City, sheriff reach new deal

After months of negotiation, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Spokane Valley have reached an agreement on a new law enforcement contract that will slightly change the way the city pays for services. The City Council is set to vote on approving the contract at its Aug. 10 meeting.

The new contract would cover all of 2010 and extend until Dec. 31, 2013. The old contract was renewed annually but the longer term will give both the city and county a sense of stability, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said.

Earlier this year the council voted to add a precinct commander. The new contract includes that position, but the number of deputies and other command staff is the same. What has changed is the number of shared positions the city is paying for, including special teams such as major crimes, gang enforcement and the property crimes task force.

The city is now paying for an additional 0.75 full-time equivalent employee for gang and meth detectives and 1.29 FTE for intelligence led policing and marine/search and rescue. In some cases those positions were funded by grants that no longer exist or the city simply wasn’t paying for it. “It was black and white,” said acting City Manager Mike Jackson. “The city wasn’t paying for those services.”

The number of positions the city pays for in the shared services category will fluctuate based on usage, Jackson said. “That’s how that number moves,” he said. “It’s based on a percentage of officers, not a static number. That is an estimate of what we think will happen in 2010.”

The Sheriff’s Office will still be solely responsible for funding some items, such as sex offender registration. “There are certain categories they do not get charged for because it’s more regional,” Knezovich said.

The city and Spokane County have had an ongoing billing dispute for several years, with the city maintaining that it was being overbilled in some areas. As a result the city withheld money each year. The new cost methodology in the contract that has the city paying based on the actual services used will end that discussion moving forward. “It’s more clearly spelled out,” Knezovich said. “All those arguments that have been had in the past have been worked out in the cost plan.”

However, that doesn’t eliminate the ongoing discussion about the money the county believes it is owed for the past several years. The city paid $1.2 million of the disputed amount last year, but no one is sure how much more money might be on the table. “It’s changed so much so many times I would hate to even guess,” Knezovich said.

“We didn’t even talk about the billing dispute during the negotiations,” Jackson said. The city continues to meet with the county to discuss the issue and progress is being made, he said.

When actual numbers for costs are available for a calendar year, the county and city will reconcile those numbers with what the city paid. Any overpayments or underpayments will be rolled into the costs for the next calendar year.

Under the new contract the county and city will meet quarterly to discuss any issues that arise. “I’ve been trying to get that done since 2007,” Knezovich said. “I think it will smooth out and, quite frankly, mitigate whatever may come up.”

While the cost of the total contract has gone up, the city will still be paying less than it budgeted. The city paid $15.2 million for 2009. For 2010 the estimated cost is $16,550,021, which includes cost-of-living increases, the added precinct commander and the new shared resources charges. The 2010 estimate also includes $237,000 for communications, which used to be administered under a separate contract. All that comes in under the $16,581,960 the city budgeted for law enforcement in 2010.

Everyone involved agrees it is a good contract. “I’m very pleased with it,” Jackson said. “I think they were good negotiations. We reviewed every paragraph. I really think we ended with a positive win-win contract.

“We’ve received quality law enforcement services from the county. We haven’t compromised in any way the level or quality of service provided to the Spokane Valley.”

“It was refreshing the way we were able to discuss things and problem solve,” Knezovich said.