Langley On City Budget Priorities
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 7/6/08 @ 12:49 am - Filed Under City Council, Featured, Local Politics
Charles Langley, former 4th District city council nominee, has gotten a jump on Fort Wayne’s upcoming budget debate by offering a few suggestions at his new blog Deliberation. Readers should check out his post for a comprehensive list of his ideas but I thought I’d share a few that I found particularly interesting:
Take home police vehicles. Perhaps there can be monthly or quarterly rotations of officers taking home their vehicles OR limit this benefit to officers who live inside the city limits. If no compromise can be reached, with leadership failing, officers, as well as other city workers, will not be able to take home city-owned vehicles.
I would think take home vehicles could be restricted to higher crime areas. In fact this would be a benefit for officers that live in those neighborhoods. Perhaps the depart could couple this with other incentives to try and get more officers to live in areas that would greatly benefit from their presence.
Instead of cutting police and fire positions, which seems the status quo, each government department, such as the Division of Public Works, would need to eliminate at least one position. This decision should be made as a recommendation by department leadership and not Council.
Cutting positions is going to be a difficult task politically. I would support a one year salary freeze and perhaps positions could be eliminated through attrition.
The removal of the four neighborhood area advocates; this position should be adequately completed by the district council members with reinforcement from at-large members.
Again this might be a tough sell but I applaud Langley’s effort to jumpstart the debate and throw out his ideas. Take a minute to read all 10 of his suggestions and then feel free to critique his ideas in the comments or suggest your own…
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2 Responses to “Langley On City Budget Priorities”
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Just my 2 cents:
–The take home policy win areas wheere officers LIVE (that would not be anywhere near MY AREA), so I’m at odds with it in that regard.
Still, a graduated “charge” per paycheck depending on DISTANCE from the city core would be a nice idea (the further you are, the more you pay, etc).
–I agree that the area “advocates” need to go. In ALL the time I lived here, I never received ANY help in matters partinent to MY neighborhood (evene had my email blocked by Brent Dufor), and subsequent emails are NEVER returned, nor do we get call backs. They are a waste of time (inmho).
–Public works could stand to lose a pair of boots here and there. We don’t see all that much (on the south side) for what they currently HAVE as it is.
Charles makes some intriguing propositions. Now, the REAL trick comes with getting the RIGHT PEOPLE to listen up.
Good luck with that.
B.G.
As one that enjoyed the “take home car” (not Fort Wayne PD), I have to say the policy worked well over the long run. We were required to assure the serviceability of the car, were required to clean the car and, could NOT drive by an accident, reported crime or a stranded motorist when off duty. We were required to be armed when driving, could not take it to a drive-in or a bar off duty. And yes, we had officers that were suspended and fired for violating those policies
I believe the Fort Wayne PD will see savings over the long haul. Good management and supervision is a key to the success of any program. If the local officers cannot demonstrate the effective use of this program by not only long term savings but, good community feedback, that’s a different story.