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East Lansing Police Department unsure about the future of its budget

January 26, 2011
East Lansing Police officer Tom Blanck uses a radar gun to monitor drivers on Haslett Road on Wednesday in East Lansing. Over the last two years the East Lansing Police Department has received more than $1 million in grant money, which will largely be used on new equipment. Kat Petersen/The State News
East Lansing Police officer Tom Blanck uses a radar gun to monitor drivers on Haslett Road on Wednesday in East Lansing. Over the last two years the East Lansing Police Department has received more than $1 million in grant money, which will largely be used on new equipment. Kat Petersen/The State News —
Photo by Kat Petersen | and Kat Petersen The State News

With the future of revenue sharing throughout Michigan in a state of uncertainty and the city’s dwindling public service budget, the East Lansing Police Department’s finances could be in store for more cuts.

The East Lansing Police Department has been cutting back on training, equipment and personnel for the last several years, Capt. Tom Johnstone said.

The department has its funding secured until June 31 but beyond that, no one is sure how much funding will be received or where it will come from, Johnstone said.

“It depends if (revenue sharing is) a total cut or a partial cut,” he said. “If it were a total cut, I’m not sure how we’d absorb it. If we don’t get that money we’d be in a bind.”

The East Lansing Police Department has made cuts to training programs such as crime scene investigation, and it has reduced the number of officers working with the East Lansing school district, Johnstone said.

East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton said because the East Lansing police and fire departments make up such a large proportion of the city’s budget, cutbacks are inevitable.

According to the city of East Lansing’s comprehensive annual financial report, from 2004-09 public safety saw a steady increase in expenditures but from 2009-10, saw a drop of more than $660,000 because of retiring officers. The total expenses for 2010 totalled less than $18.5 million.
Although the city does not single out public service, one of the ways it can make cuts is by reducing personnel costs, Staton said.

“With 50 percent of city’s budget being in these departments, police and fire, they have to be addressed,” Staton said. “With 80 percent of the budget for these agencies being personnel, it’s hard to make adjustments without cutting into that.”

Johnstone said the department has not laid off any employees, but there are certain positions that intentionally are left unfilled when someone leaves the department.

“On a day-to-day basis we have fewer officers on the road than we did in the past,” he said. “You have a lot of people who are wearing multiple hats.”

The biggest cuts have been made by not updating equipment, Johnstone said.

The department has become more dependent on federal grants to make up for budget cuts, particularly in funding new equipment, East Lansing police Interim Chief Juli Liebler said.
The department received five major grants in 2009 and 2010, totaling more than $1 million in federal and private money, she said.

“These grants have provided us with the opportunity to purchase equipment and officers that we would not have been able to purchase,” she said. “We update those things very sparsely and if it weren’t for those grants, we would have to hold off updating them for even longer.”

Aside from the Community Oriented Policing Services grant in 2009, the East Lansing Police Department has received all the grants it has applied for in the past two years, Liebler said. The department reapplied for that same grant in 2010 and received it.

Johnstone said the department also has been combining efforts with the Meridian Township and MSU police departments to help make up for the reduced number of officers on patrol.

“We are able to maintain the same level of police work despite the cutbacks,” Johnstone said. “We’re always looking at ways to combine services. East Lansing, Meridian and Michigan State (police departments) currently share a 911 center. … Over the last several years they have been merging back with the rest of the county.”

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