(The Center Square) – Spokane voters have less than a week to decide whether to pass the mayor’s Community Safety Sales Tax, but police Chief Kevin Hall says it won’t solve everything.
Mayor Lisa Brown proposed her sales tax increase in July after pulling a similar property tax levy from the August ballot. If successful, the tax would cost consumers $1 for every $1,000 spent, with that revenue intended to bolster public safety.
Hall told the council on Monday that if the tax hike passes, the Spokane Police Department will relaunch the Neighborhood Resource Officer program “within months.” The effort would start with seven officers, one for each precinct, but he noted it wouldn’t bolster much due to the loss of others.
“Roughly every month, we’re losing two officers [through] healthy attrition, retirements, medical, whatever it may be,” Hall said regarding trends over the past four years. “Over the next five months, we’re going to be gaining roughly 15 officers who are going to be going solo out of [field training].”
He acknowledged that there would only be a net gain of five officers due to the loss of ten through attrition, but Hall said that’s still enough capacity to relaunch NROs through a “scaled plan.” The 15 other officers coming out of field training are already authorized, but the seven new ones will cost about $1 million, which doesn’t include a fleet expansion.
“What we have to do is balance [NROs] with what we’re losing,” he said.
SPD has several positions that it hasn’t been able to fill in the past couple of years. Hall wants to figure out how to slow attribution and build the recruitment pool to fill those slots. There are a couple of strategies involved, but he said that plan wouldn’t be ready to present until next month.
Hall noted that adding seven NROs would bring SPD’s total number of authorized officers to 358, which he believes is the most the department has ever had. He said SPD is currently budgeted for 351.
“Quite frankly, in my plan over the next years, it’ll be bigger than that,” Hall said. “We’re going to have to expand the fleet.”
According to the city’s website, the proposed sales tax revenue is also intended to support a “robust traffic unit,” among other uses with the Spokane Fire Department, Office of the Police Ombuds and Municipal Court. Hall said technology would have to take the lead initially with the traffic unit.
Hall said personnel can only do so much until SPD boosts recruitment, so until then, the revenue would allow for more traffic cameras around town to help decide where to put officers.
Matt Boston, Spokane’s chief financial officer, said the revenue would also allow the city to tackle some deferred maintenance on several fire stations and put new engines on credit.
He said the Office of the Police Ombuds would increase staffing immediately, and money would flow into Municipal Court to alleviate some capacity there and with the jail.
“That is going to be a continuation of really finding the permanent funding for that so that we can defray a little bit of our jail costs and mitigate some of the ongoing issues,” Boston said.
