MISSOULA — The Missoula police and fire departments on Wednesday kicked off the city's official budgeting season, seeking funds to cover inflationary costs and to fill their anticipated needs over the new fiscal year.
Police Chief Mike Colyer said his department is facing a roughly 6% operational increase, with many needs scaled back.
The costs include contracted services, enhancing the drone program, maintaining the capabilities of the special teams unit, and increasing city contributions to the wellness program.
Maintaining contracts includes school resource officers and the downtown police patrol.
“These are existing positions that have been in our budget for many years,” Colyer said. “We've restructured the agreements with the school district and downtown business partnership. The increases in the police officer union contract present a challenge for those vendors to pay for that.”
The downtown police patrol handled more than 3,000 incidents last year that resulted in roughly 146 criminal charges, including drugs and alcohol, and sexual assault.
Likewise, the school resource officers handled 1,430 incidents, primarily dealing with substance abuse, runaways and assault.
Colyer placed the department's additional cost of covering the restructured contracts at $20,000.
Other requests include $25,000 for the drone program and $25,000 to maintain the department's special teams.
Deployments from the explosive ordinance team increased 3.2% last year while SWAT responses remain steady. The programs are funded at only $12,000 a year, far less than comparable departments in Montana.
“A big part of that request goes to training,” Colyer said. “When you need them (special teams), there's no acceptable alternative.”
The fire department also submitted its funding requests, which total around $2 million.
Some of those requests may be drawn from the new fire levy, though some may also come from the general fund, if approved.
Assistant Chief Phillip Keating placed the department's baseline requests at $12,600 — an increase needed to cover inflationary costs, including fuel, utilities and overtime pay.
However, a larger portion of the funding request includes $200,000 to fund the 911 At Ease program and $105,000 for a data analyst.
“As we continue to increase in technology, having someone available to focus on the data and analytics is becoming more and more critical,” said Keating. “We're seeing this trend nationwide in the fire service and how critical it is to have that data.”
John Petroff, the newly named assistant chief, said facilities expansion and equipment replacements are also included in the department's request for the new fiscal year. The latter rings in at $1.6 million but includes a $1.1 million for a new fire truck.
Petroff said the wait time on delivery is around three years and, if paid up front, the city can save up to $100,000 on the order.
“We have a 10-year life span for an engine and five-year reserve time frame. We're running two reserves right now. One of our engines at Station 2 has more than 100,000 miles on it. It's wearing down pretty quick. It's not the best thing for the community.”
Other city departments over the coming months will also introduce their funding requests for the new fiscal year.
The Missoula City Council will consider the requests as it moves close to adopting the new budget in August.
