Norwalk Police Budget
If there’s one thing most people can likely agree upon its that most City services seem typically underfunded. Which ones are understaffed depends on your particular interaction with the City of Norwalk. And then there’s the police department.
Your average “Joe The Plumber” and let’s all be thankfull that Joe moved off the six-pack reference this election, would say that there’s not enough policeman because of the huge overtime numbers. Meanwhile there’s the small but vocal neighbourhood contingents that are convinced that policing is not enough, because of imagined surges in crime, and has been investigating citizen patrols, whether Red Beret or other. That would be the policy perception side of the budget equation.
The Mayor has announced that all departments must cut their budget, and the Common Council has stayed silent on the issue. So much for check and balances. But back to the police department.
This morning’s Advocate presents the lame analysis of the police department budget cuts. I say lame, because there’s absolutely no context for any of the numbers presented. Here’s the key grafs:
A $469,000 budget cut that will reduce patrol, community police and the vice and drug squad will not affect service, Chief Harry Rilling said Friday.
One police officer will be cut from each of the three eight-hour patrol shifts, the complaint bureau officer will be moved to the sergeant’s desk, one officer will be moved out of the Special Services Unit and two will be removed from the Community Police Unit, Rilling said.
But residents likely won’t notice the cuts, Rilling said.
“I want to make it clear the mayor and I have spoken and we will be evaluating this shift activity and . . . make sure that the public safety and officer safety is not compromised,” Rilling said. “If we have to make an adjustment, if we are seeing an increase in criminal activity, we will make adjustments.”
Three police officer positions will be cut, leaving 176 officers.
The department now has 167 officers in uniform and plans to put four more into a police academy in December. Another four officers may be sent to the academy in February, Rilling said.
So where’s the beef? Well a trip to the wayback machine gets us some fascinating numbers. By December 10th of last year the Police Department was at 65% of its overtime. Where is that overtime number now? And what then was the Police Department doing to curb overtime? Well, good thing I quoted a Robert Koch article on that subject:
The department is funded for 176 officers now, with an authorized strength of 182. In the next 18 months, the mayor and chief hope the funded number will be 179.
But even though 176 are funded, there are only 167 serving — and seven of those are in the police academy, Rilling said.
We pause here for station identification. No, we pause because the numbers don’t add up. A year later and the police force is at 167 officers in uniform still. And where are the police officers that were in the academy last year? Aren’t they still? And how can you cut one officer from each patrol when you are working with the same force you were last year and you have no layoffs announced? Why the magic of overtime! Last year’s Koch article continues:
In every year except one (2002-03) since 2001-02, the police department has overstepped its approved overtime budget, according to figures from Donna Castracane, city assistant director of management and budgets. Last year, the overrun was more than $700,000 and the year before that it was more than $1.3 million.
Last year, the police department spent $2,146,733 on overtime, a 14 percent decrease from overtime spending the year before. The approved overtime budget last year was $1,442,498.
This year’s approved budget includes a $148,956 increase in overtime wages over last year’s approved budget, according to the police budget as published on the city’s Web site.
Rilling, like other department heads, was required to submit his budget request for 2008-09 to city Finance Director Thomas Hamilton by Nov. 30. The chief declined to release the details of his budget request.
City Board of Estimate and Taxation Chairman Fred Wilms said police overtime spending is “one of our most difficult challenges” because on one hand, board members want to keep taxes as low as possible while on the other hand, “we all want to live in a city that has a low crime rate, and where the police department has all of the tools they need to protect us.
“We want to see crime keep going down and so we want to support the police wherever we can but overtime has been a recurring issue,” he said. “For the last few years it’s been a real challenge to try to manage the overtime spending of the police department. The chief has done a great job. I feel he’s been very mindful of overtime spending. But it’s not something that can be solved right away.”
Over the past two years or so, the trend has been to transfer excess funds from the regular wage account to cover overtime, Wilms said.
Last year, asset forfeiture money was also used to cover overtime “and I think that’s a welcome development,” he said.
One solution to the problem is adding more officers to the force, Wilms said,
“We’ve been moving in that direction from a budgetary perspective,” he said. “In the past two years we’ve increased funding for additional officers.”
He added that the DROP “has really had a huge impact on the force and cost the city a lot of money. I wish it had never been implemented.”
Rilling said he will have a budget review Dec. 18 with the finance department, which will forward its recommendations to the Board of Estimate and Taxation. The board is slated to meet with the police department in January, Rilling said.
Seems like we are playing with fantasy numbers here. The part I particularly like to juxtapose is this concluding graf in the Advocate article:
Rilling and Deputy Chief Thomas Kulhawik said the financial problems that led the city Thursday to announce a $1.8 million budget cut forced them to cancel plans to attend a five-day International Association of Chiefs of Police conference that begins today in San Diego.
“It was not going to cost the city anything, but we felt it was just not right when we were asking our officers to understand and do their part to help us cut back on our expenditures,” Rilling said. “We felt it would not be inappropriate for us to go at this time.”
The $5,000 that was to be used to pay for air flights, hotel and the $700 admission fee for both officers was to be paid through the department’s asset forfeiture account funded by money and property seized in drug, gambling and prostitution arrests, Rilling said.
The flights, hotel reservations and conference admission fees were canceled Friday, Rilling said.
Would that be the same police asset forfeiture fund that we fund overtime with? And does this get counted as revenue to the City? Or just another way to mask the huge overtime generated by the police department?
source: Advocate, Cost-cutting won’t hurt public safety, police chief says, By John Nickerson, November 10, 2008
source: The Hour, New officers may be sought to curb overtime spending, by Robert Koch, December 10, 2007
