SHAMOKIN - Crime reportedly plummeted in the city over a five-year period studied for Shamokin's Act 47 plan, and those statistics are referenced in support of recommendations to ditch mandatory staffing requirements and close the department for four hours overnight.
The crime rate fell 68.8 percent between 2009 and 2013 compared to the five years prior, and this was in spite of three unfilled vacancies within the Shamokin Police Department.
The results are a statistical anomaly compared to Coal Township, which surrounds the one-square-mile city, with populated areas nearly indistinguishable from each other. The township's rate fell, too, but at 22.4 percent the decline was less severe. Bolstered by the city's own stats, the countywide crime rate dropped 36.3 percent.
Regardless of whether Shamokin's crime rate tumbled as reported to the state's Unified Crime Reporting System, or if the stats are flawed as suggested by the city's mayor, the result is that the authors of the preliminary Act 47 plan - financial consultants contracted by the state Department of Community and Economic Development - used the data to find ways to cut department spending.
But the suggestions for city council aren't based solely on tallying crime reports. It's the city's financial future driving the plan's initiatives.
Deficits mounting
City Hall's single largest expenditure is personnel costs. The price of public service in 2015 is estimated at $2.26 million, or 78.4 percent of total city spending. The department with the costliest budget is the police at $1,23 million - 91.6 percent of it for personnel.
Revenues, in turn, can't keep pace with continued increases in salaries, benefits and insurances as evidenced by the $2.2 million in cumulative deficits built up during the five years studied. It came to a head in 2013 when, as if out of thin air, more than $811,000 in past due bills appeared - mountains of stationery amassed inside two overburdened folders.
Should nothing change - no benefits curtailed, no taxes raised, no radical changes in how public services are delivered, emergency or otherwise - deficits will continue, according to the plan. Shamokin will overspend its collective budgets by an estimated $4.4 million between 2015 and 2020 - double the cumulative deficit that got Shamokin to this point in the first place.
And so the financial consultants sought ways for the city to pull itself together and perhaps come out of Act 47 ahead by $500,000 when the calendar turns to 2020.
Proposals
Adopt Home Rule government. Increase and maintain the Earned Income Tax at 1.5 percent. Negotiate union contracts favorable to city budgets. Freeze spending for all 25 employees. Reduce paid time off. Eliminate pensions. Limit city costs for employee and retiree health care. Raise the salary of the city clerk and hire an administrative secretary. (Sure to be a head-scratcher to a majority of citizens considering all the suggested cuts.) Apply for grants. Focus on increased employee output and decreased manual process. Explore consolidation of police, public works and other services with Coal Township.
Scratch the surface of the preliminary Act 47 plan and what you get is listed above. Sweeping changes are suggested, and no department is excluded.
Among 18 proposed initiatives for the police are the aforementioned daily closing of the department between 3 and 7 a.m. when call volume was found to bottom out. State troopers and Coal Township police could handle emergencies, the plan suggests, while non-emergencies would wait for the day shift.
It's suggested the minimum staffing requirement be eliminated. As it stands, no less than two officers are mandated by union contract to be on duty each shift. Instead, two officers are recommended to work at the same time only between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. when call volume peaks.
Among the other mandates of the union contract is that no part-time officers be hired. The Act 47 plan says that should end. Overtime neared $75,900 in 2013, more than double the $36,942 budgeted. To reduce overtime and avoid the costs of health and retirement benefits for full-time positions, part-timers are encouraged.
Reducing the department from its current 10-man roster to eight men is also suggested, but not immediately, at least not through layoffs. Attrition is suggested. Should a current officer leave the job, council is advised to allow that position to remain vacant. It's not unprecedented. Four officers have retired since 2008 and none have been replaced.
More revenue
The primary initiatives when it come to the police department under Act 47 may appear the most drastic in a community where, despite the reported drop in crime, many are convinced otherwise.
When city council voted to lay off two police officers in December 2013, City Hall's public meeting room filled to capacity. The crowd lined the long staircase and spilled onto the sidewalk along Lincoln Street. Hundreds showed to support the department and its officers amid fear the city was increasingly dangerous. They cited elements of drugs and violence. City council members were chastised for their decisions, and the furloughed officers returned to work in less than a month.
The suggestions for the police department among others can be avoided, but it will come at a cost, as the plan states.
A Northumberland County judge will first be asked to approve a hike of the Earned Income Tax to 1.5 percent, which would generate an estimated $3.9 million in additional tax revenue through 2019.
Millions more in tax dollars will keep the department's doors open 24/7, prevent the elimination of minimum staffing requirements that keeps two policemen on duty each shift, and stave off the suggested cut of two patrolman positions over time, according to the plan.
Willing to pay?
But the tax rate can only stay above 1 percent while Shamokin is an Act 47 community. The preliminary plan, as it's written, will allow voters to value for themselves, at least in the short-term, the cost of police protection as it's currently organized. Are they comfortable with essentially authorizing a tax increase themselves to pay for it in 2020 and beyond? City council is recommended to ask that very question, albeit framed differently at the polls.
The proposed rate is a 50 percent hike on what taxpayers currently pay. For example, a city resident earning the median salary of $20,294 would have $304.41 deducted from their pay over a full year, an increase of $101.47. The larger the income, the higher the increase.
Should Shamokin's voting public approve abolishing the city charter and rewriting a new plan under a Home Rule form of government, City Hall can maintain the Earned Income Tax at 1.5 percent.
City council members will meet at a special town hall-style meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday inside a space larger than City Hall - the Northumberland County Career and Arts Center at Eighth and Arch streets. State officials and the plan's authors are expected to attend. An explanation will be given for the suggestions, and for Shamokin's potential economic recovery. The public will be given the chance to voice its opinions.
Shamokin's belt has long needed tightening - no one can argue that at this point - and the plan's authors are the first in some time to give it a forceful tug. It will be up to city council, however, to decide how to fasten the clasp and hold it in place.