Police, Fire Departments Present Proposed Budgets

The village continued the budget process at a work session on Thursday evening, where the board of trustees, Citizens Budget Review Advisory Committee (CBRAC) members and residents heard proposed budgets from the fire and police departments, among various other departments, in Garden City.

“I think we have a long march ahead of us," said trustee Andrew Cavanaugh, chair of the Finance Committee. "The village budget, as you know, for the last few years has been developed along relatively conservative and prudent lines … there has been a little bit of under spending in certain areas and, from the submissions which have been made by the departments so far, there is obviously a feeling that some of that now has to be revisited and we have to return to perhaps what used to be called more ‘normative practices.’”

Cavanaugh added that they will not know if this goal is achievable or not until the entire budget process progresses.

Garden City Fire Department

Chief Charles Cavarra presented the fire department's proposal for the year, which called for an overall 2012-13 budget of approximately $7 million. The department's budget is 75 percent salaries and benefits, about 8 percent for hydrant rental, 8.7 percent for capital and 8.4 percent for operating costs, he said.

Cavarra said that they would like to include $3,500 for a grant writer because hiring one has "produced many large awards to local fire departments."

"We think it would be money well spent," said Cavarra, noting that it was stated that they could get at least $10,000 in grants.

Cavanaugh said that the last few fire budgets "have been somewhat prudent," adding that it “may” be time to restore some money to the department.

Garden City Police Department

Commissioner Ernest Cipullo introduced the police department's overall budget, which is proposed at $9,359,450 - a 15.32 percent budget-to-budget increase. Personnel costs account for $8,800,475 of that figure, with personnel increases alone standing at approximately 16 percent. The other $558,975 goes towards non-personnel and equipment costs.

Cipullo said that the "budget is pretty straightforward" and that the majority of it is personnel costs. There is a substantial increase in all categories for personnel costs, he added.

He said that the department is asking for the three positions to be reinstated that were taken out last year. Therefore, the salaries and figures for the proposed budget were based on 55 officers instead of 52, said Cipullo, adding that there are some potential retirements for this upcoming year.

"As you can see we are asking for the three positions to be reinstated that were taken out of the budget last year,” he continued. “Hopefully we will convince you that we need to replace them in the course of this new budget.”

"In effect what we are doing, we would be increasing the compliment, hiring into that 55-person force in order to fill the deficiencies caused by the disabilities,” Cavanaugh said. “If you have your three disabled officers now, you probably would be able to have good cover without the operational difficulties.”

The next village budget work session will take place Thursday, Feb. 16, at 7:30 p.m. at village hall.