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Police chief asks council to fund four patrol officers to sustain staffing levels
Summary
Chief Mitchell told the council that four approved but unfunded officer positions are in the academy and urged the city to fund those positions—using attrition-based salary savings if necessary—to maintain a 10-officer-per-shift baseline as the city and special events grow.
Chief Mitchell presented the police department's FY26 request and said four officer positions had been approved as headcount but not funded in the salary line. He told the council those positions are in the academy now and projected to be finished with field training in the spring, and said the department aims to preserve 10 officers on shift while assessing long-term staffing needs.
"We have 4,481 calls, for that month," Chief Mitchell said while explaining call-volume metrics, and added, "and it says a response time 1 minute and 28 seconds." He said the 4 unfunded positions are counted in the department's full-time headcount (moving the total from 84 to 88) but clarified the salaries had not yet been budgeted and that the department planned to use salary savings from attrition to pay cadet salaries as openings occur.
Council members pressed for operational detail: whether the new officers would increase the number of officers on patrol or be cannibalized into specialty units. Chief Mitchell said the four currently in the academy would be assigned to patrol once they complete field training and that future organizational decisions would depend on the number of certified officers available and ongoing attrition. He said he intends to re-submit a request for four additional positions in the department's multi-year strategic plan.
The chief and staff said they will monitor monthly personnel and budget status and return with a budget amendment if salary-savings are insufficient. City staff described prior practice of budgeting a salary-savings assumption and estimated historical savings in the police department had been "hundreds of thousands of dollars."
