Springdale officials discuss police budget

Springdale City Hall is shown in this undated file photo.
Springdale City Hall is shown in this undated file photo.

SPRINGDALE -- City officials continued Monday night discussing next year's budget, including proposed new equipment for the Police Department.

The Police Department's Tasers range from 7 to 13 years old, although they are only guaranteed for five years, Chief Mike Peters said. He explained that if someone gets hurt during an incident with a Taser, the Taser company will deny that any harm could have been caused because of a faulty Taser as long as it is under 5 years old.

Peters asked the city to lease Tasers on a five-year plan, allotting $22,500 in 2019 and $25,813 a year for the next four years. That would supply half of the department's officers with Tasers. The rest would have pepper guns.

Last year, the city leased 10 vehicles, which Peters said had its ups and downs.

"I'm proposing that in this budget we retract that considerably ... . What I'm proposing in my budget is to leave part of the money to lease a few vehicles and go ahead and buy three," he said.

The proposed budget includes $35,000 for vehicle rent and $75,000 to purchase vehicles.

The proposed budget also includes $25,000 for a drone that would have a camera and a thermal energy camera.

"We have licensed people in the department in hopes of buying this," Peters said.

Mayor Doug Sprouse had proposed Thursday about $1.2 million in salary increases for employees. He said after the meeting Tuesday the proposed pay raises are important to the Police Department, the city's largest department.

The department's proposed 2019 personnel budget, which includes everything from pay and insurance to workers' compensation and uniforms, is more than $15.1 million. The original personnel budget for 2018 was more than $13.7 million.

The department has lost nine officers this year, Peters said. The department has five open positions, four officers in training and seven on long-term injury leave. Peters said that pay is sometimes the reason people leave. Some people find they are not cut out for the job and do not make it through the training.

"I imagine it's hard to convince somebody for $36,444," City Council member Colby Fulfer said.

Peters said Haas Hall Academy reached out to him to ask for a school resource officer whose salary would be paid by Haas Hall for the ten months out of the year when school is in session. The city would be responsible for the officer's six months of training and his or her salary for two months of the year. The salary and benefits for six months would cost the city $28,400, Peters said.

The Jones Center will continue using Northwest Arkansas Community College's police department until January 2020, but there has been talk of the Springdale Police Department possibly providing services there, too, Peters said. That relationship would work differently than the department's relationship with school resource officers. The Jones Center would have to pay off-duty police officers.

"We need to concentrate on covering our bases with the number of officers we don't have before we consider expanding out to an SRO," City Council member Mike Overton said.

Peters said it is up to the council members whether they want to move forward with a school resource officer for Haas Hall and that he told the school the department would not do it if it did not have enough officers.

NW News on 11/20/2018

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