Monday, October 15, 2007
Budget hearing, night 2
What a difference a couple of days can make. The other night, during the first budget hearing, we had about a dozen people in the audience. We're here at City Hall tonight, and there are several dozen people seated behind me; many are unfortunately packed in a hallway behind our meeting room. Most of the folks I recognize are from Lake City and Tillicum. It's not surprising they are here, as if you've read the posts below or certainly if you read the paper, you know that the draft budget would eliminate community policing from their areas.
These are not happy people, and the expressions on their faces show it. I'm proud of the people of Tillicum and Lake City. They are here.
This was the first formal chance for Chief Larry Saunders to explain why he and the city manager made the recommendation they did. The short version is that they were trying to hold growth of the police department budget to 4 percent. And that meant in order to fully fund four pairs of community police officers in the other four patrol districts of Lakewood, they had to eliminate community policing entirely in two neighborhoods. As the chief says, that alternative was not his first choice.
Among the things we learned tonight: we need to pay the county dispatching system another $300,000 for records, information technologies and other systems; another $45,000 to the jail; and another $30,000 for ammunition (apparently the war in Iraq and elsewhere is forcing up the cost of large-caliber ammo) So it's no wonder that money is tight.
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These are not happy people, and the expressions on their faces show it. I'm proud of the people of Tillicum and Lake City. They are here.
This was the first formal chance for Chief Larry Saunders to explain why he and the city manager made the recommendation they did. The short version is that they were trying to hold growth of the police department budget to 4 percent. And that meant in order to fully fund four pairs of community police officers in the other four patrol districts of Lakewood, they had to eliminate community policing entirely in two neighborhoods. As the chief says, that alternative was not his first choice.
Among the things we learned tonight: we need to pay the county dispatching system another $300,000 for records, information technologies and other systems; another $45,000 to the jail; and another $30,000 for ammunition (apparently the war in Iraq and elsewhere is forcing up the cost of large-caliber ammo) So it's no wonder that money is tight.
