Whadda ya think?

We’re back in the throes of City budget preparation, a process that seems to last from December to August. Like cities nationwide, the challenges are immense given the recession. Lincoln is staring at a multi-million dollar gap between our projected revenues for fiscal year 2009-2010 and the expenditures needed to maintain the current level of service. Something’s got to give: either more revenue (unlikely) or more cuts.

This follows two particularly lean years in city government where over 100 jobs were cut. The less painful medicine has already been taken, now the bitter pills await. All City departments were tasked with submitting a budget that is 91% of their current FY 2008-2009 budget. Since cost escalate about 3%, meeting a 91% budget really means cutting to 88%.

Since our budget is primarily personnel costs, you can do a rough calculation of what this means by multiplying our 417 employees by 12%. Whether such drastic cuts really occur is another matter, but I have been warned by the budget staff that it will be nigh-on-to-impossible to balance the City books if the public safety agencies (police, fire, 911) are taken off the table, since they account for the biggest chunk of the tax-funded portion of the City budget.

When you’re in my position, you’ve got to at least think about and plan for how you would handle cuts, if they happen. The process is rather straightforward: you look around at all the activities and programs your department is engaged in, and you compare these to out mission—providing police services that promote a safe and secure community. Enforcing traffic laws has a significant impact on safety. Investigating child abuse and neglect has a big impact on safety, crime prevention efforts and problem-oriented policing projects aimed at burglary reduction has an impact of security, and so forth.

Parking enforcement, conversely—though it may have important purposes and value—has virtually no relation to our mission of promoting safety and security. The contribution of traffic direction at special events to safety and security is debatable. And what does the investigation of traffic crashes—a major consumer of police resources—contribute to safety and security? A bit, perhaps, but not very much.

The Mayor and I had just this discussion last year, and he was intrigued. I told him that traffic crashes are one of life’s minor crises, and that we make these less painful for citizens. We help them get wreckers, notify family members, gather the information from the other driver they’re going to need, ensuring that he or she has a license, isn’t drunk, and has insurance (or issue citations for these offenses. We also do crash a investigation that often leads to a ticket for a moving violation, and always produces a detailed report, which makes it much easier for insurance companies to evaluate and settle claims.

We could, however, produce the former (help with wrecker, make sure drivers exchange information, evaluate for suspended license-drunk driving-no insurance) without producing the later (the detailed investigation and the investigator’s report.) This would take your typical fender bender from over an hour down to about 30 minutes or so. If you do the math, that’s somewhere between two and three officers in person-hours. If we were to lose personnel, my goal will be to keep the workload of our staff manageable, so they can continue to do what remains with quality. I want to drop the least important services, so the effort can be focused on the most important work.

This is exactly what we have done in previous down cycles. Off the top of my head, we no longer escort funerals, investigate traffic crashes on private property, assist with money transfers, unlock cars, go with the Fire Department to all medical emergencies, respond to barking dogs, teach DARE, provide school resource officers to elementary schools, or investigate gas drive-offs with no suspects. That’s several thousand police dispatches annually that we would have been making in 1989 that we aren’t making in 2009. So, what’s next? Would traffic crash investigation be a logical choice?

The City is engaged in a survey to gauge what citizens think about several of the cuts that are under consideration. I’d like to get my own sense, though, from readers of the Chief’s Corner. How would you feel if you were rear-ended, we helped get things organized at the scene, but we didn’t take statements, do measurements, evaluate cause, or produce an investigator’s report? Is my thought process sound in ranking this as only marginally related to our core mission (particularly in comparison to other police activities?)