http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20091216_11_0_BRIANB321320Mayor Dewey Bartlett said Wednesday that he has requested a proposal from the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office to patrol part of the city as Tulsa braces for more police officer layoffs.
“If it looks like we’re going to find ourselves short of police officers, we want to have a good option available so public safety is not compromised,” Bartlett said.
Sheriff Stanley Glanz and Undersheriff Brian Edwards have agreed to put together a plan for deputies to be responsible for a to-be-determined area. Reserve deputies also would be available for assistance.
“We’ll do whatever we can to help the city because we serve the same citizens,” Edwards said, adding that the details still have to be worked out.
Meanwhile, more than 300 police union members met Wednesday night to see what they can do to prevent as many officer layoffs as possible. Among the ideas discussed was giving up the right to take patrol vehicles to their homes outside the city limits.
Union President Phil Evans said the meeting was one of the best attended, adding that “there’s a lot of concerns among the officers about their jobs and the impact this is going to have on Tulsa.”
Ryan Perkins, a trustee of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 93, said the worst budget scenarios would cut 54 and 123 officers from the force of roughly 808 officers.
Bartlett said the size of the patrol area to be covered by deputies would depend on the severity of the Police Department cuts. That number remains unknown.
And how the Sheriff’s Office would be paid also must be worked out, Bartlett said. It may be that the city has services it can trade.
“Obviously, we have to see a cost savings,” he said.
The mayor is looking at making as much as $10 million in total city budget cuts due to plummeting sales tax revenue.
Budget reduction plans of up to 4.4 percent have been requested from each city department head to be turned in by the end of Friday. For the Police Department, that means as much as $3.4 million.
No cuts will happen before the end of the year, Bartlett said, noting that it will take at least a few weeks to thoroughly review all of the reduction plans and decide the best course of action.
The size of the city’s January sales tax check from the Oklahoma Tax Commission will help determine how deep administrators must cut, Bartlett said. The City Council must agree to the final budget reduction plan.
Police Chief Ron Palmer said Wednesday that police officers are expected to be affected in this round of budget cuts.
“We know it will touch personnel,” he said. “We can’t come up with that type of money and avoid that, unfortunately. The extent of that, we don’t know yet.”
But Palmer said he had not heard about the Sheriff’s Office help being sought by the mayor and declined to comment about it.
District Attorney Tim Harris already has been consulted to make sure there are no jurisdictional issues that could hamper sheriff’s deputies patrolling within the city limits, Bartlett said.
Also, both the city and county work off the same 911 dispatching system.
“From what we understand, it would he a seamless transition,” he said. “It would just be a different color of uniform and a different kind of patrol vehicle.”
Council Chairman Rick Westcott said the idea is worth exploring.
“We need to sit down to discuss it and eliminate any emotions of territoriality,” he said. “We need to look at how we as local government can best serve our constituents.” Westcott, a former police officer, said he doesn’t think Tulsa is ready for “a full blown city-county police force.”
Bartlett said if the partnership is put into place and it is successful, it could become a permanent arrangement to help the city rein it its public safety costs.
“This could be an example of what this administration can accomplish by having a good relationship with another entity,” he said. “If at the end of the day, the public is safe and its done cheaper, then hallelujah.”
It is impossible, Bartlett said, not to impact the police and fire departments when cutting the budget since combined they consume nearly 60 percent of the city’s general operational fund.
Already this fiscal year, Tulsa’s force of about 808 sworn officers have each had to take eight unpaid furlough days with the rest of the city workforce and 21 officers were laid off. Eighteen of them were later rehired using federal stimulus grant funding. Palmer also grounded the two police helicopters, disbanded the mounted patrol and took other cost-saving measures.
Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Office, which has about 225 sworn deputies, has had no furlough days or layoffs because it relies heavily on property taxes, a much more stable revenue source that the city’s sales taxes.
The mayor said he has asked the police and fire unions to start contract negotiations in January — about a month earlier — with the hope of getting some financial concessions.
“We need to start that right away,” he said. “Hopefully, there will be some good proposals made because everyone needs to realize the severity of what the city is going through right now. We need the contracts to reflect the reality of our economic situation “It will be a difficult process for both parties.”
Evans noted that any concessions the union may offer the city would have to be voted on by union members.
Bartlett plans to hire a director of public safety and protection as part of his administrative team to help him oversee both the police and fire departments. He said he hopes to have that person on board soon to help with the cuts.
“We have some names in mind but we haven’t approached them yet,” he said.
Other ideas Bartlett said he is pursuing include selling one or both of the now-idle police helicopters to help protect officer positions.
It’s possible, he said, that the city could partner with another law enforcement agency or other organization on a helicopter.
