Valley budget saves cops

Wed., Sept. 15, 2004

By Megan Cooley meganc@spokesman.com

Valley studying home detention

The city of Spokane Valley is studying whether it could save money by jailing criminals in their homes, rather than at Geiger Correctional Facility or in the Spokane County Jail.

The staff is looking at many alternatives, including tracking convicts using satellites and forcing them to take random alcohol-detection tests. It costs the public about $50 a day to jail criminals, City Attorney Cary Driskell said in an interview Tuesday. That doesn't include the booking fee of about $70.

On the other hand, the most expensive of the alternatives to incarceration costs about $25 a day, he said. In some cases, the city could charge the criminals for the service.

"The bottom line on all of this is anything you can do as an alternative, even if you pay for it, is significantly less expensive than jail," District Court Judge Howard Clarke III told the City Council at an August meeting.

In addition to costing less, the alternatives often reduce the likelihood that offenders will break the law again, said April Anderson and Scott Davis, two Gonzaga University Law School students studying the issue for the city. The alternatives avoid forcing families and businesses to cope with the loss of employment, and some programs help beautify the city, they said.

The options include:

•Community service. Instead of jail time, the offender must perform some service without pay. The work might include painting over graffiti or doing grounds work in parks.

•Electronic home monitoring. This might take the form of an ankle bracelet that intermittently sends signals to a receiver letting law enforcement know the convict is at home. Or, the offender could be fitted with a global positioning system, which constantly monitors the person's whereabouts via satellite. Offenders might be forced to give random urine or breathalyzer tests to detect drugs or alcohol in their bodies.

Only people convicted of misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors and some first-time felons would be eligible for the programs. Sex offenses, arson and some other crimes are prohibited from participation.

The city wouldn't have control over how many Spokane Valley convicts would receive an alternative sentence. It's up to judges to sentence criminals, and some prefer actual jail time over home monitoring and other alternatives.

The city of Spokane Valley’s staff presented a budget proposal to the council Tuesday that calls for no new services and only a slight increase in spending next year, without cutting police officers, as had been feared.

The proposal calls for a $27.6 million general fund, a $1.8 million increase over 2004’s current general fund. The staff proposal assumed that the city would have to do without $6 million from a proposed street bond. That assumption was correct; voters appeared to have rejected that bond measure Tuesday.

If adopted, the city would spend $42.8 million overall next year. That figure includes capital projects such as CenterPlace, the community center under construction now at Mirabeau Point Park.

“We are operating on a limited revenue stream, so we have calibrated the budget to try to live within that revenue stream,” City Manager Dave Mercier said.

“We are looking to sustain the core service programs that were evident in the 2004 budget,” he added later.

The budget proposal calls for adding 5.25 positions to the staff of about 47. The additions include one engineer, two positions in stormwater management to provide a service that Spokane County no longer will offer, and two people to work at CenterPlace.

Spending on CenterPlace will need to more than double next year – to $320,000 from $125,000 – because it will open by early fall, Mercier said.

The budget would allocate $15.7 million to public safety. Of that, law enforcement would receive $13 million, an amount Spokane Valley Police Chief Cal Walker said prevents him from having to cut positions from his department.

Walker had thought he might have to cut six or more police positions.

Spokane Valley is still paying off money it borrowed to cover the start-up costs of running a new city. It owes $3.7 million, and the proposed budget suggests paying off $1.1 million of that in 2005.

Mercier shared a bit of good news: Sales-tax revenues grew in the second quarter of this year, allowing the city’s projections for 2005 to be a bit rosier than expected. Spokane Valley’s sales-tax revenues have been coming in lower than what the city had estimated it’d be collecting by now.

But there was bad news, too. Only $1.2 million will be available for street maintenance such as pothole repairing and snowplowing. The city has at least $3.8 million worth of work it wants to do next year.

“We have stripped the cupboard bare to maintain services for 2005,” Mercier said, adding that he expects that problem to grow in the years to come.

There was little discussion among council members on the proposal Tuesday, except to thank the staff for presenting a balanced budget.

“Some very serious decisions need to be made for the future,” Mayor Mike DeVleming said.

The council will hold public hearings on the budget this fall and decide whether it wants to change the recommendations.

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