Amendment eliminates 98 vacant positions
The Board of Estimate and Apportionment on April 30 amended the city’s proposed Fiscal Year 2022 budget to eliminate 98 vacant police positions and reallocate the $4 million previously budgeted for those positions.
The April 30 meeting was held to approve the proposed budget in order to submit it to the Board of Aldermen for their approval. Aldermen and alderwomen cannot make any additions to the budget, but they can propose amendments to the budget.
Once that board approves the budget, it goes back to the BEA for final passage.
Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, who is also a BEA member, voted against the amendment, while St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones and Comptroller Darlene Green voted in favor.
“I will not be able to vote in support of the reduction in uniformed officers today only because when I look at it, it is hard to tell how we’re going to make up for the purchasing of fewer work hours within the police department, for that reason I will be not be voting to support that amendment today,” he said.
In an interview, retired Det. Sgt. Heather Taylor reiterated the point that this budget reduction only affects those unfilled positions — there will be no hiring freeze or firing of current officers. Taylor is serving as acting Public Safety Direction Dan Isom’s advisor.
Jones said her office worked with St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden to come to the specific number of positions to eliminate.
“At the end of the day I support the mayor’s notion that jobs, or positions not actually realized yet is really something that can be utilized elsewhere potentially,” Hayden said during the board’s meeting. “And I support her idea, her initiative, that perhaps we could send the right, or different, professionals to the scene.”
When Reed asked Hayden how this decrease in funding would affect officers’ overtime, the chief said he was looking at the potential effects — and that overtime really comes down to unpredictable events (such as protests in response to national or local events).
Looking back to years past, Reed and Paul Payne, director of the city’s Budget Division, determined that the department would have been over budget because of overtime costs if it weren’t for the $4 million allocated for those vacant positions.
Typically, the police budget went over by about $3 million to $4 million — with the exception of 2017 in which the Stockley verdict protests put the budget over by around $10 million.
“So, you’re going to have to be more diligent on overtime only because if you don’t have that kind of slack in your personal services, you cannot have that kind of overspending going forward,” Payne said.
The $4 million would be reallocated to the following categories:
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$1.5 million to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund
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$1 million to the Victim Support Services
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$1 million towards increasing the capacity of the Department of Health & Human services to support the unhoused.
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$500,000 towards affirmative litigation, directing the city counselor’s office to provide legal support to the Civil Rights Enforcement Agency
“You cannot arrest your way out of violence — historically it doesn’t work,” Taylor said. “What does work is providing resources.”
She believes this plan, providing resources to those who need them in our city before they become violent crime offenders, seeks to fix the root cause of most crime: poverty. She concedes it will take time for the benefits of this kind of approach to be seen, but believes this is a sustainable approach to crime reduction.
“I think the community has a right to question and criticize what we are doing, but I think if people just soak it all in and realize that what we’ve been doing now – we’ve been arresting people constantly — and why don’t we have the results then? You can’t arrest yourself out of something that is a social, economic issue,” Taylor said.
The reallocations reflect sentiments articulated by several residents during a public comment hearing regarding the budget.
Activists asked the board to remove funding for the police department’s vacant positions, as well as overtime, SWAT team, the Real Time Crime Center and the ShotSpotter gunshot detection program.
They recommended those funds be put toward housing and human and health services for the city’s most vulnerable residents.
The initial proposed budget already included no funding for the Medium Security Institution — more commonly known as the Workhouse — allowing Jones to fulfill her promise of closing the jail within the first 100 days of her administration.