Running head: CITY COUNCIL BUDGET PROPOSAL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
City Council Budget Proposal Executive Summary
Erica Murillo
CJS/365
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CITY COUNCIL BUDGET PROPOSAL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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City Council Budget Proposal Executive Summary
Introduction
The city council has an annual budget allocation to various departments to help run various
city council’s activities. Normally, all departments under the city council prepare their budgets
depending on the amount of money allocated to each department. Therefore, like all other
departments, the police department had a budget already in place with various subunits allocated
funds deemed necessary for efficient operations. However, the City Manager requires that 7% of
the city’s budget need to be cut down. In compliance with this directive, the police department will
be seeking to review its budget to find out the areas whose budget can be altered without
significantly jeopardizing the police department’s operations.
The Need for Police Department Budget Review
There are many reasons that will compel the City Manager to issues a requirement for
budget reduction. However, for whatever the reason it might be, the overall budget has to be cut
down by at least 7%. Budget reduction requires proper consideration because the police
department is made of several units that work together to achieve the overall goals. There are areas
in the police department which will not take in the budgetary cut down. These areas are very
sensitive, and its budget allocation cannot be altered without considering the impacts it will have
on the overall performance of the police department. Such an area is the salaries department. On
the other hand, there are some areas that can take in budget alteration without significant impacts
on the overall operations.
With that in mind, our team had to review the budget allocations to identify the areas whose
allocations can be adjusted. A proper analysis of how the budget reduction could affect each unit
was done. This was important in ensuring that the police department complies with the city’s
budget reduction requirement as well as ensuring that the police department’s operations do not
face a significant compromise. This led us to the solution explained below.
The Police Department Budget Reduction Proposed Solution
As stated above, the police department is made up of several units that handle various tasks
and duties. Some of the units that require fund allocation are the human resource, purchase of
equipment, money to fund legal activities and money allocated to other services needed by the
police department. From these areas, some are very sensitive and budgetary change may affect the
operations of the police department while others are not very sensitive. Therefore, our team
decided that the best way to achieve the 7 percent budget reduction was to adjust the areas that
were not very sensitive.
Salaries/pay unit was considered by the team to be very sensitive and therefore may not
accommodate any budgetary change. This area happens to be the one that carries the largest
percentage of the total police department’s budget, but the team noted that reducing police officers
and other staff’s salaries would lead to dissatisfaction and low job morale hence affecting the
police operations. However, in this area we decided to cut off overtime to all police officers and
this would reduce the budget by 3.7%. We also proposed eliminating any travel and lodging budget
CITY COUNCIL BUDGET PROPOSAL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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that are regarded as unnecessary unless it is done for investigative purposes. This will save us
another $160 from the budget. We also proposed discontinuation of any hiring and recruitments
that had been planned until when the budget can accommodate the process. Within the human
resource department, we also noticed that we could do without the mounting unit and therefore
propose that this unit be discontinued. Also, the team realized that for the time being, we could use
only half of the unit to patrol the parks and any surrounding areas.
From the initial budget, we realized that supplies/contractual expenses and professional
services expenses sections have various areas that can be adjusted without causing significant
impacts to the entire department. The team decided that training may not have a significant impact
on the operations of police officers and other staff members. This is because training has always
been done in previous years and therefore putting it on hold will not affect the abilities of the
human resources to discharge their duties. Thus, the team proposed that training budget be reduced
by half so that in case a necessary need for training emerges there are funds allocated to it and
other training to be done in future.
Another area that can accommodate budgetary changes is the vehicle and bike maintenance
section. These are the areas that have been allocated fairly large amounts of money. The reason
for proposing a budgetary allocation for these sections is because it not very often that we find
defective vehicles and bikes. By urging vehicle and bike users to be more careful, we can save a
significant amount of money that will not affect the operations of the police department. Therefore,
we proposed a budgetary reduction of 37.01% on vehicle maintenance.
General Line Item Budget Cut Numbers
The table below shows the various areas that our team deemed fit for budgetary reduction. The
team members believe that these are the areas that can accommodate budget reduction and will
not have significant impacts on the operations of the police department. The first column of the
table shows the proposed areas for budget reduction while the second column shows the current
budget allocation for the proposed areas. The third and fourth columns show the amount of
money to be reduced in each of the proposed areas and the corresponding percentage reduction
on the overall budget respectively.
Police Services
Current Budget
Budget Cuts
Budget Reduction %
Vacancies
9 Vacancies
$1,070,000
1.3425%
101 Overtime
$3,000,000
$2,191,716
2.7499%
160 Travel & Lodging
$44,000
$35,200
.0441%
161 Training
$70,000
$35,000
.0439%
180 Recruitment
$20,000
$20,000
.0250%
231 Vehicle Maintenance
$130,000
$52,000
.0652%
232 Mounted Unit
$2,500,000
$2,175,000
2.7290%
Total
________
________
________
$6,834,000
$5,578,916
7%
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It is important to note that there is no area that the team proposed 100% budget reduction
because we realized that even though the proposed areas may not be very sensitive, they might be
very necessary at some point. Therefore, all areas proposed for change has some percentage of
budget currently allocation retained.
Conclusion
To reduce the budget by 7%, which is equivalent to $5,578,916, we had to carry out an indepth analysis of how a budget reduction in various areas will affect the police department’s
operations. The areas that identified and proposed for budget reduction were cancelling job
vacancies which reduced the budget by 1.3425%, Overtime payment cutting budget by 2.7499%,
travel and lodging (0.0441%), training (0.0439%), recruitment (0.0250%), vehicle maintenance
(0.0652%) and mounted unit (2.7290%). This reduced the overall budget by 7%. Therefore, we
propose that the police department reduce its budget as indicated above so as to comply with the
city manager’s requirement and maintain effective operations.
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