Eric Bartkus Lowell City Council

As mentioned in other articles, I took off work on a Monday afternoon this past summer to attend the annual 2 hour budget review meeting. It was interesting to watch how Mike Burns and the council go through the budget for next year. I was the only non-council person in the room. It was time well spent and I believe they are trying to use your tax dollars wisely.

A careful budget is very important for the taxpayers well-being. Too much spending results in higher taxes/debts that hurt residents and businesses. Too little spending causes cuts to services and equipment problems. Lowell has some large financial needs (street rebuilding, unfunded employee pension liability and possible water plant expansions) and careful budgeting must continue. The next decade is critical to continue watching spending and budgeting well.

I am an engineer and have always studied the details in life, including my finances. I completed my own taxes until just a few years ago. I have been “CFO” for both of my businesses, Bartkus Engineering and Ability Weavers, and have been careful with the revenue and spending to keep them both successful.

If elected to city council, I will help guide the city budget as if it were my own money. Mike Burns and Sue Olin are experts in good budgets, but I will offer suggestions and ask questions at every opportunity.

I did not ask any questions at this past budget review, but am listing below some example questions/comments I would have asked if on the board.

I am going to concentrate on the police department budget, as it is the largest expense ($1 M) in the $4 M general fund budget. These are for example only. I haven’t asked Chief Hurst or Mike Burns about these and am sure there are good answers for all. I fully support the Lowell Police Department!

Eric’s Example Comments/Questions on LPD budget:

1)Eric: Total full time salaries for 8 people increased from 437K to 478K in 2 years for 6 full-time officers, Chief Hurst and a clerk. Very reasonable pay and 4.7% raises for people putting their life on the line every day.

Mike: Salary –  We have a Police Chief, Sergeant who works patrol, three patrol officers, a full time detective and police clerk.   Before 2021, the Detective position worked patrol 24 hours a week and 16 hours a week as a detective.   This was becoming a real problem with our investigations.  Police investigations seem to become more complex and the Prosecutor’s office has more demands on evidence when reviewing whether they will authorize charges in criminal investigations.  This was becoming a real problem for us.  In many instances, on the detectives patrol days they were spending a lot of time doing detective follow up and it was neglecting patrol.  As you know, we have one officer on patrol per shift.  Frankly, this is very low in my opinion but based on the revenue we have this is the best we can do. 

Anyhow, in 2020 we began receiving a $5,000 annual fee for each marijuana facility in the city.  At the moment there are 10 facilities (we lost River City Cannabis recently) who pay this fee.  We also have seen an increased PILOT from Lowell Light and Power due to some King Milling expansion and the grow facilities.  We chose to put these funds to making the detective position full time and add another patrol officer in spring of 2021.  One of the things I do is make sure we can fund the position for five years before I add a position.  I felt confident we could do this so we made the change.

One of the other issues we have is police salaries.  Pay for many of the agencies in Kent County (i.e. GRPD, Walker, KCSO, Kentwood, Grandville etc.) is very well.  They have opportunities and pay we just cannot compete with.  We have lost officers to these agencies and we don’t want our full time officers leaving for these agencies if we can.  We have increased pay quite a bit since I came here.  We could make an argument that our pay is comparable to many rural communities our size.  However, none of those communities are in an urban county where cost of living is higher.  While we have made the changes, we are still on the lower end of pay for police officers in Kent County but I feel comfortable with our structure and believe we need to do what we can to keep our officers here and taken care of.

2)Eric: Temporary officers pay reduced from 84K to 45K in 2 years. Why?

Mike: Temporary Salaries – When I came here in 2016, we had a part time staff of about 10 to 12 officers.  It was a really good set up.  A lot of these officers were less experienced and working for us gave them experiences to be hired full time with us or move on to other agencies full time.  When we lost someone, we very easily hired a new part time officer.  We also had officers who retired full time from other agencies and worked part time for us.  It really worked well.  However, since 2020, the whole dynamic has changed.  These part time officers don’t exist.  New academy recruits are being scooped out of the academy or larger agencies are just sponsoring them and paying them salaries while they train them in the police academy.  We cannot afford this.  Also the retired officers now want nothing to do with law enforcement so that market has evaporated for the most part (I have tried to recruit a few myself).

We currently have 5 part time officers and we rely on really only one right now.  The others are just not filling in the voids we have currently due to their real jobs.  We are about to hire a new part timer just out of the police academy but we are actually paying to activate his certification (something we have not done since I have been here).  When we prepared the budget this year, we looked at completely eliminating part time officers and taking these funds to hire an additional officer full time.  However, I was not comfortable in moving forward this year.  We will be looking at this again next year.  Last year we spent less than we have in this category (significantly) since my arrival.

In fact, we used to have two officers scheduled on the night shift on weekends.  We haven’t been able to staff these in over a year due to this.

3)Eric: What is $4500 for standby labor?

Mike: Standby Pay – Our standby pay is for our police clerk.  She is also technically our dispatcher so we provide standby for her on the weekends if we need her to come in for an emergency.  This has been a standard practice for many years before my arrival.  We budget it but have not actually paid it.

4)Eric: Fuel budget from 16.8K to 20K in 2 years seems low. Why? Hybrids?

Mike: Fuel – We have two patrol vehicles that are now hybrids and we just purchased a third hybrid and are waiting for it.  This has dramatically reduced our fuel budget and has been a very good decision on the Police Chief’s part to do this.

5)Eric: Glad to see $7K spent on improved body cameras, $4.8K on Core technology and $1800 on Tasers

6)Eric: What is $15K budgeted under Contractual?

Mike: Contracting –  We have a number of contracts for our services.  This goes from the subscription service for our police cameras, report writing system, computer systems, copier, cleaning etc.  We had an increase this past year because the police cameras went to a cloud based subscription service.  We had an archaic storage system before this and it also provides greater capabilities including a system for police complainants to provide evidence to us better.  The other big increase is updates to our report writing system.  In the past we had real good price on our maintenance for our report writing system.  The company doesn’t give that good price anymore and we saw a substantial increase.

7)Eric: What are $42K in dispatching services? Can this be brought in-house?

Mike: Dispatching – Years ago, we had our dispatching in house.  I believe in 2007 or 2008 we chose to contract with Kent County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch through the Kent County Dispatch Authority.  I can tell you we have significant savings by contracting this for $42k a year.  You are probably looking at about $400k or more a year operating a dispatch center if we did this ourselves.

8)Eric: Can $5K ammo budget be reduced when $1100 is actual spend?

Mike: Ammunition – The cost of ammunition has skyrocketed in the past few year.  I would rather keep that amount where it is and not spend it.  However, sometimes we get deals where we can buy ammo and supply it for a few years without having to purchase more.  This is why the budgeted amount and the actual amount may vary.

9)Eric: Why has workers comp increased from $6300 to $21000 in 2 years?

Mike: Workers Compensation –  A few years ago we had a number of workers compensation claims that increased our costs quite a bit.  That said, it has gone down some.  Workers Compensation is paid based on a percentage of payroll and the total amount is spread across all funds in the City.  Our costs have been significantly less than budgeted.  However, we will continue to budget very conservatively in this area.

10)Eric: Why has overtime increased from $2800 to $17500 in 2 years?

Mike: Overtime – Due to the lack of part time officers covering open shifts due to sick time, vacation and trainings, we have seen a significant increase in our overtime budget.  In fact, the Chief works an 8 hour patrol shift weekly and is covering a lot of day and evening shifts without overtime.   I think the solution to this is needing to add more full time officers.  However, you are looking at approximately $100 to $150k a year once you pay them, provide them benefits and properly equip them. In my opinion, we really need four more full time officers so we can have two officers per shift daily.  This would require an additional millage to do so, which is something we want to avoid.  However, we are looking in the next few years of trying to add two more.  I believe this might be possible without raising the millage rate.  However, reducing the millage rate will definitely not allow this.

Mike: I should mention, I go through the budget pretty thoroughly about three times a year. I do a deep dive usually in January then in March and near the end of the fiscal year. I also have discussions when necessary with department heads. We change our projections at these times and make changes where necessary so we don’t go over budget. With the exception of spending down fund balance for pension and roads, I have yet to allow expenditures to exceed revenue in the general funds since I arrived in 2016.

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Again these are for example only of how I would study and help guide the next budget.

Before I close I want to address a question I received about the $1 M spent on the police force compared to other cities (Ada township was specifically mentioned). Question: What’s your position on the percentage of the Lowell budget spent on police compared to neighboring cities like Ada?

From Eric: 25% of the general fund is spent on police safety in Lowell which is exactly the same as Allegan, a similar city with a lot more money (see attached). I know that Chief Hurst is very careful with his budget, including buying used vehicles when new was an option. I really appreciate having a dedicated, well-trained police force on call. I lived in the township for 23 years and my 911 calls to the Sheriff sometimes took 20 to 30 minutes. My calls to Lowell took less than 4 minutes. I fully support the Lowell PD !

9/10/23 Addition-Percent of general fund spent on police:

Lowell 25%, Allegan 25%, St. Joseph 33%, Portland 32%, Ionia 45% (police and fire)

The Kent County Sheriff average response time for Cascade township in the fall 2022 was 22 min 50 seconds. (source Cascade twp website). Ada township would I think be higher, coming from the Ball street HQ. I do not support contracting police services to the county. I will carefully study all city spending as if it were my own money.

FYI my Promise 12 further discusses Police, Fire, and other services. Thanks for reading! Eric