In discussing the proposed annual budget for 2019-2010, The Upland City Council at its meeting on Monday of this week gave indication that other than hiring a single unsworn assistant at the police department in the coming fiscal year and perhaps making a promotion of a sergeant or detective into a soon-to-be vacant lieutenant’s position, the police department will not likely fill any of its ten remaining  unfilled berths, nine of which are police officer positions.
After Mayor Debbie Stone indicated she had a “question about adding or reclassifying new positions at the police department,” acting City Manager Rosemary Hoerning said, “As part of the budget process, Chief [Darrell] Goodman looked at his organization and he said,  you know, he could freeze four positions within the police budget, but there were a couple positions that he needed in order to facilitate his operations. He could speak to that, but those two new employees are embedded in this ask for additional staff as part of his overall budget. He’s actually frozen some positions he feels he won’t be able to fill at this time and would like to revisit those the next budget cycle if there’s money permitting.”
Goodman told the council that he was prepared to live within a budget for 2019-2020 that had been pared back from four anticipated hirings to one over the next year.
“The positions are varied,” Goodman said. “One is a lieutenant position and it’s based on the fact we have a pending vacancy there based on future promotion, so I’ll freeze that position The other positions are based on officers positions that have not been filled for the last couple of years.  We’re currently at nine vacancies.  And while the hope is to always fill those positions, the reality is we’ve been trying to ever since I got here, and it just takes time. So looking at trying to help the budget situation, I can realistically project that we will not fill nine positions in the next twelve months if we haven’t been able to fill them in the last 24. So, it’s reasonable to suggest that at least two of those positions, which is what we agreed to, can be frozen, not eliminated, but frozen for this next fiscal year. The fourth is a dispatcher lead position. We have two of those that have not been filled, and we have not used either of them, so again, for cost savings, we have agreed to freeze that position as well. The other thing that should be mentioned along with this is a lot of this is being supplemented or helped by the salaries savings that we have contributed by not having those positions filled to the tune of almost $2.3 million. So that factors in as well.”
The city will hire a police service technician in 2019-2020 at a cost of $59,788.
-Mark Gutglueck