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Intern builds interactive calculator to estimate cost of scaling Acton police and fire services
Summary
Ian Ryan presented a spreadsheet-based cost calculator that estimates staffing gaps, per-position costs and property-tax impacts for proposed additions to police and fire departments, and compared those costs to other capital projects.
Ian Ryan, an intern and rising junior, presented a spreadsheet-based cost calculator that estimates the fiscal impact of scaling Acton’s police and fire staffing and compares recurring costs to existing capital projects.
Ryan said the tool combines local variables — population, hiring costs, salary and benefits estimates, asset lifespans and department capacity thresholds — to produce an annualized fiscal implication and a per-household or per-property assessed-value cost. He noted the police department’s current staffing is about 1.79 officers per 1,000 residents and referenced a capacity threshold range of 2.0–2.5 officers per 1,000.
The calculator shows the incremental cost to add positions (salary, benefits, training, equipment and overtime assumptions) and then amortizes those costs over configurable periods with an adjustable discount rate. For example, Ryan said a sample scenario produced an annualized cost that would be presented alongside four large capital projects (new DPW building, North Acton fire station, a school campus project and the Complete Streets initiative) so the committee can compare relative scale.
Ryan said most inputs are editable — including inflation, benefits assumptions and assessed property values — and that the model is intended as a transparency tool to stimulate informed trade-off discussions between departmental needs and budget constraints. Committee members praised the model’s approach and asked about factoring asset lifecycles (fire apparatus, vehicles and buildings); Ryan said an asset module could be added to incorporate equipment replacement schedules and amortization.
The presentation included quotations from national responses to recent incidents to underscore risk: Ryan quoted a Fall River firefighter and the International Association of Fire Fighters president to illustrate the safety consequences of understaffing in other communities and said the tool is intended to avoid similar outcomes by informing incremental budgeting decisions.
