We live in a safe community and quite appropriately many of us value the police, fire, and ambulance services the City of Owosso provides. We all have personal stories of how a public safety employee was of great, even life-saving, service to us or one of our family members. However, these benefits do not come cheaply. According to the 2009-10 budget, the City spends over $3.5 million annually on public safety. This represents 56% of the City's general fund expenditures.In recent months, several citizens have raised appropriate questions about inefficiencies in our public safety programs. In particular, people have questioned the management structure of having a public safety director and a police chief and a fire chief. Do we need three managers of public safety? In response to a citizen petition, the previous city council put forward an ordinance amendment that would eliminate the public safety director position. It was not clear if this proposal would result in the elimination of an employee or any salary savings.
The discussion got me thinking about how to best organize the City of Owosso public safety programs. Future budget challenges (due to declining revenues from the state and from property taxes) further spurred me to ask questions about how to provide the highest level of police, fire, and ambulance service at the lowest cost. In other words, how do we optimize our public safety programs?
At last night's (11/16) City Council meeting I requested that the City Manager provide us with information on several options for reforming our public safety programs. I suggested eight areas for research:
1. Elimination of the Public Safety Director position and other administrative restructuring.
2. Creation of a true Public Safety Department where police, fire, and ambulance personnel are cross-trained and provide support for one another in their duties.
3. Regional cooperation with surrounding jurisdictions whereby we expand on current mutual aid agreements to see if it possible to provide necessary services with less manpower or equipment.
4. Contracting some city public safety services to surrounding jurisdictions; apparently in the past Owosso has provided ambulance services.
5. Contracting with private companies to provide services.
6. Use of volunteers; currently the City saves considerable money through the volunteer services of Community Radio Watch.
7. Cooperation with the County Sheriff and/or the State Police; recently the City has examined closely cooperation in drug enforcement through the State MAGNET program.
8. Use of grant funds; e.g. Neighborhood Watch programs
The City Manager promised to provide an analysis of these and other options by the December 21 Council meeting. Importantly, there will be a financial analysis of these options so that we can compare the costs, as well as any non-financial benefits or risks, of each of these options. In addition, the experience of City employees will be drawn on through a formal request to the relevant unions for their ideas and input.
I am no expert on public safety, and some of the suggestions outlined above may be impractical or not lead to any cost savings. There are undoubtedly other ways to optimize public safety programs; for example, someone in the public hearing raised the idea of better managing overtime schedules of police and fire personnel. What I believe is important at this time is to get on the table as many options as possible so that they can be compared with one another and the best opportunities identified for saving taxpayer funds.
What ideas do you have for optimizing the public safety services in Owosso? Do you have any reaction, information, or insight to any of the options outlined above? It is critical that the public weigh in with their opinions. Thank you.
I am all for research on subjects but they shouldn't be byassed. Fivas brought to the council meeting a byassed report. We should have an independent that is neither for or against having public safety cross trained, or volunteers, and outsourcing. We as taxpayers deserve to know all aspects of what council and city management are thinking about. As far as the cost of having an independent company do research why doesn't the city go to the local universitys and ask the business schools for their input. I am sure that they would jump on the chance to have the students research. And I am all for putting any changes to the local goverment to a vote. Let the people vote for what they want. If we eliminate the Fire dept and make it Volunteer what are all the stats on this. Having the Ambulance service"outsourced" The revenue from the service wouldn't be benefiting Owosso. The funds would go to Saginaw, that is where MMR is located. Why did we ever get rid of Transfers a few years back when that brought revenue to the City? Why should we sacrifice our public safety? Have you went to the fire dept and police dept and ask them to reopen their contracts to help the city with lost revenue? Have you went to upper management and asked how they could help? I am sure job security is more of an issue. And have we went to all resources that the state and federal goverment have to offer? I know FEMA through Obama has grants available to keep public safety.. I know they have grants available for Fire depts that are short staffed or have people on layoffs to call back. Wouldn't that concern our fire dept? Especially when I know one of our shifts on the Fire dept are running one man short for a year. Have our Council members and City officials looked into what is all out there without losing the Fire Dept or Police Dept. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteI had watched the council meeting and was disappointed that not a single question was asked of the expert in ems and fire services, that being the Owosso fire chief. I believe our city management will never admit to the mistake of creating the public safety director in the first place. You have an extremely qualified fire chief that is not allowed to talk. Council should talk with him, alone. Don't forget that the firefighter wages are assisted by the revenue they produce. As the comment b-4 me, MMR revenue goes back to saginaw. The 'benchmark' you recieved was very biased. The true comparables are traverse city, alpena and sault ste marie, none of which are 'public safety'. The population comments are misleading. 4.5 sq miles with 15000 residents is a densely populated area. No yearly run amount data also. Our ambulance has been to all parts of our county for mutual aid, How much revenue does our ambulance bring in? I bet around half of thier wages. Not such a burden now after all.... As for the 'public safety officer' Meridian twp tried it and only lasted 2 years and returned to traditional fire and police. Cost for training increased thier budget. At least they could admit it and switched back. Kalamazoo is PSD and plagued with problems of high turnover in personnel, low moral, cost to train the new people and climbing crime. The state of michigan has 28 PSD depts. That's not very many. I am sorry for getting a little upset here, but the city has seen this coming and simply added positions.
ReplyDeleteGoing to a paid on call fire dept. and private EMS will be the first step to the collapse of Owosso. Between the sky rocketing cost to citizens for non-covered services MMR and the like charge and the increase in insurance cost. Will the last person to live in Owosso shut off the lights when you leave.
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