s cut his budget and cut his staff from 13 firefighters to only 10 firefighters for a city with about 60,000 people.

He also cut two paramedics and a firefighter.

Soqui says the department now has enough men to handle a major fire, but more cuts means asking help from other fire departments and longer response times.

“We’re at the point where we’ve done everything that we can that’s more with less it’s gonna have to be less with less cause you can’t just continue to cut and cut and cut and have an expectation that the service levels are gonna stay the same,” says Chief Soqui.

Chief Soqui says if there’s more cuts he’ll have to close one of the city’s three fire stations by losing either an ambulance or an engine.

When asked which one would go, he said it’s a choice he hopes he never has to make.