Cheboygan projecting future budget deficit
CHEBOYGAN -- An exploratory committee has been organized by Cheboygan's city mayor to look into the prospect of transferring police services to the Cheboygan County Sheriff's Office.
City manager Scott McNeil says they're projecting a deficit by year 2011 in the city's $2.75M budget. McNeil says the city is looking across the board at all options to try to keep their budget balanced. Future purchases, cost sharing programs, and all departments will be looked at.
However, during Tuesday's city council meeting, the mayor formed a committee, that will be led by McNeil, to study the idea of eliminating the city's police services.
"That will basically explore the possibility of providing police protection for the city of Cheboygan through the Cheboygan County Sheriff's Office," McNeil said. "Right now we're just getting started and we will ask the questions that need to be asked." With an annual budget of $818,000, one question is whether the elimination of the police department would be a savings to taxpayers.
"We're not real sure if there is a savings or if there is a savings substantial enough to outweigh the value of having control of our own police departments, those are all issues we're just stepping into," McNeil said.
Chief Kurt Jones of the city's department of public safety says long term savings may not be there.
"Everybody may be thinking it's great, we're saving, but are the numbers going to be low the second and third year and when the numbers become high you have to spend probably double or triple the money to restart again," Jones said.
With 8 officers, Jones says the department is already at its minimum level and is the only municipal police department in the county that has an officer on duty 24/7. Jones adds the city police department responds to between 1,000 and 3,000 complaints annually; that does not include the countless other calls he says his officers respond to.
While he admits there are tough financial decisions that need to be made, Jones says he believes the taxpayers would like to see the department remain.
"Four years ago the taxpayers just built to add onto our facility for police and fire and I think that shows they want their own police and fire service and hopefully if it were to come to that I think the tax payers would show again and vote to not contract to any other agencies," Jones said.
Jones adds he would rather see the city take the approach of cutting less funding from more departments versus eliminating entire departments.
McNeil reiterates the committee has been formed merely for the purpose of explore an idea "that has merit."
No timeline has been given as to when the council will report back to the city council. McNeil says the committee would be expected to hold several public forums on the topic.
