The East Lansing City Council is again discussing potential budget issues that could cut police and fire services, which might hurt the departments’ ability to deal with large events, such as future March Madness celebrations.
During their Tuesday night work session at City Hall, 410 Abbot Road, council members discussed removing eight full-time police positions, including five patrol officers, two detectives and one school officer to maintain a lower budget in the 2013-14 fiscal year.
Currently, the East Lansing Police Department has 35 patrol officers, six detectives and two school officers, East Lansing Police Chief Juli Liebler said.
At the meeting, Liebler expressed concern about handling NCAA Tournament celebrations with a reduced staff.
“Losing eight officers over a year would significantly affect how we do business,” Liebler said.
Special education sophomore Lauren Reschke said although she feels safe, she is concerned about maintaining safety during these celebrations if there are not enough officers or firefighters available to respond to emergencies.
“They should cut elsewhere, not there,” she said.
At the work session, East Lansing Fire Chief Randy Talifarro said the suggested 2013-14 plan would remove five positions in his department. Currently, there are 44 fire suppression positions in the department.
Beard said the suggested changes are based on a possible worst-case scenario, should the financial situation in 2014 be as poor as expected.
“We have had to deal with declining revenues (during) the past several years,” Beard said. “Things we thought we could count on are now gone. … There’s less money to distribute.”
Funding for every department in the city would be scaled down should this worst-case scenario become a reality, Councilmember Don Power said.
Power said the financial issues the city is facing have developed because of poor investments in developments such as City Center II and the state of the current economy, among other things.
“We are far better than most communities, … but that doesn’t mean we have time to go to sleep,” Power said. “(We have) to address these problems, (and) that’s what we’re going to attempt to do.”
The city has seen the consequences of these issues through budget cuts throughout the past decade..
Liebler said since 2002, changes in funding have forced the department to cut nine full-time police positions and several civilian positions.
Many civilian positions also have been changed from full-time to part-time.
In a past interview with The State News, Talifarro said four positions in the fire department have been removed during the last 10 years. Two of those positions were eliminated last year.
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