The City of the South represents the council budget proposal for public safety for the 2016 fiscal year: particularly, the budget of the police department. The total budget of the City of South police budget would decrease from $79,698,800 to 74,119,884. This depicts a seven percent reduction in spending. This will be attained through several reassignments and cuts. By reducing the expenditure of each department throughout the public safety and police diversion, the City of the South will be able to eliminate unnecessary spending whereas improving and maintaining its present standards of service to the community. The City of the South has 325 police officers with nine overall filled position. Of these police officers, 185 are patrol offices. Currently, the city has 120,000 inhabitants with 28000 households.
The city council of South acknowledges that the city is not prone to violent crime hence it has a low crime rate. The low crime rate is attributed to high employment rates and affordable living standards. The city is industrialised, and only 10 percent of the city’s land is available for development, this depicts the rate of development of South City (Giannarelli, Wheaton, & Morton, 2017). Since the city has low crime rates, the payroll spending of the city needs to be reduced without plummeting the ability of the police department to serve and protect the inhabitants of the South City. Also, the city council acknowledges that the City of the South has low incidences of drug-related crime. This budget suggests a decrease in the payroll of drug enforcement detectives (McCarthy, 2017). The best way that the city can save a significant amount of payroll is by utilising patrol officers in crime investigation.
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The City of South is landlocked, and therefore, states officers will be required to patrol the outmost regions of the city to ensure law and order is upheld. Moreover, the City of the South has a large portion of the metropolitan area which has been part of the revitalisation project of the city. The City of South can decrease its expenditure by deploying several bicycle units in the metropolitan area of the city and decrease the officers by two. An increased presence of homeowners, potential business and presence of workers is a natural crime deterrent. This decreases the need to deploy frequent patrol officers in South City. Moreover, it offers the department of police an opportunity to improve the relations within the community by permitting an extra community-based approach to policing (McCarthy, 2017). Lastly, by reducing twenty percent of bicycle officers, South City can reduce the bicycle’s unit maintenance budget by twenty percent.
By downsizing the workforce, the South could reduce the overtime budget by half. Reducing two of the patrol sergeants will only upsurge the responsibility of the remaining sergeant by 1.1 (McCarthy, 2017). This will permit the police officers to receive the same development and training without triggering a substantial upsurge in the workloads of the sergeants who patrol. This similarly decreases the necessity to overflow officers in the department. Also, the city council recommends a reduction of the civilian workforce which is employed by the city od South. Officer aids could be reduced by two. This will decrease a momentous amount of expenditure on contract labour (Giannarelli, Wheaton, & Morton, 2017). This will permit the police department for their recruitment budget. By plummeting the overall staffs in the police department to 302 officers, the city would save close to 5,142,916 in payroll. In all, the city council recommends that through the reduction of payroll and all additional cuts to discretionary spending and expenses , the whole budget of the police department could be reduced to approximately $5,578,916.
The money that the city council of South obtains from the reduction of payrolls and other expenses can be injected into other projects and fix the problems that the city faces. The budget is a big part of the police department and therefore, reducing it a bit the city council would put the money into other areas that need money. By decreasing the overall staff to 302 officers and training them to be competent in over specialities will help reduce the budget since fewer officers would be required since the present have diversified skills and can handle several tasks. When reducing the budget expenditure of the police department, it is important to careful on the criteria used to reduce since in the preceding fiscal year the department may need more money yet its budget was under quoted (McCarthy, 2017). It's important to consider which budget expenditure is being reduced since some budget expenses change over time. For instance, if the number of detectives is reduced and train some police officers on what to consider when investigating none-serious crimes, the department is likely to save close to $130,000 per detective, and this money can be used to train detectives on other areas of the police department. When an officer has more than one skill the department of police is less likely to employee unnecessary employees, this reduces redundancy in the roles of the officers.
Reducing the number of officers in the police department and retraining the available officers to do more than one task reduces idleness. Employees are required to give all their effort when working for the different organization. No organization wants to pay its employees, yet there is nothing they are doing (McCarthy, 2017). Therefore, the department of police should make the maximum use of their workforce by training the workers to handle the different task; this will help reduce idleness and increase the productivity of the police determent. Consequently, the Police department would benefit since it has reduced its expenses whereas increasing the productivity of its workforce. Some of the money obtained from trimming the Policy’s workforce can be used to equip the department with supplies that it is missing, this would help the police offer quality services to the residence of the City of South.
Conclusion
Since trimming of the budget in law enforcement agencies may seem a necessity, there is a need to observe what is happening in the world. When evaluating the budget, it is important for every city to place a high priority in the police department since it deals with daily crimes. We are living in a crucial period and officers doing administrative duties become a hindrance to each society. The reduction of the budget proposal should be sufficient, and all shortcoming would be handled using the proposal that us a place. When reevaluating the budget proposal, it is crucial that the estimates should not be less whereas what needs to be spent is more and this would create a financial crisis for the police department which is crucial. The money saved from cutting the expenditures of the budget needs to be reinjected to the department to ensure it offers quality services to people. With adequate budget planning moving forward and strict budgeting, the City of South, will be enormously fecund.
References
Giannarelli, L., Wheaton, L., & Morton, J. (2017). Estimating the Potential Impacts of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Proposal on Safety-Net Programs Using Microsimulation.
McCarthy, J. (2017). Politics & Co. LePage’s Budget Proposal Cuts Funding for Three ‘Incubator’Programs.
