The Journal Star reports on the City Council’s budget meeting last night, which centered on police protection:
In May, the City Council approved a one-time $100,000 transfer from the capital budget to the Police Department for “saturation patrols.”
On Tuesday, the council got its first glimpse at the payback: 619 traffic citations, 99 vehicle impounds and $17,752 in drug money, 103 grams of narcotics, 434 grams of marijuana and four firearms seized.
Wow, all of that for only $100,000. Of course, they can’t keep robbing the capital budget to fund operations. I wonder where they could get some extra funding? I saw Councilman Chuck Grayeb on WEEK last night saying:
“We bite the bullet and we go to the public and say look, we’re down to the bone right now and we have a deficit and we cannot afford to take away from police and fire and we’re going to have to raise taxes.”
But others don’t think that’s such a great idea. They want to just maintain the status quo, “work smarter,” do more with less, etc.
Meanwhile, Pioneer Railcorp still has an offer to purchase the Kellar Branch rail line from the city for $565,000.
$565,000.
Imagine how many saturation patrols that could finance. Or what equipment it could purchase. Or other ways it could be invested. While the council tries to pinch pennies, they keep overlooking the most obvious, easiest money they could get, and instead want to lease the right-of-way to the park district for $1 per year for 99 years, only to have them tear out the rails and ties. Kind of like they’re throwing away the entire Sears block for a museum project that is only going to develop 1/3 of the land.
Boy, if the city council keeps throwing away assets at this rate, I don’t even want to know how much our garbage taxes are going to be in a few years.
CJ: I have lost my link to you because the pic I was using as a button is no longer at the adress it was. Blogger’s template makes me hot-link to get the pic. Is there a web addy I can use to get that pic back?
Ok… lets look at the numbers a minute. For $50,000 (they spent half of a $100,000) and about three months time we got..
6 to 7 tickets a day: which to me is nothing to get excited over. They could issue 6-7 tickets in one hour on my street and still not break a sweat.
99 impounds: Which comes to a car a day thereabouts. This seems to be a large number. I can’t imagine needing to impound cars that often but hey what do I know. We don’t know why they were impounded. Noise perhaps?
$17,752: Respectable I suppose, especially if it was nabbed in one sting. Or it could be a couple hundred dollars a day. Still, I bet it is a drop in the bucket where drugs are concerned.
103 grams of narcotics and 434 grams of pot: I love how PDs want to report stuff in grams. It looks so much larger. Lets translate: about 3.5 ounces of narcotics or a 1lb of weed. Is that a lot? Not really. But it is probably hard work to actually crack a drug network. My guess is they scored this on the traffic stops. A pound of weed is going to disappoint about 100 people for a weekend. The 3.5 ounces of .. crack or meth? A teaspoon or tablespoons worth. I am going to guess that came off one person and was enough for them.
I am glad something is being done. Just having the police being seen driving around and actually doin something is priceless. When the police do little or are perceived as doing little, people learn to ignore or dismiss it. I am sure each officer is working their buts off. But is $50,000 enough?
And now that I have gone off topic a bit… yes I think selling the kellar to Pioneer Rail is a good idea. Certainly better than what the trail folks are offering.
Apparently, without “saturation patrols”, nothing much happens in the way of crime SOLVING in Peoria based upon the department’s web site that shows no crimes solved or prevented this last week. Just a poorly written letter from a citizen, presumably regarding the noise ordinance.
Police Saturation works- If nothing else the fines pay for the overtime, but it does work. It does work as a good deterent also.
What could be done with Sixty Five million?