South KC Perspective
By John Sharp
The proposed KCMO city budget for fiscal year 2024-25 running from May 1, 2024, through April 30, 2025, submitted to the city council February 8 by Mayor Quinton Lucas and City Manager Brian Platt contains funding recommendations that should be welcome news to many residents, while at least one may raise serious concerns.
The budget must be approved by the city council by March 28.
There will be a public budget hearing from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, February 24, at Southeast Community Center, 4201 E. 63rd St., and one at the same time Saturday, March 2, in the Council Chambers on the 26th floor of City Hall, 414 E. 12th St., with free parking at the Wolfe Garage at 11th & Oak and a virtual link posted at KCMO.GOV/BUDGET.
Persons can also email their feedback on the budget to publictestimony@kcmo.org and put “proposed budget” on the subject line.
The $2.273 billion dollar submitted budget represents a 10.3% increase over the current fiscal year’s budget.
Recommendations expected to have widespread support include:
- Increasing funding by $8.1 million for a cleaner city including purchasing 170,000 lidded and wheeled trash carts for residences in the city to be added to the city’s current recycling carts. The trash carts will allow more trash to be set out for curbside pickup without a fee since they will hold more trash than the current two-bag limit which should reduce illegal dumping. The carts will also prevent animals from ripping up trash bags to get food scraps which is a major problem in some neighborhoods.
- Providing in accordance with the city’s current 5-year business plan $40 million in general obligation bond authority for capital improvements such as street resurfacing, which resulted in a record number of 469.4 lane miles resurfaced in FY 22-23, and $7.5 million in bond funding for sidewalk repairs and accessible curb ramps. The submitted budget includes an additional $7.2 million dedicated to sidewalk improvements around schools.
- Allocating $31 million ($5.3 million per council district) in capital improvements sales tax funding for neighborhood conservation projects such as park, sidewalk, storm drainage and street improvements. Neighborhood projects funded by the sales tax are analyzed by the citizen volunteers who serve on the city’s Public Improvements Advisory Committee and recommended to the City Council for approval.
- Investing $1 million for planting trees on public property to be added to the over 3,000 already planted in year two of the city’s three-year effort to plant 10,000 trees.
- Providing $7 million for violence prevention and intervention through the Health Department including $1 million from the recreational marijuana sales tax and $6 million as the second year allocation of a $30 million five-year commitment by the city to fund violence prevention and intervention.
- Increasing pay for all police officers and, as outlined in the mayor’s State of the City speech on February 7 when he said violence remains the city’s greatest challenge, increasing the starting pay for officers from $50,000 to $65,000 and providing a $2,500 hiring and retention incentive for all 911 call takers and dispatchers.
Following the mayor’s State of the City address, Police Chief Stacey Graves said, “I am thankful for the mayor’s words of support and value placed on public safety in our city. I want to acknowledge the great progress our department and city have made in collaborating to ensure our members are a priority in this year’s budget.”
The salary increases, coupled with last year’s elimination by the Missouri General Assembly of the outdated state salary caps on officers of all ranks, should greatly improve the department’s ability to recruit and retain officers since many area law enforcement agencies now pay their officers significantly more; don’t dispatch them from call to call to call due to staff shortages; and don’t expose them to as much risk of violence due to their much lower violent crime rates.
However, while significantly increasing the department’s overall budget primarily due to salary increases, the submitted budget does not include funding for more officers which impacts police response times.
Even with the department’s newly implemented 11-hour shift schedule designed to put more officers on the streets during the times when there is a high volume of violent crime, it is unlikely officers can often arrive at the scene of a crime of short duration such as a robbery in time to stop it and apprehend the subject.
However, on crimes such as domestic violence that often escalate over a longer period of time, prompt police response can be life-saving.
Also, when a victim of violent crime survives a gunshot, cutting or stabbing and suffers an arterial bleed, they only have a few minutes to survive without medical help.
Emergency medical personnel will not enter a violent crime scene unless they are reasonably assured it is safe. Sometimes they can see for themselves if it is an outdoor scene, and sometimes they can be assured it is safe from the 911 caller, but if they aren’t reasonably assured of their safety they will drive toward the scene but park a block or two away until law enforcement arrives to secure the scene.
The median response time by the department’s patrol bureau for fiscal year 2022-23 reported in the submitted budget was 7.45 minutes and seconds for top priority calls. The estimated median response time for next fiscal year in the city budget is 7.50 minutes and seconds. Obviously, some responses take much longer.
If you add the one or two minutes it takes emergency medical personnel to enter the scene after police officers arrive in even the median response time and declare it safe, it will too late to save some victims that could have survived with prompt medical treatment.