CLEARLAKE – The Clearlake Police Department is facing another round of downsizing if the Clearlake City Council votes at its Thursday meeting to accept several proposed budget measures.
The meeting will start at 6 p.m. at Clearlake City Hall, 14050 Olympic Drive.
Clearlake City Administrator Dale Neiman is proposing to scale back city staff in the coming fiscal year by a total of 9.5 equivalent positions, 5.5 of them in the police department, as Lake County News has reported.
The city's Proposition P sales tax measure, which helps fund the police department, is expected to have a negative fund balance of just over $204,000 on June 30, according to the report Neiman will present to the council on Thursday.
If the council accepts Neiman's suggestions, the positions in the police department that will go away include a lieutenant and a sergeant position, and three police officers. A full-time sergeant's position would be replaced with a half-time officer. The savings would total just over $482,000.
Neiman told Lake County News that three of those positions currently are vacant; two became vacant last September and another about a month ago.
The 2006-07 City budget authorized 28 full-time equivalent sworn police officers; the number of sworn officers dropped to 23 in the 2009-10 budget, Neiman said.
For the 2010-11 fiscal year, the number of sworn officers would drop to 17.5. If the city's redevelopment plan isn't approved, Neiman proposes to cut another officer to save an additional $70,250. That would reduce the sworn officers to 16.5.
Neiman said the city's boundaries encompass 10.1 square miles. A recent state Department of Finance report gave the city's most recent population estimate at 14,385.
If all of the cuts are approved, Clearlake Police would have only about three officers more than the city of Lakeport.
At Lakeport Police, the department has 13 sworn officer positions, 12 of which are filled, said Lt. Brad Rasmussen.
Lakeport's officers patrol a city that is roughly three square miles, said Rasmussen. The state estimated that Lakeport had 5,140 residents last year.
Clearlake's current officer to resident ratio, based on the number of filled positions, is one officer for every 719 citizens. If the cuts are approved, that ratio would increase to one officer per 871 residents. Lakeport's officer to resident ratio is one officer to 428 citizens.
According to the most recent report on police departments around the United State produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics – which is located within the United States Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs – the average ratio of full-time officers for cities with populations of 2,500 to 9,999 is 2.2 officers per 1,000 residents, putting Lakeport just slightly above average.
However, for cities with populations of 10,000 to 24,999, the average ratio is 2 officers per 1,000 residents, which means Clearlake – based on current staffing and the three vacancies – is about eight officers below the total number of 28 sworn officers it would need to be at an average level.
If all of the cuts are approved, that disparity would grow to 11.5 officers below the national average.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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