The Haines Police chief is asking for a $37,826 budget increase — about 3.7 percent — for the fiscal year that starts July 1, to help cover the expense of officers on standby. In addition, Chief Heath Scott is asking the borough assembly to appropriate funds to cover a $28,000 overrun in this year’s budget for the same expense.
“It’s fundamentally a mathematical problem,” Scott said at a borough assembly committee of the whole meeting last week. “Five officers don’t fit into a 24-hour schedule. The department has historically underfunded standby.”
The police department also went over budget in 2017 by about $30,000. At the time, the borough assembly increased police standby time from 265 hours per year to 500 hours and hired an additional officer. Scott said he wanted to hire a fifth officer to get back to a five-officer department that was the historic norm, and to decrease turnover.
This year borough manager Debra Schnabel has proposed increasing standby to 1,100 hours per year.
Officers on standby are paid minimum a wage of $9.89 per hour. Instead of patrolling, the officer monitors the department’s radio to respond if needed. Standby allows Haines to provide 24-hour coverage at a lower cost than actual patrols. In a typical day, 16 hours would be covered by an on-duty police officer, and the other eight hours would be covered by a standby officer.
Standby time increases when the department is down an officer due to training, traveling or for health reasons. When the department is down two or more officers, the entire day might be covered through standby.
Standby time costs the borough about $40,000 per year, according to Schnabel, and the ongoing issue of overusing standby time is the main reason the police have exceeded their budget for the last two years.
Assembly member Tom Morphet accused the department of using the borough government like an ATM at a meeting last week.
“That’s not how it works in anybody’s budget,” Morphet said. “It’s unfair to the budgeting process. It’s unfair to the other agencies and departments of the borough.”
According to Scott, his department has repeatedly overspent, because they are short-staffed.
To illustrate his point, Scott has repeatedly drawn comparisons between Haines and other Southeast communities, Petersburg, Wrangell, and Cordova. All of those communities budget more officers than Haines does, but none of them are currently able to fill their budgeted positions, due to the problem of police retention rates in Southeast.
In creating the FY2020 budget, Schnabel contacted 11 other Southeast communities to find out how many police officers they have, and how much they spend on law enforcement. She said she agrees with Chief Scott’s assessment that Haines Police are underfunded to provide 24-hour service to the community.
“In performance we are not lagging behind, but in budgets we are,” said Schnabel.
At a public safety commission meeting last week, some residents’ insistent requests for a trained police drug dog were put on hold by Scott, who again cited a lack of funding for the department.
“I’m not trying to punt or kick the can on this,” he told public safety commissioners. “If I can’t pay my people, it’s very difficult to take on new responsibility.”
Scott said his department is too small to fill 24-hours of policing in a day. “We have five guys. We can’t do it,” he said.
This year, the department was budgeted $40,000 in standby time, but exceeded that amount by $27,000 when Scott took leave for back surgery.
Scott said the cost of another officer would be about $123,000, including certain benefits.
“How much money would you need so that we could get a canine?” an audience member asked Scott at the public safety meeting. “If the public wants to raise the money for it and give it as a gift, why does it have to go through the borough?”
“I don’t think it would be that much,” Scott said. “But where we are budgetarily right now, it would sink us.”
Four audience members supported bringing a canine to Haines, an issue that arose last year when the commission recommended the borough purchase a drug-sniffing dog in response to lobbying efforts from Scott and several residents.
The assembly voted against it. In February, more than 100 residents signed a petition asking the assembly to re-consider. The assembly directed Schnabel to research the costs of a canine, information that has yet to come back to the assembly.
The Haines Police Department is the highest paid in borough government, and the chief makes more than any other government official; his base salary is $99,840. He’s paid more than both the Petersburg and Wrangell police chiefs, who make a base salary of $96,000 and $92,000 respectively. Haines Police officers are paid less comparatively to officers in other departments.
Currently, Haines Police officers each make an average of $67,855. This figure reflects their ‘potential earnings’—a combination of their salaries plus whatever they make from standby time.
The proposed budget increases police officers’ potential earnings to an average of $70,655.
Similar to arguments made two years ago, Scott and Schnabel both say it would be better for officers’ professional and personal wellbeing if the police department relied less on standby time, and instead hired another officer.
Morphet wants to reduce the time officers are on duty. “Haines is an aging community. Our median age is 49.5-years-old. 50-year-olds aren’t typically committing a lot of crimes,” Morphet said, who would rather reduce or maintain the police budget than have 24-hour policing.