Police cut budget in weakened economy

With the weakened economy, the Asheville Police Department cut some items and personnel from their budget while staying focused on public safety.

“From a people perspective, I think police has more personnel than any other department in the city,” said Asheville Budget Director Tony McDowell. “Now, unfortunately, like I say, we’ve been in bad times lately so what’s happened is we’ve had to talk about ways to cut back on the budget.”

For the fiscal year 2005-06, the capital outlay for police was $82,257, according to the department. In 2008-09, that number fell to $17,090.

“What’s there, that $82,000 and what’s now down to $17,000, is they have small capital items they may need through the year,” McDowell said. “For them, maybe it’s some kind of tactical gear or something like that that’s going to cost over $5,000, but less than $20,000.”

The reduced budget reflects the crippled economy, according to Capt. Wade Wood, who works with the police budget.
“I know there were some years where we had a million dollars to purchase vehicles, and then we went down to $300,000 last year, or this current fiscal year. So that makes an impact,” he said.

Even though police had $300,000 in their fleet budget for the current fiscal year, they didn’t replace any of their vehicles, according to Asheville Police Chief Bill Hogan.

“Last year we did not replace any vehicles, and we eliminated four positions,” he said. “Citywide we were unable to give any raises to our employees, while their cost to live in Asheville continued to rise.”

The police used the $300,000 to offset the city deficit, according to Wood.
“It just went back to balance the city’s budget,” he said.

Additionally, the budget cuts affect community service, according to Hogan.

“We are also planning to reduce police overtime this year, and that will have a direct impact on service to the community,” he said. “At this point, throughout the city departments, all of our cuts will reduce to some degree the direct services we provide to our citizens and visitors.”

Money increased in the miscellaneous portion of the police budget, according to the department.
For the fiscal year 2005-06, miscellaneous revenue was a little more than $60,000. For 2008-09, the figure hit just slightly less than $110,000.

“One reason is they got money from the court fees,” McDowell said. “That’s about $40,000 in court fees. And the other big revenue in that category is about $50,000, and they have a false alarm fee.”

Police charge money if businesses continually have their alarm systems going off without a threat, McDowell said. The city implemented a false alarm fee when police continued to use their time responding to false alarms.

“We have a lot of items, but it all goes back to (the) general fund for noise-ordinance violations, animal violations, (and) false-alarm responses,” Wood said.

In the fiscal year 2005-06, the support bureau division had a little more than $1.8 million available, according to the department. For 2008-09, the division had slightly more than $3.6 million.

The support bureau division contains such divisions as police/fire communications, property control, court liaison, crime analysis and building maintenance, according to the department.

“I know they pay a lot of our larger contracts for our computer system, CIJI (Criminal Justice Information System), as well as our animal shelter fees,” Wood said. “I think we might’ve increased the personnel by a couple within that division we absorbed with the animal services around 2004-2005.”

The Information Technology budget originally funded the CIJI system, which Buncombe County administers, but the system eventually moved over to the support bureau division, according to McDowell.

Despite money increases in some areas and decreases in others, police stay vigilant with their mission, according to Hogan.

“We are a public safety operation, and we need sufficient personnel and equipment to respond to emergencies such as in-progress crimes and traffic crashes,” Hogan said. “We are the peace keepers of the community, and we need sufficient resources to protect our citizens, to maintain order in the city and (to) protect the constitutional freedoms of all citizens.”