The Portland Police Bureau is on track to overspend its approved budget by $5million this year, and other city bureaus may have to make cuts to make up for it.
The news broke in a memo sent out yesterday by Mayor Sam Adams to his fellow commissioners. Council will have to find that $5million by June, to balance the budget for the year.
Update, 1:37: An alert reader sends a link to this video, which was probably not cheap to produce!
Original post:The news has angered City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who has an ongoing beef with Police Chief Rosie Sizer in the way she is running the police bureau.
“The money has to come from somewhere,” says Leonard. “We can’t run a deficit.”
“I’ve been in elective office in one position or another since 1993, and in the legislature I was on the ways and means committee,” he continues. “I have no experience with any state agency or any city bureau ignoring the advice of the governing body and spending what they want to spend money on.”
“You have an incident here with the police bureau not overspending by $50,000, but $5million,” he says. “We’re left with the potential of having to close a fire station. The fire chief is incensed when he says to me, explain to me why I follow my budget to the tenth cent, and I’m punished for doing the right thing by having to close a fire station because the police bureau can’t close its budget.”
The police bureau says it was required to hire new police officers under the direction of council.
“They’re doing a misinformation campaign,” says Leonard. “That would be analagous to me saying, well I thought the council didn’t want people to die in fires, so I went and built three new fire stations. It’s once again an insulting response by the police bureau which is proving itself to be unaccountable.”
I have an easy answer to the problem, which will actually knock out two birds with one stone:
Sell all the PPB’s firearms online @ http://www.gunbroker.com!
Not only will they make at least a good chunk of the money that they seem to be incapable of budgeting for, but we’ll also solve the problem of more innocent mentally disabled Portlanders getting shot!
WIN/WIN!
Man, the cops just can’t get a break these days.
I’m thinking Rosie is gonna get fired pretty soon. Complete lack of confidence in her ability to do her job. They should get that Sheriff Arpaio guy to run the PPB.
Another alternative: With our well-funded police force, we probably don’t need to be spending the $7.5m on more red light and speed cameras, do we? Problem solved!
I get the impression that the $7.5m on the cameras is projected to pay for itself, so while cutting it might be symbolic, it wouldn’t actually save any money.
The $7.5 pays for itself quite quickly, actually, if you take into consideration that not only are these devices generating a great amount of revenue for our fair city (typically paid for by the suburbanites working here…look at it as commuter tax), they are also putting cops back onto “police work” (like shooting the homeless, I guess) and not sitting in traffic with radar guns (which is a gross misuse of public servants).
Man, PPB is really on a winning streak this year.
Stay tuned for next week’s news: “Rosie Sizer Chokes Four Children to Death With Wads of Cash – Grand Jury Fails to Return Indictment.”
Just got a call from an editor buddy of mine over at TIME. They’re looking at Scott Westerman for Person of the Year.
How about the PPB cut back on the amount of paramilitary ordinance? This isn’t LA we’re talking about, mini tanks and microwave weapons are just not things that Portland needs. Unless there’s some sort of unseen threat that the citizens are being kept in the dark about…again.
How is it again that the PPB gets to go over budget for weapons, overtime, and rationalizing excessive violence, and the city decides to close schools again?
Doesn’t crime prevention start with a good formative education? I mean, if the city is truly in favor of crime prevention, shouldn’t we make sure the next generation is smarter and more capable than the preceding generation? Rather than a bunch of punks telling me that I’m old and “don’t get it” when they take to the streets, I would prefer if they actually were capable of “schooling” me on a thing or two.
Instead of preparing for warfare, shouldn’t the city be preparing for peace? Or hell, preparing for an onslaught of hyper-intelligent people who will actually take care of me when I’m a decrepit old fart? This is the Portland we all know and love, and financial mis-management and a lack of oversight are degrading MY BELOVED CITY.
Maybe they can eliminate the “Air Support Unit” to save a little cash.
See: http://www.portlandonline.com/police/index…
and:
http://www.portlandsentinel.com/node/5263
(Bet you didn’t even know they had a plane!)
Anyone else blame the Council for this at all? Aren’t they supposed to be managing this place?
No, Blabby. It is up to the PPB to manage their budget, just like it’s up to IT divisions to manage their own, not the CEO or board of directors. Same/same.
@Jack and Blabby – True, except that when the IT division runs over budget, then it’s up to the CEO or Board to smack ’em down, right? They’d replace the CIO or set up more oversight, or something. So let’s see how city council reacts to this.
Any predictions?
Right, Reymont. I have been on the other end of that in my eleven years working IT and was never fired, so I think that would be extreme if they canned Sizer. Without knowing how over-budget percentage-wise they are, that’s a hard call to make.
we should get the guy from the plane video to narrate this story:
We just uhhhh… shot a guy for holding an ex-acto knife uhhhh…. just uhhhh killed a dude for surrendering uhhh…. pulled a gun on some guy cause he cut us off, ahhhh… we’re just uhhh… several million dollars over budget
Randy Leonard for Mayor!
Chunty Mchutchence for Comment of the Week!
(But you should have a New Column narrated by the plane dude)
No one is accountable for nothing. Check.
“It’s once again an insulting response by the police bureau which is proving itself to be unaccountable.”
Damn that Randy and his recent spate of sense making! I’m finding it harder to dislike him.
@Graham
Arpaio would just loooooooooooove Potland.
Hasn’t Rosie pretty much confirmed she’s going to be retiring in August or something like that? (Just waiting for her pension to fully vest.)
Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with this place?
I can’t help but ponder some irony. If our darling school district had overspent its budget, the attitude would likely be “oh no our children” with widespread clamoring for a tax levy to cover the shortfall. Bad fiscal management is rewarded. Since it’s our idiot police force doing the overspending, it’s all “those fuckers should be punished for not managing their budget”. Bad fiscal management is penalized. Is it just me or does anyone else notice this?
This should not be interpreted as I Heart Cops. More like I Don’t Heart Having To Pay For Anyone Else’s Bad Math.
$5 million ya say? that is nothing compared to the “punitive damages” plus “actual damages” that shall soon be levied against the PoPiggies, say in neighborhood of $20 million, and add that to the paltry sum of just $5 million and we talking mega-bucks FLUSHED DOWN THE DRAIN ALL BECAUSE OF 800 TURDS that think they’re somehow “special people” that aren’t accountable and are managed by the most inept people that Tom Potter could possible find.
It’s time to pull the drain on these turds and flush their asses down the drain but good!
Blabby, I blame ’em. Saltzman is not getting my vote.
Not to feed the beast or anything but how about Blabby for mayor?
Assholes are tolerable when they come with some uncommon sense.
Yes, in North Portland we’ve been talking about this for over a week, when the story broke at http://portlandsentinel.com/node/6051 The question is, where is the saving promised to the public by closing the old North and Southeast Precincts?
@ Sentinel-thanks for the link-very informative.
That video is awesome/worth my tax dollars.