Accomplishment #1

Posted by Steve Roos in on 11:20 AM




 

 
Continuing with my obsession in making government more efficient, one of the first things I did was to eliminate a captain and two lieutenant positions and put them on the street.  Of course I did this through attrition (I’m not a barbarian).  Besides putting three additional officers on the street, which would have cost the city over $250,000 a year, it saved the city about $89,000 a year in lower salaries.  Here are some other annual cost savings:

·        Eliminating ineffective Cadet Program $30,000

·        Renegotiated SRO contract $74,328

·        Negotiated deaf-line fees $4,800

·        Through efficiency gains in Records, cut ½ position $24,371

·        Initiated online accident reports $1,700

·        Condensed three secretary positions into two $45,817

·        Initiated online crime reporting $40,148

Through attrition, we civilianized three positions saving about $95,000 a year.  Sworn police officers are expensive.  It cost about $12,000 annually per officer just to keep a cop trained and equipped.  They require a lot of specialized training and they are wired a certain way.  It makes sense to have cops do what cops do best.

·        Civilianized Property Room Technician $43,849

·        Civilianized Training Coordinator $31,709

·        Civilianized Crime Scene Technician $20,175

Lessons Learned:

On the downside of flattening the organization, lost opportunity for promotion was a serious blow to at least two sergeants.  At the time, I considered it likely that at least two lieutenants would retire.  That never happened (I guess they loved me too much to leave).  This also limited our options in making mid-management assignments.