On Tuesday, Oakley Police Chief Chris Thorsen presented a plan to the Oakley City Council that would expand Oakley’s police force by 4-officers to 33-positions at a cost of $700,000.
Oakley currently has 29 sworn officers serving a community of just under 41,000 residents. In May of 2016, the City of Oakley assumed operational responsibility for the police Department.
The Staff Report highlighted:
“An analysis of the operational costs through the first five months reveals that the City Council was right and the cost estimates were correct, our costs have been significantly reduced. The budget (under the Sheriffs contract) for salaries and benefits for 2015/16 for staff assigned to the Police Department was approximately $7,500,000 with an authorized strength of 28 sworn officers.
The 2016/17 budget salaries and benefits in the Police Department is approximately $5,900,000. This reflects an authorized strength of 29 sworn officers an additional professional support staff assigned to our records function. There are some other costs, such as dispatch services and other internal staffing that utilize some of the savings, but as we had estimated at the binning of the budget year, there are clearly funds for planned increase in the number of sworn officers.”
Thorsen reported Tuesday that they have several months of payroll data to support the savings.
“We need to add staff to deal with some of the challenges we are dealing with. The biggest one is a traffic officer,” said Thorsen. “What we need to do more and we need to be better and part of our staffing augmentation plan is to add in our traffic area.”
Thorsen is proposing the addition of four sworn positions within the police department:
- Traffic Officer – The city currently has two traffic officers and would like to be expanded to three. These officers focus their efforts on traffic enforcement and education. They also assume responsibility on major injury and fatal collisions.
- Police Service Dog (K-9) – Oakley currently has no police k-9’s at this time. These K-9 are considered a valuable force multiplier and can search yards and buildings much faster than humans. K-9’s are also considered a community outreach tool. Staff is proposing the addition of one new officer position to function as a K-9 handler.
- Investigations Sergeant – Currently, Oakley has four full-time detectives and a full time school resources officer assigned to the investigative division. Staff is proposing a new position to assume the responsibility of supervising the day to day activity of the investigations unit, participate in and supervise complex criminal cases as well as handle administrative investigations.
- Problem Oriented Policing Officer (POP) – The officer in this assignment is tasked with solving community issues that are highly time consuming. The Pop officer is not typically assigned to calls for service. He/She is free to focus on specific quality of life crimes. These range from drug houses to barking dogs. The goal is to solve matters and reduce repeat calls for service at a given location.
Thorsen highlighting the savings a second time and said they needed to take some of the gap in savings and roll it back into police services to add bodies.
Thorsen stated that the city has a plan to pay back some of their upfront start-up costs which has already been paid back. They also saved money in the police chief who was sitting at the time of the transition retired and was replaced with a per-Diem employee with no benefits—that position alone saved Oakley $200,000.
“We think we are hitting it right, clearly there is a need to add and the proposal tonight is to approve that add,” said Thorsen.
Councilwoman Vanessa Perry stated she was glad they broke away from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office and that they were saving money and adding officers.
“We were paying $7.5 million with the sheriff, now we are paying $5.9 so even after adding $700k we would still be at $6.6 million and saving roughly $900k,” said Perry.
Thorsen said that there is still savings, but it’s also being eaten up in other areas—they now have a better deal on Dispatch, they now have a “property room” but highlighted they don’t have 5-years of data to show a true cost. They also now have an in-house records unit as well.
“”yes we are still saving money and believe there is more but we have a strong history of being very conservative, especially when it comes to adding reoccurring costs,” says Thorsen. “I believe we are taking the prudent route in measuring our additions. I am absolutely convinced the money is there.”
The council approved the recommendation in 5-0 vote. No timetable as to when the officers would be hired was provided Tuesday.
Source:
http://www.ci.oakley.ca.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/3.4.pdf
