ShawneeDispatch.com

In an effort to make sure the city remains within its budget in the face of a weak economy, the city has held off filling vacant positions — but it’s beginning to show.

“It’s starting to really wear and tear on people,” Carol Gonzales, city manager, told Shawnee City Council members in a committee meeting last week. “… It’s saving us some money, but it’s not really a good place to be.”

The city has delayed filling 23 vacant employee positions, but it is the six unfilled openings in the Police Department that Gonzales said are becoming a real concern. All of the city’s openings largely are due to attrition, retirements or people moving on to other careers, Gonzales said.

The Police Department’s vacancies are hitting its patrol staff. The department runs three patrol shifts with six to 10 officers per shift, and it is operating on minimum staffing at times, though Lt. Bill Hisle, public information officer, said the city was still safe.

“We are currently meeting minimum staffing, and we will continue to do so, because that is our main priority,” Hisle said.

Hisle said the department had cut back on the amount of ongoing training its officers receive in order to keep the shift positions filled. Officers in other divisions also have been moved to patrol to keep shifts covered.

“We’re not going to work short-handed and leave the public at risk,” Hisle said.

The problem with filling the vacancies is it is an almost 10-month process to train a new employee to get them on the streets. New officers spend four months in the police academy, about a month of orientation training around the department, and then four to five months in a field-training program with a field-training officer.

“So if you hire a guy on Jan. 1, we hope (to) have him going on (duty) Sept. 1 or mid-September,” Hisle said.

So the city is doing what it can to fill the open patrol spots. Three officers are now in the field-training program, one who will finish in December, another in January and another in March. Another officer has been hired and will start training in a few weeks — but that means he won’t be ready for patrol duty until August.

If someone came from another department and was already familiar with the area and how to book people in the Johnson County jail, it would cut back training time to about four months, Hisle said.

So, should other area cities start to lay off police officers, finding experienced employees could help; but Hisle said he doesn’t know of any other cities that have resorted to laying off officers yet.

Another part of the problem is Shawnee’s Police Department hasn’t expanded in six years; it has had a maximum of 89 employees since then, 45 in patrol, so even if there were no vacancies, the department couldn’t handle maximum staffing levels at all times.

“Even with every position filled, by the time you talk about vacation, sick time, training time — all those things take away,” Hisle said.

Another issue compounding problems is the department has two officers who are injured. One of them ought to be back in a couple of weeks, Hisle said, but the other may not be back for months.

“That just kind of adds to the difficulty we’re facing,” he said.

With closer to the minimum number of officers per shift, officers have been so busy responding to calls that they haven’t had as much time to seek out offenders like speeders, part of the reason the city’s revenues from the Municipal Court are down $30,000.

Holding positions vacant isn’t all the city has done to save money. At last week’s meeting, Gonzales reminded Council members that the city has cut its mill and overlay program reduced its bridge repair program and canceled or pushed back projects.

The city also will have a smaller snow removal program this winter and has cut down its mowing in rights of way, deferred replacement of computers and other equipment and implemented “green” policies with cost savings, like cutting down on vehicle idling and even the use of lights and other electrical consumers in City Hall.

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