Rockbridge area police departments have yet to apply for stimulus money
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| The General Assembly allocated $29 million in federal stimulus money for Virginia Sheriff's Departments. (BRETT HOLTON/ The Rockbridge Report) |
Funding for local law enforcement and public safety has already been stretched thin by budget cuts, but three jurisdictions in Rockbridge County say they haven’t yet applied for a slice of anticipated federal stimulus package money.
Last weekend, the state General Assembly passed a $77 billion budget, which included $1.5 billion of federal stimulus money.
The federal money is being directed toward restoring funding cuts made late last year by Gov. Tim Kaine in education, health care and public safety.
The state has already received requests totaling $950 million from jurisdictions seeking a share of the stimulus money, but law enforcement officials in the Rockbridge area have yet to send in requests for aid.
Police administrators in Lexington, Buena Vista and the county , however, say that even without stimulus money, they are hopeful they won’t have to cut staff positions or abandon any major programs. All three departments cited maintaining current staff levels as a priority.
Rockbridge County Sheriff Bob Day said the General Assembly set aside $29 million in stimulus funds for sheriffs’ departments across the state.
Day anticipates that the county will cut nearly 5 percent of the department’s budget for next year. A budget work session with the county on March 9 will give him a better idea of where the sheriff’s office stands. He said he hopes that stimulus money might be available should his office be forced to take a larger cut.
And while Day isn’t concerned that the anticipated funding reduction will force staff cuts, he says it’s the unanticipated costs that could cause the biggest headaches.
“Hopefully we’ll make it through a year that we don’t have to replace a computer, a copier, or a printer or something like that,” Day said. “If that happens, we’ll get through and we’ll be all right.”
Buena Vista Police Chief A.J. Panebianco expects the release of the final version of his department’s budget by City Council later this month. He said he won’t apply for stimulus money from the state before he sees that budget.
Panebianco is uncertain exactly how much money Buena Vista police might receive from the stimulus package, should the department apply.
“We’re just figuring how much to stretch a dollar to its breaking point without breaking it,” he said.
Panebianco anticipates a sharp decrease from last year’s budget, including about a 10 percent cut in funding from the city. Once the budget is in place, he said, he plans to apply for funding that would maintain current salaries for officers.
The department’s budget for fiscal year 2008-2009 was about $1,050,000. For the coming year, Panebianco said he hopes the total will come to $1,034,000, but he won’t have a final number until April.
He said one idea he's considering is applying for state-issued grants to retain current officer salaries and keep staffing levels stable.
“We fully intend to apply for everything that we believe will be of use for our city,” he said.
Lexington Police Chief Steve Crowder said he hasn’t even begun to think about applying for federal stimulus money. He said he would wait until after his budget is set before considering applying. If his department’s budget is adequate, he said, the available stimulus money might be better used by other jurisdictions.
The Lexington Police Department’s operating budget faces $50,000 in cuts in funding from the city, Crowder said. In recent years, the total budget for Crowder’s 16-officer department has typically run about $1.7 million.
Crowder expects this year’s total budget to be about 3 percent smaller than last year’s.
“We don’t have much wiggle room in our budget,” he said. “I will struggle in a big kind of way trying to stay in the black.”
But Crowder thinks the department is in better shape than some of the other Virginia departments, particularly for its size.
“You know, we have good equipment, a good facility, good vehicles,” Crowder told The Rockbridge Report about a month ago. “We are in pretty good shape. We [just] don’t want to start treading backwards.”
In other city departments, Lexington officials have already applied for stimulus-funded grants. But while Monty Higgins, the city’s finance director, hopes that federal stimulus money will help fund some of the city’s higher-priority projects, he knows that stimulus funding might not come easily for any given locality – with no exception for public safety – should it eventually be needed.
The stimulus money, he said, “is kind of like a snowball. Is it going to get going, or is it just going to melt before it gets here?”
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