Wednesday, March 24, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.
The bad news outweighed the good in a report on Clark County's financial picture delivered Tuesday by county management.
The good news for county management is that the local government expects to bring in $12.3 million over revenue projections this year, thanks largely to a big increase in sales taxes reimbursed by the state government, Finance Director George Stevens told the County Commission.
The bad news is that the additional revenue over the budgeted $858.6 million won't be enough to hire all of the new employees requested by county departments or Metro Police. Stevens presented the budget and said that unless the commission slashed the amount going to Metro, which the city of Las Vegas and the county jointly fund, there would be no money at all for new positions in the county.
The final budget should be worked out in May and be in place for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
County managers have identified a need for nearly 500 new positions to serve the growing county population. Metro had asked for a supplemental appropriation of $10.6 million from the county to hire about 165 new officers and civilian personnel.
The County Commission, however, directed Stevens to prepare a budget that would provide about half of that supplemental appropriation, which Stevens said may allow Metro to hire 100 new employees but would also allow the county to hire 50 to 75 new people.
Stevens told the commissioners that some new positions are critically needed, among them 18 new firefighter jobs to serve a new fire station in Summerlin.
"Virtually every department in the county has some staffing need that has to be addressed," he said.
County Manager Thom Reilly said some of the new positions at the county are desperately needed. He warned that new positions, including new and relatively expensive positions for the county's public defender's office, are needed to avoid the county facing a constitutional challenge.
"If the budget is approved as is (without cutting the Metro request), we do not have the ability to add new staff," Reilly said. "We have no ability to move positions around anymore."
Commissioners said hard decisions have to be made, and that would include cutting Metro's request.
"Public safety has to be one of our top priorities, but we have so many top priorities, I don't know how we spread it all over," Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey said. "I don't know how we can continue increasing police. I don't know how you switch things around when there's no wiggle room."
Undersheriff Doug Gillespie said he wasn't surprised that it appears the department might not be getting the funding it asked for; that rarely happens, he said.
But Metro official planned to continue pushing for the extra money.
"We need a higher percentage increase than what was suggested this (Tuesday) morning," he said. "Our goal as an agency is to hire a minimum of 100 police officers, 18 civil employees and have some services, supplies and capital increases."
If the county goes through with its plan to slash Metro's budget request in half, it will give the department an 8.5 percent increase in funding over last year.
That would give the department enough to pay salaries for nearly 100 officers, but there would be little remaining to fund anything else.
Of that 8.5 percent increase in funding, 6 percent is what Metro will need to maintain the status quo and the other 2.5 percent will be new money that would be used to pay for additional police officers, supplies, equipment and capital growth.
For example, the department would not have the funding to buy more Taser guns as it had planned. And plans to renovate a building at St. Louis Avenue and Atlantic Street and turn it into a full-service substation would be put on hold, Gillespie said.
"I don't think this is a good number for us to work with at this particular time," Gillespie said, adding that he plans to meet with county finance officials "to see what the county can fund and what would be workable from our standpoint."
Over the past five years, Metro's budget increases have been as high as 14.7 percent and as low as 7.6 percent. Last year, the increase was 10.2 percent, which paid for 46 new officers. Of those, 34 were assigned to the patrol division and the rest were assigned to McCarran International Airport.
At the current staffing level, there are 1.7 officers per 1,000 residents. Gillespie said the ratio will continue to decline as more people move to Clark County.
The national average is 2.5 officers per 1,000 residents and 4.6 for major metropolitan areas of 1 million or more.
More than 3.3 million calls were taken by Metro's 911 center during the last fiscal year with 865,283 being emergency calls, Metro officials said. The department expects to exceed 3.4 million calls this fiscal year.
"Our calls for service continue to increase and our workloads continue to increase," he said. "We are in the type of business where we can't tell people no when they call."
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