Mesa, PD face ‘unprecedented’ budget cuts

Mesa is facing significant budget cuts in the months ahead and city officials are starting to prepare their departments for what Mayor Scott Smith says could be a "paradigm shift" in the way the city operates.

Mesa Police Chief George Gascon is one of the first to sound an alarm. He e-mailed a two-minute video on Monday to his agency's approximately 1,500 employees warning of rough financial times.

"The city's revenue streams fell critically short of their projections, which adversely impacted the budget for all city departments," Gascon said in the video. "The police department's ability to obtain funding has been critically impacted at a level never before seen, and the need to reduce department expenditures is at an all-time high."

Neither police nor city officials are willing to talk yet about what sorts of cuts might occur, the level of reductions or what the effect on services or public safety might be. They say they are waiting for a number of factors to become clearer, including the outcome of a Nov. 4 bond election, a couple more months of sales tax collections and what sort of reductions the state might make in the amount of money it passes on to cities.

"I think that the level that we're talking about is essentially unprecedented," said Fabian Cota, president of the Mesa Police Association, which has been helping work through possible cuts in the police department. "The levels they're looking at making cuts at is just very extreme."

Cota said officials aren't trying to withhold information; the specific number simply isn't yet known.

Still, the cuts will be deep and "it scares the bejeebies out of everybody," he said, adding that cutbacks in the police department likely will be larger than in more than a decade.

"It will mean longer waits and, in our profession, time sometimes is of the essence," he said. "Whether we have a case, can develop a suspect, whether we have the evidence - those things are time critical."

Smith also described a financial picture unlike anything the city has seen before. "It's unprecedented what we're going through," he said Tuesday.

He noted the city has worked through budget cutbacks in the past but "this time it's different."

Smith said city officials are not only preparing department heads for "pretty significant adjustments," but also to start thinking about how the city operates and provides services because it likely will be very different.

"We're trying to get everybody in the mindset of not only where can we cut, but how do we do business and what services do we provide and where do we go from here," Smith said. "We may have to make some basic changes in how we approach things. We need to at least start thinking that way. We don't want to be caught off guard."

Smith pointed to some proposals that Gascon has talked about as the kind of changes he means. Gascon has been looking at ways to free up a dwindling number of sworn officers for essential police functions and letting civilians or even volunteers take over administrative tasks and some simple investigative roles performed by officers. "Now I think we do have to look at bringing in some paraprofessionals, some citizens, so that the police can concentrate on what they are trained to do," Smith said.

He said the budget outlook will be clearer next month, after the Nov. 4 general election and when the state has more solid numbers about its revenue collection and revenue-sharing plans.

The city also will have a better handle on its own sales tax collections. "We want to have that information before we jump into specifics," he said. "We want to do it right so it is not a panic reaction."

In his video, Gascon told employees that the fiscal problems are directly related to "the economic condition of our country and its effect on both local and global economies. Municipal, state and federal government entities have been incredibly burdened by the economic impact of the situation."

Gascon said he has met with police commanders and union officials to begin developing strategies to reduce spending. Equipment purchases are being re-evaluated and overtime reduction plans are being implemented, he said.

The police department has already been cutting back on its spending.

In January, Gascon said he would slash the police budget by 5 percent - about $7.2 million from the $147 million operating budget - by the end of this year.

Overtime spending was a big-ticket item in that reduction plan.

Instead of calling officers in on their days off or having them work later, police officials began shifting on-duty officers from one area of the city to whatever problem or issue needed to be addressed.

Cota says that extreme cuts are necessary in the police budget should be a wake-up call to Mesa residents that they can't continue to rely solely on a sales tax for so much of the city's income. Mesa is one of very few cities in the country that does not have a property tax.

A bond package that will be put before voters asks them to approve $169 million in capital projects, including street improvements and to bolster police and fire facilities and equipment.

Cota noted that the police department has already adopted a number of efficiencies in the past year. "We've been ahead of this already but you can only trim so much before you start cutting into the bone," he said.

Smith also is hopeful that people will see the need for the bond money. He thinks the city needs to invest in the essentials now but acknowledges that tough financial news causes people to think harder about whether to spend the money. "We're hoping the citizens of Mesa see that the bond package is worth it for the future, in both public safety and streets," Smith said. "It will pay off in the long run."