Police department to scale back overtime, training

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To reduce costs but maintain its force, the East Lansing Police Department will be decreasing overtime, training and equipment spending, East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert said.

“What causes us to have a good service is that we have good people,” he said. “And we want to keep them.”

Public safety, which is comprised of East Lansing’s police and fire departments as well as Parking and Code Enforcement, accounts for about 18 percent, or about $17.6 million, of the city’s budget, which is about $95 million. The department took a 1 percent hit from last year, which amounts to about $106,520 being subtracted from ELPD’s overall budget. The department, which received $10,201,470 of funding last year, will receive $10,094,950 of funding next year.

The East Lansing Fire Department also will experience no position cuts.

The cut to ELPD’s budget reflects cuts to departments across the city the 2009-10 fiscal year budget, City Manager Ted Staton said. The city’s budget was approved by the East Lansing City Council on Tuesday.

“There’s no way to balance the budget without spreading the pain, so to speak, to every department,” Staton said.

Although ELPD received a cut in funding from last year, Wibert said community members shouldn’t notice an immediate effect because the same number of officers will continue to provide the same services.

The police department will decrease overtime spending by increasing efficiency, he said. Wibert said this will allow the department to cut back overtime, and it will use e-mail and other technology to avoid unnecessary meetings.

The department will lower spending on police training by lowering travel expenses and prioritizing which forms of training are most essential, he said. Equipment spending also will be reduced, Wibert said, meaning officers might, for instance, have less up-to-date computers.

“I’ve always taken the stand that people are more important than stuff,” he said.

Wibert said maintaining the police force is the most important way to keep the community safe, but social relations and policy sophomore Laura Egerer said the idea of training cuts worries her.

“I would feel better with less people that were more trained than more people who were less trained,” she said.

This year’s budget cuts could be the beginning of multiyear reductions for police departments in East Lansing and the state, Wibert said, as economic downturns make available funding more sparse.

“It means we are going to have to be extremely diligent,” he said. “Every dollar has become important.”

Spending cuts this year might be temporary fixes, Wibert said.

“It’s not like it’s going to be easy,” he said. “We have some tough choices now and maybe some tougher choices ahead, but we’ll do our best to
get by and provide the services taxpayers pay for.”

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