BURLINGTON — Two years after voting to slash the number of police officers the city could hire by 30%, Burlington leaders are divided over how to fund their police department.
For Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger and his allies, this year’s police budget should rectify the June 2020 resolution that ultimately led to an exodus of officers from the agency. With about half the number of patrol-ready cops as it had two years ago, they argue, the city needs to pour more than $1 million into initiatives to beef up the department’s ranks.
But to more than half the City Council, including the six-member Progressive caucus, the same police reform effort that reduced the department’s headcount needs more investment to work. Instead of funneling money into attracting and retaining officers, they say, the city should fully fund the policing alternatives that were proposed alongside the officer cuts.
This debate about the future of policing has a deadline. The city’s fiscal year begins on July 1, before which the City Council is required to pass a budget that funds Burlington’s government through the end of June 2023.
Still, there appears to remain significant disagreement on whether to redirect some of the mayor’s three-year, $1.2 million “rebuilding plan” to plug a $600,000 gap in the city’s effort to institute a team of mental health workers that responds to individuals in crisis.
“From my perspective, we need to identify $600,000 and prioritize that, because if you think about it, it is definitely going to take some type of burden from the sworn police officers,” said Councilor Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7, at a special Board of Finance meeting Monday night.
“That certainly would be a way to do it, Councilor Dieng,” Weinberger replied. “I guess I want to be clear — the budget you will be submitting will include a rebuilding plan. … I am not going to put forward a budget that does not properly fund that effort.”
“I don’t think we can just do it the way you’ve just laid out,” the mayor said to Dieng.
The $17 million proposed police budget would be a $1 million increase from the current budget, though it would carve out roughly the same 18% slice of the city’s overall budget.
The police department was one of two city departments for which the mayor did not seek to make budget cuts this year, after voters rejected a proposed municipal tax rate increase on Town Meeting Day. The other was the Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Department.
Weinberger’s $1.2 million rebuilding plan would, over the course of three years, set aside $500,000 for police officer pay increases — a prospect that’s central to ongoing contract negotiations between city officials and the police union.
The plan would also allot $270,000 for officer signing bonuses, with an estimated 18 new officers each receiving $15,000. An additional $150,000 would go toward other incentives, such as housing, education and child care, according to a proposed budget from the mayor’s office.
On top of the incentives, Weinberger proposed spending $200,000 on marketing the department to new officers, which would include working with a recruiting firm.
To pay for the plan, the mayor wants to rely on nearly $1 million the city saved last year because the police department failed to meet its goals for hiring and retaining officers — if the employee count decreases, so does the payroll.
The plan isn’t entirely taxpayer-funded, as $150,000 would come from the Queen City Police Foundation, a nonprofit that provides financial support to the Burlington Police Department.
Despite their different priorities, not all Progressives were wholly against the rebuilding plan. Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1 — one of two Progressives who voted to raise the authorized headcount last fall — said the department should be more selective about which methods it uses to boost its ranks.
“Maybe we just try one thing first, like the bonus, or the additional incentives, or the recruitment firm,” Hightower said at Monday night’s meeting.
Then, Hightower said, the department could repurpose the money saved by scaling back its recruiting efforts to fully fund the policing alternatives — in particular, the “social-service crisis team.”
Also called the “crisis response team” or “CAHOOTS Model,” the crisis team would respond to incidents that deal with mental health or substance use disorders, and would not carry weapons. The program — based on one pioneered in Eugene, Oregon, and explicitly mentioned in the June 2020 resolution — would aim to lower the likelihood that police officers would use unnecessary force in situations that advocates say are better suited for mental health workers.
The crisis team is one of three alternative policing programs in Burlington that have picked up speed in recent months. The department has also hired community service officers (unarmed employees who — among other tasks — direct traffic, do paperwork, and issue tickets in response to noise or open alcohol container violations), and community support liaisons (mental health workers embedded in the department).
The mayor’s budget would allocate money to hire more of each position — something that City Council President Karen Paul made note of on Monday night.
“I think, at least based on what I’ve heard, that those who have been to these meetings and have given substantive comments, that those have been incorporated,” the Ward 6 Democrat said.
Yet some councilors would like to see more investment in the crisis team. The current budget proposal allotted $400,000 toward the fledgling program, much less than the $1 million bids the city received from social service agencies willing to perform the work.
Weinberger said his office approached the state about obtaining a matching grant to fill the funding gap, and received “considerable interest” in the idea. But that hasn’t yet translated into any commitment of state money for the program.
“We don’t have clarity on exactly where we go from here,” Weinberger told the Board of Finance. “We’re actively working on it.”
To Hightower and Dieng, though, the state grant has no bearing on whether the city should proceed with the program. Between the two roughly million-dollar proposals — the crisis team and the rebuilding plan — the city knows it will get public safety services from one of the expenditures and not the other, Hightower argued.
“This has been like a key cornerstone of how we’ve talked about changing public safety,” Hightower said. “It’s hard to make a decision from our side when one is sure and one isn’t.”
