Why are police officers and firefighters the first to go?
Most people wonder whenever a city or county has budget problems: “Why are the police officers and firefighters the first ones on the chopping block?” If the truth be known, that probably isn’t the case. It seems that way because in most places there are far more firefighters and police officers than parks employees or other departments
In city budgets there are two separate types of money. The first is money that can be spent wherever the city wants to spend it. This money is called the general fund. The second type of money is “dedicated” or “enterprise” funds. These funds can only be spent on specific items as dictated by state law or local laws (usually the law that authorizes the collection of these funds).
Dedicated funds are things like water, sewer and natural gas (if owned by the city). These funds are not allowed to run at a loss, but they cannot make extra money to be used in the general fund either. All of these funds must pay for the normal operation and be putting aside money for repair and expansion of the system.
The general fund normally relies on three income sources: sales tax, utility tax and property tax. Despite everyone’s belief to the contrary, cities collect very little of the property tax collected annually. In 2009, 19 cents of each dollar spent on property taxes went to cities, with counties getting a little over 10 percent. In the city of Buckley, for example, property tax is only the third largest source of income to the general fund.
The general fund is where all of the other programs are funded that do not have a dedicated funding source. This includes police and fire protection, municipal court (if the city has one), planning and building departments, the mayor and City Council’s salary and expenses, parks and recreation as well as general administrative costs. Again using the city of Buckley as an example, a portion of the budget to provide jail services and 911 dispatch services also come out of the general fund. Cities without a 911 dispatch center or jail or municipal court must contract out those functions with a local agency that does. The city of Orting contracts with Buckley, Sumner and Pierce County to provide jail services depending on which jurisdiction has capacity. Orting spent 43 percent of their 2009 general fund revenue just to provide law enforcement services.
Many smaller cities and towns save money by having a dedicated volunteer fire department. While volunteer firefighters have to keep up the same rigorous training as the professional firefighters they only get paid a small monthly stipend. To compare, Enumclaw spent slightly over $1 million to provide fire protection in 2009, while Orting spent slightly more than half of that. To be fair there are some differences in size of the two cities, but a full-time firefighting staff will always cost more.
Another example in the city of Buckley, the Fire Department’s budget took up 5.4 percent of the general fund in 2009 which is the same as the Planning Department and Building Department combined.
This should in no way be considered an attack on spending by our fire and police departments. The nature of the jobs do require higher expenditures for training, equipment, salaries and benefits. When you are looking at reducing costs, the smaller the department budget, the greater the impact of cutting that budget. The real question is “What are the essential services that we must pay for to maintain the way of life we desire?”
