Fort Smith police chief, city director debate proposed police budget cuts

by Aric Mitchell ([email protected]) 386 views 

Fort Smith Police Chief Kevin Lindsey and City Director Tracy Pennartz dueled over the elimination of personnel incentive pay at Thursday night’s (Nov. 12) budget meeting held in the Police Department’s Bartlett Community Room.

Lindsey’s department is looking at the elimination of 13 patrol officer positions for the 2016 budget as well as one vacant senior clerk position. Five of the 13 positions were left vacant in 2015 so the net loss would be eight. This would take the “Regular Salaries” line item down from an estimated $4.956 million for 2015 to $4.542 million for 2016, a savings of around $414,000.

“These vacancies come with consequences including elimination of police response to lower-priority calls for service,” Lindsey said. “Exactly what those response calls for service will be, we haven’t discerned. They’re obviously not going to be emergency calls.”

Lindsey asked the Board to consider implementing the cuts “through attrition as the department is staffed at 160 sworn positions, which reflects the number of officers budgeted for 2015.”

He continued: “The department has a current authorized strength of 165, but we have left five sworn positions vacant throughout this budget year. If the 13 vacancies are to be implemented at the beginning of 2016, the department would have to reduce our force by laying off seven officers currently employed with the department.”

INCENTIVE PAY CUT CONSIDERATION
From those layoffs, Lindsey said, vacancies would be the first to go, followed by officers currently in training, and one officer, who was hired in February. Pennartz had other ideas, asking Lindsey to identify incentive pay on the budget. He answered that it was included in the “Regular Salaries” line item and totaled $360,739.

“Chief, since we have the figure, did you consider instead of cutting those additional personnel that you’ve indicated, have you considered a cut in that for 2016? That’s $360,000. That’s not chump change,” Pennartz said.

When Lindsey said that he hadn’t, Pennartz pressed for his “rationale.”

“The rationale is, basically, what we’re going to tell people is we don’t value them getting experience and training; we don’t value their educational pursuits; we don’t value them as employees,” Lindsey said.

“I don’t know if it does that,” Pennartz answered. “I certainly appreciate your opinion about that, but when we’re looking at terminating officers, I think it’s serious business. And if not having that incentive pay for a period of one year could help alleviate that posture, I think it’s worth consideration.”

POLICE FURLOUGH ISSUE
Pennartz also asked if Lindsey and staff had considered furloughs instead of layoffs. According to Capt. Jarrard Copeland, staff met with Daily & Woods about the legalities of furloughs and found it would be a legal option, but “the problem we have right now is that the Civil Service Commission does not address this in the Civil Service Rules and Regulations.”

“As of right now, any member of the department who receives a reduction in compensation would have a grievance to file with the Civil Service Commission,” Copeland said. “It’s possible we could have 150 or more grievances filed every month that we were doing a furlough. It’s probably something we’d need to take before the Civil Service Commission to get it changed and get that language in there if we were going to go with that idea.”

Following the Police Fund discussion, the Board motored through proposals from the Fire Department, Parks and Recreation, Development Services, Policy/Administrative Services, Human Resources, IT, Street and Traffic Control, Transit, and the City Clerk’s Office. The Board will reconvene at the Police Department for night two of discussions on Monday (Nov. 16).

The department likely to take center stage at those talks will be the Utility Department led by Director Steve Parke. Parke has been the subject of intense scrutiny from Directors Pennartz, Kevin Settle, and Keith Lau over the last year, mostly in relation to the $480 million consent decree issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the city’s violations of the Clean Water Act.

That scrutiny reached a fever pitch at the Nov. 3 meeting when the Board voted to hire an internal auditor specific to the Utility Department.

The Monday meeting will start at 6 p.m. and is open to the public.