Haines police chief Heath Scott said the department lacks funding to provide adequate 24-hour police service. This comment was part of a presentation Scott delivered on Feb. 12 to the Public Safety Commission, which is currently deliberating budget recommendations for the coming fiscal year, FY21.
At present, Haines budgets for a five-officer police force. Scott presented the commission with several options moving forward: a full-time police force with six officers, the minimum number recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice in a document titled “Guidelines for Starting and Operating a New Police Department;” a full-time police force with five officers, substantially increasing overtime and standby hours to cover when an officer takes time off; and a 16-hour per day police force with four officers, the least expensive option but an option that presents challenges for other first responders.
Commission member Kelly Williamson, director of Lynn Canal Counseling who works on-call for Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC), said SEARHC could not operate as it does without 24/7 policing. SEARHC staff require an officer present to respond to certain situations like a 2 a.m. suicide call, she said.
For each of his proposed scenarios for FY21, Scott prepared a draft budget. A 16-hour per day police force would reduce the budget for the department to $554,812, roughly equivalent to FY18 funding for a five-officer force. A 24/7 six-officer force would cost $780,122. And a 24/7 five-officer force, the status quo, would cost $702,007.
Scott’s proposed budget for a 24/7 five-officer force in FY21 is a roughly $90,000 increase over the FY20 budget. Most of the increase comes from proposed increases to overtime and standby hours. His proposal includes 1,750 overtime hours, nearly three times FY20 overtime hours, and 5,400 standby hours, a 22% increase from FY20.
Scott said his proposal is designed to reduce officer burnout. He proposed increasing standby and overtime for FY21 to allow officers to take more time off for vacation and required training. Turnover can cost the borough tens of thousands in the form of training expenses for a new hire, Scott said. Long-term, allowing officers to take time off and reset could save the borough money, he said. Although, the proposal to increase standby and overtime suggests that officers would likely make up for any increased time off by working longer hours.
“I don’t agree that we don’t budget for training and vacation, so explain to me how I’m looking at it wrong,” Haines Chief Fiscal Officer Jila Stuart said at the meeting. The current five-officer budget allows for just under three 10-hour shifts per day, roughly 30 hours of coverage a day, she said. If an officer were to take time off, this would reduce the schedule to roughly two 10-hour shifts per day, which is how the department is currently functioning until it hires a fifth officer, she said.
Right now, the Haines Police Department is budgeted for five officers, but only four positions are filled. To cover the community 24 hours a day, seven days a week, one officer works a shift from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, Scott said. A second officer works a 10-hour shift beginning in the afternoon. When the department hires a fifth officer, they will staff times when the department receives higher numbers of calls, he said.
Any gaps in the schedule are filled by officers on standby, Scott said. While on standby, officers are not on the job, but they have to remain within phone service and be ready to go out on a call at any time. Standby shifts are stressful for officers because they have to remain alert, Scott said. Officers are compensated at a rate of $8 an hour for standby, according to their union-negotiated contract. If an officer goes out on a call during this time, they switch into overtime, one and a half times their hourly wage, Scott said.
Scott said police departments throughout the state are experiencing officer retention issues. He listed Skagway as an example. According to the Alaska Department of Public Safety’s website, communities including Cordova, Craig, Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka and Wrangell are all trying to hire an officer. In 2018, Alaska Public Media reported the Department of Public Safety was struggling to keep state troopers, who were leaving for better pay and benefits packages in other states.
Several years ago the Haines Police Department was underfunded, in terms of gross wages, compared to departments in similarly sized communities in Southeast. Since FY17, when Scott took charge of the department, the budget has grown every year. During this span of time, overtime hours have doubled and standby hours have increased by a multiple of five. For the current fiscal year, standby hours more than doubled in an effort to compensate for the assembly’s directive that officers respond to urgent calls outside the townsite.
It is challenging to draw a straight comparison between police department budgets for different communities as departments can vary in the way they structure benefits packages and whether or not dispatch, officers, and DMV staff are included in a single budget. Communities differ in aspects like service area size, trooper presence, and crime rates. “While you have to be careful when drawing conclusions, comparing gross wages for officers across departments might be the best way to draw a reasonable comparison,” Stuart said.
Comparing the gross earnings of Haines officers to other departments in Southeast suggests that current officer earnings are equivalent to, if not more than, gross earnings for officers in other departments.
The Skagway Police Department, with four officers and six other employees, budgeted $586,799 for salaries in FY20, roughly $68,000 less than Haines’ five-officer force for the same fiscal year.
Wrangell, a community with nearly twice as many reports of crimes like rape, assault and theft as Haines according to the last statewide crime report compiled by the Department of Public Safety, budgeted $424,315 in gross wages for its six-officer force in FY20, about $30,000 more than the total gross wages for Haines’ five-officer force in FY20 and $30,000 less than the five-officer budget Scott proposed for FY21.
Craig, a community that had nearly three times as many offenses reported in 2018 as Haines according to the same statewide crime report, budgeted $100,000 less in gross wages for its five-officer force in FY20 than Scott proposed for Haines’ five-officer force in FY21.
The main discrepancy between these budgets comes from the number of overtime and standby hours. Craig budgeted 1,500 fewer standby hours and roughly one-third as much in overtime wages as Scott proposed for Haines in FY21.
The Public Safety Commission will tackle questions of how Haines can combat officer attrition and what appropriate funding levels for FY21 look like in an austere budget climate over the course of the coming weeks as it prepares recommendations for the assembly. The commission’s next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 11 at 6:30 p.m.