Young wants substation, 59 additional officers

Jen Lawson

Tuesday, March 1, 2005 | 10:55 a.m.

The booming southwest portion of the Las Vegas Valley needs another Metro Police substation, Sheriff Bill Young said Monday, and he is asking the city and county for money to build the area command as well as funding for 59 additional police officers.

Young's proposed budget for the 2005-2006 fiscal year, released at the department's fiscal affairs meeting Monday morning, asks for more than $428 million, an 11.7 percent increase over this year's budget.

In past budgets Young has asked for at least twice as many new officers than he did this time.

"One hundred and fifty to 200 cops -- that's what we need," he said. "The problem is we know we can't afford it ... Fifty-nine officers represents what actually can be done."

Fifty would be assigned to patrol and nine would be assigned to the airport, Young said.

The department's current staffing level is 1.7 officers for each 1,000 residents. The additional officers requested in the tentative budget would bring it to 1.8 per 1,000, still short of the department's goal of 2 per 1,000.

The "More Cops" legislation, which seeks to raise the sales tax in Clark County to pay for more officers, has some political hurdles to overcome, but Young said he thinks it has a good chance of passing the Legislature.

It would allow Metro to hire 650 officers in the 2005-2006 fiscal year, and a total of 1,200 over the course of 10 years. The other Southern Nevada police departments would also receive funds for more officers.

If the measure fails, Young said, he'd "start from scratch and ask for 150 more" officers, to be funded by Las Vegas and Clark County.

One of the key components of the budget request is $6.3 million for the construction of a new area command in the southwest, which Young said is desperately needed.

One area command already exists in the southwest, at 5925 Spring Mountain Road near Jones Boulevard. The new building would be in the area of Blue Diamond and Warm Springs roads.

The department has eight other substations throughout the Las Vegas area.

The tentative budget also seeks funding for 50 civilians to increase the staffs of the department's crime lab, information technology bureau, evidence vault and human resources division.

Also, a liaison for dealing with the homeless would be added, as well as 911 dispatch specialists and administrative support staff to accommodate extended customer service hours at the area commands and the traffic bureau.

Clark County covers 60.5 percent of Metro's budget and Las Vegas pays 39.5 percent. Both entities are to hold meetings on the proposed budget soon.

In order to make the best of the funding the department has, it began implementing some of the recommendations set forth in an efficiency study conducted last year by the Martix Consulting Group of Palo Alto, Calif.

The study looked at hundreds of aspects of the department's functions, including staffing, management, finances and productivity.

"This wasn't just some report we stuck in the corner," Young said. "We are using this audit as a guide to fine-tune our department and make sure there is no waste."

Capt. Marc Joseph and a quality assurance analyst began evaluating the 135 recommendations shortly after the report was released in May 2004. Joseph gave the fiscal affairs committee a report on the status of the recommendations on Monday.

As a cost-saving measure, the department tightened its policy on take-home cars, and is ensuring that no more than 20 percent of the department's fleet is comprised of gas guzzling sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.

Joseph said his goal is to be finished with evaluating the recommendations by May.

Peter Thomas, chair of the fiscal affairs committee, asked Joseph to work up figures on how much the department stands to save when all of the changes are made.

A similar efficiency study of county's jail operations is currently under way, Young said.