A matter of public safety

Lisa Snedeker

Monday, Feb. 15, 1999 | 11:53 a.m.

When the North Las Vegas City Council asked residents in 1996 to raise their taxes in order to put more police officers on the streets, the argument was simple.

Crime was rampant and passage of the tax, voters were told, would allow for improved police coverage, shortened response time and a more visible police presence in the city's neighborhoods.

A solid 62 percent of the voters obliged and Safe Streets 2000 was born.

There was, however, one critical flaw: a built-in $1 million-plus deficit a year.

The public-safety tax question on the ballot said a "yes" vote would permit the city to levy 20 cents per $100 of assessed value for 30 years to fund additional police and detention officers, support personnel, equipment and other expenses.

The tax rate, which costs the owner of a $100,000 home approximately $70 a year, raised more than $2.3 million its first year.

While the program has seen 32 additional officers come into the department, the total of 68 originally promised by 2000 is no longer feasible. And only 12 of 36 civilian employees that were promised have been hired.

When the City Council adopted Safe Streets 2000 for proposal to the voters, it knew the tax levy would not be sufficient, said former City Manager Linda Hinson.

Councilman William Robinson acknowledged that fact but said the council directed city staff to find the additional funds.

According to City Council minutes from an April 9, 1996, special meeting, the council adopted the plan with additional funding sources to be identified and developed later by city staff.

Alan Nelson, then chief of police, said the projected cost of hiring the proposed officers -- based on a phased-in hiring schedule in conjunction with the local police academies -- would be $2.4 million a year.

But Nelson also estimated that at least another $1.2 million a year would be needed in support costs for the new officers. That's the money that the tax was never designed to cover and the taxpayers were not told about on the ballot.

This shortfall became a reality after the first year of the plan's implementation, said Hinson, who is running for a City Council seat this spring.

She, Finance Director Vytas Vaitkus and City Attorney Richard Maurer "told the council they didn't have the funding," Hinson said. "They (the council) perpetrated a fraud on the city of North Las Vegas. Intentionally or unintentionally, the voters were defrauded."

But Robinson, who plans on running to retain his council seat, said it is clear that city staff was directed to find the additional funding somewhere in the city's budget to cover the shortfall. And Councilman John Rhodes said the way the Safe Streets plan was carried out is standard.

Even Hinson agrees that staff was directed to make up the difference but said that task was doomed.

"I was really concerned about funding," she said. "We had enough problems trying to get money, but the council said we would just have to find it somewhere."

Hinson said she used money from the city's public safety fund to supplement the Safe Streets program during its first fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 1996, to June 30, 1997.

"We knew we would be on line for the first year," she said.

By mid-April 1998, however, the program was in serious financial difficulty. The City Council held another special meeting, this time to discuss alternate ways to fund Safe Streets 2000.

That's also about the time Hinson instituted a hiring freeze for the Safe Streets program, although not for the rest of the police department.

Council members opposed any increase in property taxes, which are the highest in the state. Instead, it appointed the mayor's crime prevention task force, headed by Councilwoman Paula Brown, to research alternate funding sources.

The task force has discussed numerous options, including taking on civilian volunteers, to help the strained police department. Brown said the task force is also suggesting that the program be scaled back.

And that is exactly what the new city manager, Pat Importuna, and the new police chief, Joey Tillmon, are proposing. Nelson received City Council approval for 18 officers the first year of the Safe Streets program, and those candidates hit the streets as rookies in May 1997. That was five officers short of the recommended 23, a pattern that continues today.

In the first three years of the program, 25 police officer positions that had been promised have gone unfilled.

"We tried to stay with it," said Tillmon, who took office in 1997. "But we're still trying to play catch-up."

Tillmon said the number of officers the plan called for hiring each year was unreasonable due to a lack of slots in the local police academy, the number of applicants who don't make it through training and the lack of staff able to train the rookies.

The city has learned from the Safe Streets shortfall. Importuna and the City Council plan audits for all of the city's departments, with the police department and detention center being first.

A report about the detention center audit will be made at the Feb. 23 council meeting. And after interviewing several firms, city staff at the council's March 3 meeting will recommend Hughes, Perry and Associates for the police department audit. The audit should take 24 weeks, Importuna said.

One of the driving forces behind the audit is that the three public safety taxes residents are paying don't appear to be adequate, the city manager said. Brown said that is in part because in the 1980s the city's property tax base wasn't adequate. Therefore the additional tax dollars that are currently being generated, she said, are going toward updating equipment and repairing infrastructure, rather than hiring more police officers.

Importuna is confident the police department audit will help revamp Safe Streets 2000 into a viable plan. The audit will examine how the program can be fused into the regular police budget, Importuna said.

The detention center audit revealed cost savings for the city without employees losing their jobs, Importuna said. He would not release details of those cost-saving measures until the council has formally been presented with the audit results.

If the conclusion of the police department audit resembles that of the detention center audit, Importuna said, it will free money to deal with Safe Streets' budget shortfalls.

"The end goal is to get more cops out onto the streets," he said.