“50-1005A. ACCUMULATION OF FUND BALANCES. Cities may accumulate fund balances at the end of a fiscal year and carry over such fund balances into the ensuing fiscal year sufficient to achieve or maintain city operations on a cash basis. A fund balance is the excess of the assets of a fund over its liabilities and reserves.”

As you can see, there is no requirement for a plebicite. Nor are there limitations or prohibitions to accumulating funds for a capital project such as a new headquarters for the BPD.

The Horse Patrol was ENORMOUSLY expensive. It was a pet project and lasted because it was high profile (used mostly only during big public events)and great for PR. The costs associated with horses, feed, officers who ONLY did horse work, a Sgt. to oversee ONLY horse work, veterinarian contracts, trailers, saddles, tack, barn, trucks to pull the trailers, oodles of training, etc. and over the years, I don’t think anyone could justify keeping the unit in use.

Add too, that the horses, bought and paid for by the City, were GIVEN to the officers who rode them upon time to retire the animal. Cha-ching and it keeps on going.

The Sergeant and officers involved in the Horse patrol unit didn’t leave the dept. They went right on doing police work. See, they weren’t deemed to be expensive….just the horse accoutrements.

My understanding of the 8 new employees hired to deal with non-emergency complaints is that they are NOT officers, but civilian employees. This is significantly less expensive than hiring sworn personnel.

I disagree that police is underfunded. They could have had a new facility more than a decade ago, IF they had been willing to settle for something less than the Taj Mahal. In hindsight, what was proposed at that time (the purchase, reconfiguration and remodel of the old Ada Court facility at Barrister)probably looks like a good thing. They wanted something more and better and bigger and grander. I don’t necessarily think that is the situation now, present administration considered. However, indicision is expensive. Sometimes even a bad decision is cheaper than the lack of any.

What were or are the roadblocks to building on the currently held properties? I think people would support a bond issue for an appropriate facility, but sitting an vacant land and waiting to build later can’t be saving any money. The prices of construction materials go up almost every day (we’re blowing a lot of stuff up in a few places, and the consumer culture has gone global) so the price of the project will continue to climb with unnecessary delays.

Seems like the City, CCDC, BGAD, etc. always spend more time marketing Idaho than simply providing basic services and really improving the quality of life. Adequate police facilities, code enforcement and animal control are always tops concerns identified by neighborhood association and City surveys, yet these services are obviously underfunded and otherwise not adequately supported by the administration. Some of the most cost effective (in terms of neighborhood contact) strategies for community policing were abandoned by the City. Many neighborhood annex stations were closed and neighborhood officers reassigned or had positions consolidated. We had to get rid of the horse patrol ‘cause it’s too dang spendy. But the City is hiring eight new officers to deal with non-emergency complaints, so that’s something.

The current situation seems pretty messed up. But it’s probably not totally due to shifty deals on behalf of prior or current City officials. We the people often want it all, now, and for free. And frankly, this state beats all for the trait of being tight fisted for basic services.

Certainly more transparency is in order, but here are the numbers from the 2006 State of the City report. Not sure where the slush fund fits into this, but you can see that police services already get a big chunk of the pie. Perhaps those funds could be better utilized, but we often get what we pay for.

Boise By Numbers
• Fiscal Year 2007 general fund budget:
$140,349,728
• Fiscal Year 2007 total budget:
$304,011,242
• General fund expenditures by department:
– Police: 29%
– Fire: 23%
– Parks & Recreation: 12%
– Intergovernmental: 10%
– Planning and Development: 6%
– Library: 4%
– Contracts: 3%
– Finance and Administration: 3%
– Legal: 3%
– Public Works: 3%
– Information Technology: 2%
– Human Resources: 1%
– Mayor and City Council: 1%

It certainly is a big enough problem though, that the Mayor and Council should have a concrete proposal and be at least working towards a solution. It wasn’t identified as a priority in the SOC report, but rightly should have been

Maybe Team Dave should hire Stan “the man” Olsen to pass bond elections.

This slush fund G has revealed goes beyond a single year budget because it is long term “spending, debt,” and with no specific appropriation for a specific project or cost. Anyway you cut it sir, it is a slush fund.

I agree with G that it would be good to have a commission – either temporary or permanent – to give the city some direction on this. I don’t like the apparent indecision.

This group of city leaders know little about leading and even less about sound fiscal policy. They seem to be very good at acting like they involve the public but then set the agenda and the outcome – like the Blueprint to goofy growth and the “let’s-grab-even-more-money” billion dollars regional transit tax increase.

The Police need better facilities so that they can do their job of protecting the public. So far the mayor and council have purchased lots of very valuable property with taxpayer funds but have done nothing with it, such as building new Police station sub-divisions.
The Mayor, council and Police Chief need to get together on this right now and city government has to stop catering to land speculators to enlarge their personal kitty.

A police Commission of interested Citizens would be a solid step forward towards accomplishing what the police need, such as the best facilities and the best equipment and what the People want … a City government and police department that is totally responsive to the needs of the Community .