Updated, 3:46 p.m., financial figures
NORWALK, Conn. – The mood has changed to a sigh of relief at Norwalk’s Board of Estimate and Taxation, where the need to cut $500,000 from next year’s operating budget has been replaced with an apparent $500,000 worth of breathing room.
It now appears that the 2014-15 operating budget will come in $514,000 under the cap set by the Common Council, Finance Director Thomas Hamilton and Director of Management and Budgets Bob Barron said Wednesday. That is due to the expected $500,000 surplus in this year’s Board of Education budget, a $513,000 reduction in expenses for city health benefits and an additional $110,000 expected in state revenue, minus additions to the budget that were made during the BET’s Wednesday’s meeting, Hamilton said.
Among other things, this means the Norwalk Police Department will get all of the new vehicles it requested, BET Chairman Jim Clark said.
“We were in a landscape that is very different from what we have now, even from just a week ago,” Clark said. “… We were asking the chief ‘Would you rather have cars or no school resource officer?’ We were asking very hard questions. We don’t even like asking those questions because they are providing important services to the public. Now that we have a little more breathing room, and I will ask others to weigh in, I have no problem with honoring that request.”
Norwalk Police Chief Thomas Kulhawik has requested eight new SUV’s and two used vehicles to be used by detectives, an expense of $264,300. Clark said he wanted a forecast of needed vehicle replacements over the next five years. Barron said he had drafted a schedule, not approved by Kulhawik yet, that would in six years reduce the number of years the department would keep vehicles from the current five year life expectancy to four years. Mayor Harry Rilling said keeping a police vehicle for five years reaches a point of diminishing returns, as $15,000 is spent on repairs in the last year of service. “It would be more reasonable to auction them when they still have value,” he said. SUV’s are desired because they are higher and have 4-wheel drive, he said. The other option is a Ford Taurus, which is smaller than the Crown Victorias used to be, he said.
“The all-wheel drive version of the Taurus is relatively expensive,” he said. Norwalk Police have lost a couple of vehicles due to water getting into the engines when they were driven through a flood. “This gives us a higher vehicle,” he said. “It gains access to more places, plus it’s much better in the snow.”
He also said police have a policy of giving a new vehicle easier usage for a year by assigning to a ranking officer. “You try to take the newer cars and put them into a function where they don’t get driven that much in the first year,” he said. “… This way you guarantee one year of easy driving up front.”
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