Disagreement continues over the Greenwood public safety staffing.
During several portions of Oct. 3’s city council meeting, council member Brad Pendleton voiced concerns about staffing at the police and fire departments. Pendleton’s comments eventually led to a public rebuke from Mayor Mark Myers, who accused Pendleton of “not being part of the solution.”
Following the meeting, Pendleton did not respond to multiple requests for an interview to further discuss his comments. The story was delayed several weeks to allow both Pendleton and Myers to elaborate on their comments from that meeting.
The 2023 Greenwood budget adds six new full-time firefighting positions. Last year, officials said they planned to add three new firefighters and three new police officers each year until 2026.
However, the city was able to double the number for next year because of the county’s new .2% economic development income tax that is expected to bring Greenwood roughly $2 million each year.
The police department, though, was allotted three new police officers for 2023. City officials wanted to add more, but Myers says the department doesn’t have the manpower to train more officers. That’s because the department is losing several officers to retirement at the end of this year.
The meeting
During the Oct. 3 meeting, Pendleton first commented about public safety on an ordinance setting the city’s budget and tax rates for 2023. Public safety has been an issue Pendleton has shared concerns about throughout his time on the council.
Though a meet-and-confer committee made up of three council members and public safety officials, Pendleton said eight items were brought forward to help address public safety issues. Two of those eight items made it into the 2023 budget, but the rest did not, he said.
The first, a 7% pay increase for merit police officers and merit firefighters, was designed to bring pay up to comparable rates from other surrounding agencies.
The second was an increase in the fire department’s clothing allowance, as it had been several years since this budget item was increased. Fire department officials asked for it to be raised by $300, and city staff met them halfway, providing an additional $150.
Pendleton said he had reasons for not supporting the budget ordinance, but after talking with first responders, he said it was more than what they usually received. The city still has a long way to go, he said.
Later in meeting, Pendleton brought up public safety again during a discussion on a resolution to petition the state for an appeal of relief from property tax levy limitations. Officials requested the appeal because additional public safety and other staffing levels need to be adjusted to maintain the current level of service to the population, according to city documents.
Pendleton said he acknowledged the petition would allow the city to attempt to bridge that gap. He continued, saying the levy appeal is also needed because the city keeps rezoning and adding more residential developments — making reference to the council’s approval of a 519-unit senior living development. Pendleton voted against that development and has voted against developments citing public safety staffing concerns.
“I’ll support (the ordinance) if that’s how we’re gonna get more police and firefighters, but I kind of feel like that’s a self-inflicted wound that we’ve created there,” Pendleton said.
Myers responds to Pendleton
Myers rebuked Pendleton’s comments at the meeting. He said Pendleton volunteered to be on the meet-and-confer committee, and he was invited to a committee meeting with Myers, the city controller, deputy mayor and public safety staff, along with council members Dave Leske and J. David Hopper.
But Pendleton declined the invite, Myers said.
“You were the first to decline, yet you have the audacity to sit up here as a council member and want to criticize,” Myers said.
He also told Pendleton he should “be part of the solution instead of being the problem.”
Pendleton then asked Myers if he knew how many meetings were held with all three council members present. Myers said he did not know, and Pendleton said the answer was zero.
“That’s really sad because we volunteer to do it, and we couldn’t even show up for them,” Pendleton said.
Pendleton said he didn’t show up to the 8 a.m. meeting because it didn’t work for his schedule. Still, he said he ultimately signed off on a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, from the meeting. He did not detail at the meeting what the MOU he signed entailed, and did not respond to requests for clarification on his comments.
Myers said Pendleton, along with council members David Hopper and David Leske, were invited to a hearing with public safety officials to discuss the budget. Hopper and Leske attended the meeting, but Pendleton declined.
Pendleton was also allegedly invited to meet with both the police and fire chief to discuss the budgets, but he did not, Myers said.
The other six public safety proposals
During discussion in the public safety meeting Pendleton referenced, public safety officials said they appreciate pay raises they had already received over the last few years. However, they also said the city had fallen “significantly behind the curve,” a copy of the points of discussion obtained by the Daily Journal said.
In addition to salary raises, officials also proposed several budgetary items to address public safety. However, many were ruled out due to financial costs, Myers said.
For example, public safety officials proposed a shift differential be added to base compensation for officers who worked night shift. This was proposed to be a perk or bonus for hours worked overnight, during a holiday, and/or a weekend, the document said.
That was not possible to do for 2023, financially, Myers said.
“We’re giving them a 7% pay increase, and to go along with that, the additional funding they’re asking for this year is just not feasible without knowing what’s going to happen next year with inflation,” he said.
The other items discussed in the meeting were policy-based. The first addressed adding additional sick days for new employees, however, it was matter of finding funds for it, Myers said.
Another proposed policy would have added five military days off for city employees who serve in the National Guard. Federal policy dictates that they get at least 15 paid days off a year for active duty time. The five additional days would have applied to a very small number of employees, Myers said.
One of the last policies proposed was an ordinance to separate public safety from the rest of the city when it comes down to raises, benefits and time off, Myers said. He did not believe that would be fair.
“All the city employees are all employees of the city,” Myers said. “They all have jobs that are risky in one way or the other, and they all should be treated equally.”
Funding options are not easy
In an interview last week, Myers said with inflation, nothing more can be done to alleviate Pendleton’s concerns about public safety funding.
City officials have to look at what their budget is and how funding can legally be used, Myers said.
For example, residents sometimes ask why the city doesn’t use Tax Incremental Financing, or TIF, funding to pay police officer — or any employee — salaries. Doing that would be illegal.
“You cannot pay operating fees out of TIF funding,” Myers said. “Those are only for capital improvement, and infrastructure improvement, and incentives.”
Another example is the funds the city receives from the state’s cigarette tax. These funds are required to go to road funding, Myers said.
“Even though we get different tranches of money in, there are rules and regulations as to what that can go for,” he said. “… We just have to look at what those different pools of money are.”
The focus can’t only be on public safety, he said.
“What about the sanitation department? What about the parks department? What about the aviation department?” Myers said. “All these other employees are just as important as well. The city functions because we have all these various departments and they all have to be looked at.”
City is safe despite debate
Myers said he knows city residents are paying more attention to public safety in light of the uptick in violent crime Greenwood has seen this year.
Public safety keeps Myers, a former police officer, awake at night, he said. Residents still live in a safe and secure city, but some things are just out of officials’ control, he said.
For example, on the day of the mass shooting at the Greenwood Park Mall, the gunman had already made up his mind on what he was going to do, Myers said.
“It’s not somebody that came out of Indianapolis to do this. It was a local resident,” he said. “So to say the crime, it’s our fault for making Greenwood grow more. That’s not true. This was a local person that did that random act of violence there.”
Under Myers’ administration — which began in 2012 — both GPD and GFD have added more than triple the officers added under the previous administration. Generally, at least three officers have been added to both departments every year since 2012.
Myers’ predecessor, Charles Henderson, added roughly two to three police officers in total over 16 years. In 2012, the city had 55 police officers and 30 full-time firefighters funded in its budget. In 2023, 77 officers are funded and 70 full-time firefighters are funded. There was a 40% increase in officers and 133% increase in full-time firefighters in the last decade, data provided by the city shows.
“We’re playing make up for all of those years of not adding officers,” Myers said. “I think we’re doing a great job.”
