Springfield City Council last night passed a $338 million fiscal 2017 budget with a 6-1 vote after council members Kristi Fulnecky and Craig Hosmer failed to secure last-minute funding for the city's Police Department.
Fulnecky, who cast the lone vote in opposition, tried unsuccessfully to amend the budget by over $311,000 to add a handful of new officers to Police payroll ranks.
The move would have provided a recruit officer nonsworn classification.
“Right now, officers in training are included in the authorized number. It gets a little skewed when people say, 'How many officers do you have on the streets?'” Fulnecky said, pointing to the department's authorized sworn staff of 352, which is higher than its actual average sworn staff –
identified last month by Police Chief Paul Williams at 332. “This is a four-year plan the chief had presented. What it does is adds five recruits per year, so eventually, without affecting the budget too much, you can get up to 352 sworn officers.”
Fulnecky's motion to amend was never seconded and withdrawn when Hosmer moved to amend the budget by adding $75,000 to the recruit-classification program. Fulnecky had suggested $75,000 would help fund the classification program before the end of the fiscal year beginning July 1. That money also would have come from a contingency line item.
“This is just an opportunity for us to look at it as a different budgetary item,” Hosmer said. “To me, it makes some sense to segregate recruits from actual sworn officers out on the street.”
City Manager Greg Burris said additional program funds in fiscal 2017, however, would in turn commit roughly $311,000 in fiscal 2018 funding for officer payroll after training - without a dedicated funding source.
The amendment failed by a 4-3 vote with McClure and councilmen Craig Fishel and Justin Burnett voting against it; a total of five affirmative votes are needed for amendments to pass. Mayor Bob Stephens and Councilwoman Jan Fisk were absent from the meeting.
The approved budget is up by $4 million, or about 1 percent, compared to the current year.
The general fund budget – which includes Police, Fire and Building Development Services – was approved at $80.8 million, up 2 percent from $79.1 million in fiscal 2016. Special revenue funds such as the public-safety pension sales tax and the hotel/motel tax are projected to generate $110.8 million under the coming year's budget, while enterprise funds such as the Springfield-Branson National Airport and clean-water services total $78.3 million.
