County again desiring patrol fees from towns
They just don't know what it means to make cuts..
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www.buffalonews.com
County again desiring patrol fees from towns
By MATTHEW SPINA
News Staff Reporter
7/25/2005
Erie County officials, ordered to produce a four-year financial plan, have penciled in a charge to towns for Sheriff's Department road patrols, reviving a debate between town and county leaders over who pays for police protection.
Early work sheets obtained by The Buffalo News show that county officials also contemplate a charge for parking at county-owned parks and possibly raising other fees for park services to bring in $3 million more next year.
The increases need County Legislature consent, but the stakes are high if the Giambra administration includes the fees in its final four-year plan and lawmakers reject them. In that case, revenues would not meet expenses, so the new state-appointed control board could then flex its muscles to rein in spending and force the hands of elected leaders.
With the control board expecting the four-year forecast by Oct. 1, the debate over whether outlying towns should pay extra to rely primarily on sheriff's patrols will rage during political primary season. Legislators would vote on the plan in mid-September.
County Executive Joel A. Giambra says that it is unfair for residents in some towns to pay for sheriff's patrols they rarely use because they also finance their own full-time police departments. He says residents in roughly 15 outlying towns rely primarily on sheriff's deputies - Clarence, Elma and Grand Island among them - and pay nothing extra.
The new work sheets show that county officials assume they could collect $4.2 million from towns for Sheriff's Department patrols, roughly the entire cost for sheriff's patrols authorized in the austere 2005 budget.
"We are trying to implement user fees wherever possible," Giambra said. "Just like at the state parks, we are going to charge to come into the parks."
He added that the fee for road patrols would be based on the cost of a car and a deputy and designed to be cheaper for a town than starting its own patrol. He wants to meet soon with sheriff's officials, who resist the idea.
"I'm not surprised that it's going to be included, because it has been mentioned every time the county takes another look at the budget," said Clarence Supervisor Kathleen E. Hallock, whose town of 26,000 people is among the county's largest without a police force.
Hallock could not predict how Clarence would react if charged for patrols. It depends on the cost, she said.
County Legislator Michael H. Ranzenhofer of Clarence, the Legislature's minority leader, has been a critic of attempts to raise taxes and charge extra fees for Sheriff's Department protection.
"That's what you pay county taxes for, to get county services," he said.
The issue has been around for years, and Giambra threw it into play last year when laying groundwork for the 2005 budget. Then-Sheriff Patrick M. Gallivan responded by saying road patrols were not a luxury, as Giambra's budget director termed them, but "a vital service taxpayers pay for."
Gallivan documented the spread of Sheriff's Department services across the county, including the use of the jail by defendants from every town, and called it a fair distribution of services. The picture changed, however, when looking at complaint calls fielded by deputies.
While Buffalo led all municipalities, Clarence generated nearly 11 percent of the calls to deputies, Grand Island 9.2 percent and Alden 8.3 percent - towns without full-time police departments.
The large towns of Amherst, Cheektowaga and Tonawanda rarely called on deputies because they have their own police.
"It's reasonable for those towns that benefit from patrol services that are provided by the Erie County Sheriff's Department to contribute to the cost of those services," said Tonawanda Supervisor Ronald H. Moline. "It's not fair to expect people in towns like Cheektowaga, Amherst and Tonawanda to pay for their own police protection and then to subsidize the police protection in other municipalities."
Sheriff Timothy B. Howard, who succeeded Gallivan in May, does not want to see towns charged extra for road patrols.
"If we are going to think of Erie County as a community, we are going to think of each other in times of need," Howard said. "If one member of the family needs eyeglasses and the others don't, do the other members have a right to expect something in return?"
Before any charge is levied on any town, Howard wants to see a study on the spread of all county services - snowplowing, road repairs and sewer and lighting districts - to see if their costs are fairly distributed.
Howard also says towns with large police departments tend to use the jail more, as well as the police crime lab. Should they be charged extra?
"We provide a base level of service to all. Some want a greater service, and if they want it, they should have to pay for it," Howard said, referring to those towns that have added their own full-time police forces.
Giambra administration officials also have begun to study traffic in county-owned parks as they determine whether to charge for parking. With a $1 million infusion, the parks in May were allowed to open until Nov. 1, with legislators debating whether fees can go up to make the system self-supporting next year.
"We are looking at options," Parks Commissioner Angelo J. Sedita said, explaining that fees could be charged to launch a boat, and users could be charged more to rent a camp shelter, schedule a special event and play a round of golf.
e-mail: mspina@buffnews.com
Stop the Troopers FUND the deputies
One idea being mentioned by many people these recently is to eliminate the Sheriff's patrols and rely on the State Police. Let's take a look at the economic reality of this idea. The State Police just signed a new contract that sets the base pay of a Trooper at $72,000 after five years on the job. The base pay for a Deputy Sheriff after five years is about $44,000. Sixty new troopers would be needed to replace the deputies currently doing the job. The deputies are the third lowest paid, of over twenty full time police departments in our area. Eliminating one of the lowest cost providers of police services doesn't make much sense. The most cost effective way to police the region would be to eliminate all of the individual police departments and make all officers Sheriffs deputies. We could then eliminate hundreds of duplicated positions in command structure, investigative services, specialty services and support staff, while maintaining the current levels of patrol in all municipalities. This area will never move forward as long as fear, pride and bias stop the discussion of consolidation. What seems to be overlooked is the fact that county taxes are down 30% since the Gorski years, yet your over all taxes are up dramatically. This points to the fact that our cherished town governments and local school districts are a major culprit in the high taxes that are choking our area. Our current feudal like system of layer apon layer of government requires more than 4500 employees above the national average. So as long as people remain committed to embracing the very anchor that drags us down, we should just keep our mouths shut and open our wallets to pay those higher taxes.:mad: