I believe we are facing a municipal financing crisis throughout Michigan. Local units of government are feeling the pinch of rising costs coupled with declining revenue. When property values plummet, so do tax receipts. Unfortunately, the needs for county services only increase during tough times. In broad terms, that is how I would describe the backdrop to this conversation.

In that environment, the county must decide how much to charge local units of government that want to purchase police services dedicated to their residents (some reasonable amount of time prior to the expiration of the current contract at the end of 2009).

Currently, the county charges local units of government about 75% of the costs of putting these deputies on the road. After providing about 90 of these deputies to our customers (mostly townships), the county lays out $8.5 million to assist these other governments in providing public safety.

There are millions of dollars of public money at stake every year in this relationship; and, as a result, some communities are always trying to either widen or narrow the gap between what the county spends for police and what the county charges for police. A few years ago, Ypsilanti Township, Augusta Township and Salem Township even sued the county (costing taxpayers more millions) to protect their financial interests.

The current proposal – to extend the terms of the 2006-9 contract for one year with a 2% increase – widens that gap. Because this proposal has come up so quickly, we have not gotten a thorough budget analysis. Still, some reasonable assumptions can be made that give us an idea of the cost of this proposal. *If* costs in the Sheriff’s department are rising at roughly the rate of inflation (4.5%), then offering a contract for 2010 that increases the costs to our customers by 2% is about a $250,000 “loss” to the general fund.

That means that sometime next year, the Board of Commissioners will have to cut even deeper into our already strapped budget to offer this attractive deal to communities without police departments. Specifically, we will probably have to eliminate 3-5 jobs just to make up for the “loss” to the general fund caused by this proposal. I can’t support this without some offsetting cost savings within police services and I voted no.