COPS Grant to Spare Some TPD Jobs
More good budget news for Tacoma: that grant the City of Tacoma has been waiting for to save police jobs came through – not at the $5.9 million the City applied for, but $4.97 million – the maximum award for a police department of Tacoma’s size.
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) focuses on community based policing programs. The COPS Hiring Program (CHP) grant will fund salaries and benefits for 15 community based police officers whose jobs were otherwise be at risk.
Like the SAFER grant that will save firefighter jobs, the COPS grant covers more than this year, spreading the award over the next three years, and requiring that Tacoma fully fund the salaries of those officers for the fourth year of the grant.
The nearly $5 million COPS grant, along with the $7.7 million SAFER grant, will go a good distance towards closing the remaining 2012 budget gap of nearly $12 million, but because they must be spread out over multiple years (4 years for COPS and 2 for SAFER), we’re still looking at a bit of a gap to be dealt with. That gap will be significantly smaller thanks to these awards, and now that we know where we stand with those funding sources, we can look forward to hearing about plans for closing the remaining gap.
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Filed under: public-safety, budget
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O OkayThen June 27, 2012
“Like the SAFER grant that will save firefighter jobs, the COPS grant covers more than this year, spreading the award over the next three years, and requiring that Tacoma fully fund the salaries of those officers for the fourth year of the grant.”
Both of these grants also preclude cuts to type of employees they fund. In other words, no community based police officers will be cut for four years (or they will be considered grant funded officers and the City will have repayment issues).
While these grants are great at filling parts of budget holes, they also restrict the City choices on how to balance the budget. At least the City won’t need to ask the community if they should maintain the number of officers, as they’ve already made the decision by applying for and accepting these grants.