Faced with ever-declining property and sales tax revenues, the
city of Morgan Hill is proposing further cuts to the 2009-10
budget, including reducing the number of staffed police officers by
two.
Faced with ever-declining property and sales tax revenues, the city of Morgan Hill is proposing further cuts to the 2009-10 budget, including reducing the number of funded police officers by two.
In June, the Morgan Hill City Council will consider adopting a $27.2 million general fund budget. That’s an increase over this year’s $25.1 million, with the general fund reserves footing the bill. The proposed budget includes $1.5 million in reserves.
All told, however, the combined city budget – general fund plus all other funds – is $7.5 million less than last year and pays for 15.75 fewer full-time equivalent employees, most of which were already eliminated with January’s $1.9 million in cuts.
Councilman Larry Carr said at first glance, he appreciated the intent of the proposed budget.
“It looks as though we’re trying to preserve as many services as possible, and trying to avoid layoffs. Both are commendable things to do,” Carr said.
The upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, should be the worst of it, according to City Manager Ed Tewes, who said the budget reflects an expectation during the 2009/10 fiscal year, the housing crisis will bottom out. The upcoming budget does not expect any new home production, he said.
“This budget had to reflect what the council did in January, and this new bad news,” he said.
The proposal does not yet include the likely outcome of the failed propositions from the May 19 special state election: $700,000 in property tax revenues borrowed by the state, a move Tewes likened to a parent borrowing from a child’s piggy bank just because they can.
There are three officer vacancies of 39 budgeted positions for the Morgan Hill Police Department. While two of these would be eliminated, a third vacant position would be filled, as the city anticipates receiving a $100,000 COPS grant, even though the grant, along with many other state-funded programs, is on shaky ground in the election’s fallout. Tewes explained that the COPS grant would not pay for one specific officer, but would go to the department as a whole.
The idea of reducing the police force – if only on paper – troubles one city councilmember.
“I had a feeling we didn’t really deal with it in January,” Councilwoman Marby Lee said. The council made no decision on a proposal to eliminate the vacant positions then. “I know they’re saying everyone has to take a hit, but in my point of view, police have taken a hit for a long time. I’ve always felt we’ve been understaffed.”
The council unanimously agreed on this point in May 2008, when they approved a city measure requesting to enact a 2-percent utility tax that would have paid for nine more police officer positions. This measure profoundly failed in the November General Election.
How will fewer officers affect the residents of Morgan Hill? Expect fewer service calls answered and increased emergency response times, Police Chief Bruce Cumming said. Barking dogs will stay barking and abandoned cars will stay abandoned, for example.
Just two “basic” calls – a traffic accident involving a drunk driver and a domestic violence call, for example – will continue to max out an entire shift of four officers, Cumming said. And another caveat of the 2009/10 budget is a cut in overtime costs. This fiscal year, the department already cut back its overtime spending. Where they were expected to spend $431,000, the department projects it will spend $390,000. Next fiscal year, the budget proposes they will spend $360,000 on overtime.
If an officer is paid an average overtime hourly wage of $75.61, that’s 397 hours with one less officer in the streets than the city had this year. That’s beefing up staff on the weekend, plus some change to deal with the summer months, both of which are traditionally busier times for the police.
This will cause the department to rethink its priorities, which may result in less staffing at the schools. Currently, three officers are devoted to the two high schools and two middle schools, including an officer who administers a gang awareness program paid for by a federal grant.
“It’s going to cause us to manage our money that we do have, to manage it very, very carefully,” he said.
Officers have dealt with the current staffing level since September. Any light at the end of the tunnel expected with the upcoming budget year was squelched long ago, Cumming said.
“We’ve been cautiously optimistic in the sense that we haven’t suffered actual layoffs,” he said. “Most officers are quite happy to have a job.”
The Police Officers Association, along with the two other labor unions that represent city employees, gave up some future cost-of-living increases in January that will total $500,000 in savings annually, making up more than a quarter of the $1.9 million in cuts the council made in January. Those cuts are reflected in the proposed $7.5 million slashed from the 2009/10 general fund budget.
To ease the police staffing blow, the city is considering entering into the police towing business that could eventually bring $250,000 to the general fund, according to City Manager Ed Tewes. To do this, the city would have to spend about $300,000 buying land for a tow yard. This overhead would be spent out of the general fund in the upcoming year, but quickly made up for in subsequent years, Tewes said. The towing business idea isn’t included in the budget proposal yet. Another consideration is charging more and more often for police response to false burglar alarms. The city generated over $35,000 in false alarm fees last year.
Carr said a lot of revenue-generating ideas need to be worked out as the council considers the proposed budget.
The city will hold a public hearing during the June 3 City Council meeting, at 7 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall, followed by a council workshop on June 5. The final 2009-10 budget is expected to be adopted June 17, with the fiscal year beginning July 1.
