Board of Aldermen 07-13-2021 Page 16
Alderman Dowd made another eloquent argument in favor of restoring the money that they requested and
again, you know, he’s touching upon things hurt, talking about somebody dying because the response time is
low. Someone said to me that the response time in my Ward is going to be less and am | going to be
responsible for someone’s house burning down because of this. | understand how important this is to these
people and they are making the best argument they can. But we now we are talking about the Mayor asking —
can this Board increase the Fire Department and the Police Department to back to what they asked for and
increase the budget from what the Mayor was proposing $660,000.00. And this Board voted for that the last
time. Now the Mayor is asking us to reduce it by half of that, approximately $300,000.00. We are talking $35
million dollars; $28 million dollars — you know - $100,000.00 / $200,000.00 is not that much money so on the
one hand you could argue well why is the Mayor even bothering with this? But on the other hand | don’t think
with all due respect reducing the Fire Department by $200,000.00 is going to require them to put a fire truck
out of service. When they made that argument during the budget hearings | challenged them and | challenged
the Police when the Police wanted to reduce Police Officers as a result and the numbers just didn’t add up.
And with all due respect, they didn’t have answers for that.
Later the Police Department said, well we came up with that number of Police Officers because we were using
the lowest level of police officer, you Know, the lowest pay grade assuming that that officer is single, has no
family, he is getting health insurance from his parents. So they came up with the lowest number they could per
police officer in order to increase the number of police officers that would be eliminated as a result of these
cuts. Mr. Donovan from the School Department said to us that, | can’t remember what his number was but it
was a lot higher than this and he said, if | can’t find that number in my budget | shouldn’t be doing this job. So
| think my feeling is the same about these cuts. These cuts are really small compared to their overall budgets
and | am going to vote and support the Mayor in his effort to try to keep the inevitable tax increase that we are
going to be facing as low as possible. And | don’t think in reducing the Police Department by $100,000.00 or
the Fire Department by $200,000.00 is going to result in the drastic reduction in services that the argument is
being made tonight, with all due respect. So thank you.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderman Dowd.
Alderman Dowd
Just a couple clarification points. | don’t think the Police or the Fire are asking for more money just so they can
have additional things they can add. They have asked for that money so they can provide the same services
that they are continuing to supply to the City from last year. | have gone over their budgets in much more
detail (audio cuts out) came out in that $50,000.00 study we did on the Fire Department that they are not
asking for. It says we should add 2 more fire stations and another fire company and it can’t be related to the
school department. Mr. Donovan said he could manage $100,000.00 because he’s got $166 million dollar
budget. Under the same rationale that you use for the Police Department, we should be asking the School
Department for well over a million bucks. No. They could use more money too that they wanted to ask for that
they didn’t. But when you manage a $166 million dollars, trust me, you don’t get to within a $100,000.00 at the
end of the year because you can’t overspend.
It is much more difficult when you have, for instance, the Police Department that has no idea how many cases
they are going to be handling during the year and we are still going to have to add money to their overtime
reserve account. Because if we have a major crime, all bets are out the window. The money we are giving
them right now will not cover that. And the Fire Department, they base it on an average number of fires. We
are adding a number of high story buildings to the City in the next year or two, probably in the next year,
including a new school. And we have to ensure that we have the response times and the staffing to make sure
that we can put those fires out in a timely manner. When you man a fire company there is a lot more to it than
just saying, OK well for 3 shifts we won’t have a fourth guy on the truck. You can’t do that for a number of
reasons and we don’t need to get into it. But | implore the Board to make sure that we stay a safe City. And
