HPOU President Hans Marticiuc wrote a letter to Mayor Lee Brown concerning the proposed property tax rollback and budget cuts in the department.

The Honorable Lee P. Brown
P.O. Box 1562
Houston, Texas 77002

Dear Mayor Brown:

On behalf of the citizens we are sworn to protect and the Houston police officers we represent, it is our hope that neither you nor your colleagues on city council vote to cut the current property tax rate. Our request is based on the reality that delivery of police services will greatly suffer if a roll-back attempt is successful.

Acting Police Chief Joe Breshears and his executive staff assembled a prioritized list of reductions that would be implemented if the current tax rate is reduced. It is important to note that each of the recommendations will mean serious service cuts for people who rely on public safety services from the Houston Police Department.

The nature of these service cuts will most obviously appear in the following areas: difficulty in maintaining existing response time standards, reduced ability to proactively interdict crime and disorder, reduced community service programming, possible elimination of unique crime and disorder problem solving initiatives, and an impaired ability to maintain existing levels of follow-up criminal investigations. The primary reason for these service reductions will be directly related to removing police officers from the field to back-fill critical job functions that have been performed by civilian personnel. Thus, we will not only be experiencing service cuts, but we will be expending more money (via salary differences) by having classified police officers performing administrative responsibilities.

The proposed reductions within the Houston Police Department are as follows:

Level One ($4,016,155)

- Eliminate the December ‘03 and February ‘04 Cadet Classes. (This will effectively kill all the needed back-fill police positions that the department will need to replace retirees who will be leaving during FY ‘04)
- Layoff 93 Police Service Officers. (Vacated essential PSO positions will be replaced by police officer positions from throughout HPD) Voluntary furloughs or layoff 12 civilian employees from selected divisions.

Level Two ($8,032,311)

- Layoff 243 Jail Attendants and Senior Jail Attendants. (Replacements will be classified police officers from all areas of the department).

Level Three ($12,048,466)

- Mandatory four-day furlough for all employees. (In lieu of laying off 155 police officers, the mandatory four-day furlough will result in the loss of approximately 28,000 full days of productivity.)

 [The HPOU Legal Staff is of the opinion the City lacks the requisite legal authority to implement a mandatory four-day furlough]

Additionally, during today's Fiscal Affairs Committee meeting, Dr. Philip Scheps of the Finance and Administration Department mentioned the average personnel costs in the city were approximately 76% of a respective department's budget. According to administrators in our department, the personnel cost in HPD make up approximately 96% of the overall general fund budget costs.

Therefore, the issue of cuts that are imposed on the Houston Police Department are going to be directly connected to cutting people and positions who provide basic police services.

When this occurs, the patrol force (i.e., where most of the primary services are provided) is always the area that is negatively impacted the most. It is important to note that department staffing, especially patrol staffing in southwest and west Houston, is marginal, at best, and it is not unusual for large numbers of emergency calls to be holding due to the understaffing. Unfortunately, the tax roll-back consequences will only make that situation worse and exacerbate the problem of having patrol officers meet existing service demands emanating from the various neighborhoods throughout the city.

Please be advised if the city's current revenue deficit continues, further budget cuts and service reductions will likely occur beyond those prompted by the possible tax rollback scenario.

We welcome any suggestions you or your colleagues may have with respect to helping us avoid the potential public safety service cuts the tax roll-back will cause. Our fear is that the issue of supporting a symbolic tax reduction policy decision will actually be outweighed by the detriment to the community that these cuts will create. That would be a travesty of unprecedented proportions that should not occur!

Sincerely,

Hans H. Marticiuc
President

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