As was noted in an earlier post LRCH plans on using some of this $31 million that the 5/8ths permanent tax increase (specifically from $5.5 to 6 million) to pay for new positions. As was quoted in that AR Gazette article, that the post cited....
"Part of the $31.6 million would go to the Police Department to fill 40 vacant officer positions, hire 12 new officers and retain 27 officers currently funded by federal grants."
Here is some of the devil in the details here. In that earlier post we detailed that the financial officer down at the LR police Dept. indicated that the money needed for presently vacant positions is in fact FULLY FUNDED by the present budgets. Oops, according to the quote then that removes 40 of the positions above, because we do not need to pay higher taxes for these positions because our present tax revenue is paying for these positions....
So this means that we really only plan to pay for 39 to 40 newly funded position. And we are being asked to raise our taxes by $5.5 to $6 million for these 40 new positions. So lets do the math here...
If we take $5.5 million and divide it by 40...we get ~$140K per position...REALLY!!! We are paying $140K/year for a rookie police officer....HUH?????
So lets take their #s at their max of 79...guess what, we are then still paying a rookie cop ~$70 K a year. Now what was that part about a police officer not being payed well????
Looks more like to me....a champagne party with a beer budget (they are coming up a little short...so who do you think they are tapping for the over-charge...YOU AND ME!!!)???
You are about as informed as you are intelligent...as the girlfriend of a LR police officer, I can tell you that the starting salary of a LR police officer is less than $40,000 a year. And if the tax does not pass, they will be letting at least 45 of the most junior officers go. That is over the last 4 classes of graduating officers from the Academy!
ReplyDeleteInstead of trying to attack a tax which is more than likely going to pass, try attacking those city hall members that have mismanaged our tax money so poorly that it has put the city in this position! What happened to the $2 million dollars that was supposed to go towards buying two new trollies? It vanished into thin air? Why are we building a new bridge to an island that nobody really cares about? Go for the council members and you can go after the tax that way.
Anonymous..criticism taken, I get that a lot....and in some cases they may be right.
ReplyDeleteYet in this case most of the post was taken from the chief and the city's own handout. Just took the money they said these officers were going to cost and divided it by 53 or 79, minimum result...$80K, simple division. And I repeat...I used THEIR numbers.
As for an officers pay...we have the data to support the statement that even a beginning officer is being "compensated" at a much higher rate than "less than $40K/yr". We compensate our Little Rock Police officers handsomely for a difficult job that they have all been made very aware of by their trainers. They take the job with FULL disclosure. It is a bit inappropriate to be told what you are going to do and how much you are going to make and then AFTER you get on the job you start complaining about the your compensation.
But we will just have to agree to disagree.
Have a nice day