City officials have one thing to say to residents who ask why they should support a $919.9 million capital funding package when the city still needs police officers.
You want officers to have cars, don't you?
"Increasing public safety has been a top priority for the mayor and the council over the last two years and it's a two-pronged approach," said City Councilor G.T. Bynum, who chairs a council committee that is working with Mayor Dewey Bartlett to craft the latest funding proposal.
"You can't have a lot of police officers or firefighters with lousy equipment and expect them to do a good job, and you can't have excellent equipment and few personnel and expect them to do a good job."
As it stands, the city's next capital improvements package would fund $37.3 million in facility renovations and equipment for the police department and $34.6 million for the fire department if voters approve it Nov. 12.
That funding, officials stress, is unrelated to the city's $711 million operating budget this fiscal year, which already funds the number of police academies that Police Chief Chuck Jordan has recommended for a year - two, with 45 new officers and 16 civilian employees.
That point is important because some residents who have spoken at recent town hall meetings seemed to believe that the capital proposal deals with money that could go to hiring police, Bynum has said.
"The things that are in this are not being done to the exclusion of police," he said. "We are expanding our police force at the fastest rate that is recommended by our police department under the normal operating budget."
The proposal would extend the city's third-penny and 0.167-cent sales taxes for 5 1/2 to 6 years - or however long it would take to cover the projects' projected costs - and authorize issuing $355 million in general obligation bonds.
Transportation-related projects make up 71 percent of the proposal, but police and fire projects are a sizable chunk of what is left, officials point out. They account for about a quarter of the funding unrelated to transportation.
Assistant Fire Chief Steve Gage said the proposal is "pretty cut and dried."
"A majority of it all falls back to life safety, which is first and foremost our concern for the citizens and the fire(fighters)," he said. "It's stuff that we need to protect the people that work for us and provide better service for the citizens."
Case-in-point, he said, is the $2.6 million the department would get to replace more than 400 breathing apparatuses, which are nearing the end of the 15-year warranties.
Those devices are used regularly for fighting fires, he said.
"We're just exposed to that day in and day out and we need to provide the best equipment for our personnel and help them any way we can," he said.
The package also would gradually replace about 25 of the department's 42 large fire engines as they surpass 100,000 miles - a $17 million cost.
Facility renovations include making fire stations more energy-efficient and repairing warehouses for $9.25 million, with another $1.5 million to replace station generators.
"Just probably every station we have needs some type of attention," Gage said. "A lot of them are 30, 40, 50 years old and it'd be just like your house - they need maintenance."
Police projects include replacing the department's aging records management system, which was designed in the 1970s and has periodic minor upgrades.
The Tulsa Regional Automated Criminal Information System, or TRACIS, as the system is called, manages police reports - but only barely, say officers who complain that it is inefficient and slow.
The proposal allocates $6.53 million for a new system.
"The fact that we're still using a (records management system) designed by city software engineers in the late 1970s ... is highly problematic and reduces those officers' ability to work quickly in real time to apprehend criminals," Bynum said.
The package also includes $22.26 million to replace equipment such as aging vehicles; $4 million in renovations and repairs to the police academy, police courts and COMPSTAT facilities; $3 million for energy-efficiency upgrades to the three uniform division headquarters and $1.5 million to replace a 2007 Bell helicopter in 2017.
Police had originally requested $2.9 million to replace the helicopter, but they later said the cost would be less because of money already allocated for the purchase and the expected sale of the older helicopter, Bynum said.
Police projects
Equipment and vehicles: $22.26 million
Records management system: $6.53 million
Administration facilities: $4 million
Uniform division renovations: $3 million
Replace helicopter: $1.5 million
Fire projects
Replace older fire engines: $17 million
Fire station renovations: $7.25 million
Equipment: $4.25 million
Breathing apparatuses: $2.6 million
Warehouse repairs: $2 million
Station generators: $1.5 million
Zack Stoycoff 918-581-8486
zack.stoycoff@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Funding safety
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