It’s city budget time again. And the process is nothing if not predictable.
Step 1, Panic. Each spring the city’s finance director makes a projection for the next budget year that is reliably gloomy. In most years the estimate is that the city starts off several million dollars in the hole. That’s mostly because the lion’s share of the budget is in employee salaries and benefits. Even small pay increases can add up quickly and things like health insurance costs can increase even faster. It always costs more just to run in place. This year the gap is projected to be about $9.5 million.
Step 2, The Austerity Order. In response to the annual panic, the mayor issues budget instructions to the city’s two dozen agencies asking them to suggest cuts that typically mean a one to five percent drop in their budgets. This year new Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway has asked agencies to propose budgets with no increase, with a 2.5 percent reduction and with a 2.5 percent increase.
Step 3, Drown the Puppies. Responding to the mayor’s request for budget cuts, agencies offer helpful ideas with positive political implications along the lines of, “Sure, Mayor! To meet your targets all we need to do is drown some puppies. How many puppies would you like us to drown on your behalf?!” My favorite real life example was the year I tried to save some money by reducing mowing on the thousands of acres of land the city owns. One agency helped out by not mowing one strip of grass in the center of a median on oh-so-lightly-travelled John Nolen Drive. It looked like a Mohawk. The strip eventually got cut, but the mayor got the point.
Step 4, It’s all right in the end. By November, just before deer season, it all gets worked out. The mayor and finance department staff figure stuff out over about six weeks of putting the executive budget together and then the city council loudly rearranges a few deck chairs and all crises are averted.
I provide this helpful tutorial because Mayor Rhodes-Conway is going through her first budget process as mayor, though she’s been through it before as a member of the city’s finance committee. She’s now experiencing the Drown the puppies stage of the process.
And no agency is better at metaphorically drowning puppies than the police department. So it came as no surprise last week when I read that Chief Mike Koval said that he is moving 12 officers from programs popular with the council in areas like community and neighborhood policing because he just doesn’t have enough bodies to fill regular beat positions.
Interesting timing with that announcement as it comes just as the mayor starts to make her budget decisions. It looks like Koval wants 10 more positions in his department next year and this move is designed to put pressure on the mayor and council to provide them. And this is just what he’s doing now. In his budget proposal the chief says that a 2.5 percent cut next year would mean no crossing guards and no parking enforcement. Imagine kindergartners walking aimlessly through traffic and some jerk parking in front of your driveway. Koval didn’t say that the Visigoths are massing for an invasion on the Maple Bluff border, but wait a few weeks.
There are 599 positions in the department and Koval claims to be down 31 patrol officers. But that’s a mostly subjective analysis. There’s no reliable formula to tell a community how many cops it needs. Every city is different. Different populations, demographics, economies, neighborhoods, geography, history, levels of tolerance for various kinds of activities, civic infrastructure and training for officers.
On the last point, Madison has excellent officers in part because it’s highly competitive to get in and those who do make the cut receive great training. Koval should know since he used to be in charge of training new recruits. That should make every Madison officer more effective and efficient than cops in a lot of other communities. But that’s a hard thing to quantify as is all of those other factors in the community profile.
The department will throw all manner of numbers at the mayor and the council and that’s fine. More information is better than less, but ultimately it comes down to a subjective judgment on the part of elected policy makers who need to weigh one community need against another amid budget constraints that include state levy and spending limits.
Let me claim some credibility on this issue. I put together eight city budgets and I almost certainly provided the police with more new positions than any mayor in recent history. One year I gave them an astounding 30 new positions. I had a good working relationship with then Chief Noble Wray and I have a lot of respect for Koval. And l like cops. I found most officers to be crusty idealists with just the right balance of hard-earned cynicism and genuine interest in improving their community. They have risky jobs and I appreciate what they do for us every day.
But the department also has a long history of being very good at playing the budget game. I’m sure the mayor and council will remind them that they represent an important basic service but that they’re not the only game in town either.
How many new cops should Koval get in the end? I don’t know, three? That’s based on no formula, just a vague feel for what the city needs and can afford vis-à-vis other demands. And, in the end, it’s that kind of educated judgment that the new mayor will have to apply when making her decision.
