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Discussion resumes over size of PD

A debate over the size of the city's police force resurfaced at the most recent meeting of the city council.

Members of the grassroots organization Carbondale Spring, which is advocating for a number of initiatives aimed at making the city more sustainable and autonomous, has pushed for months to get the city to "right-size" its police department - a force those activists say is about twice as large as departments in other cities of comparable size.

During the council's public discussion last week of priorities to be included in the city's next budget, which will go into effect next May, several members of the Carbondale Spring initiative addressed the issue and expressed frustration that their arguments seem to be falling on deaf ears.

"There's a certain kind of ear-plugging on the question of the police budget," said Nick Smaligo, a chief advocate for Carbondale Spring. "The question of reducing police to a normal size has been set off the table politically, not based on the merits of the argument we've put forward ... but there's a certain kind of shadow politically that has removed this from political consideration."

Smaligo's comments were echoed by other Carbondale Spring speakers including Chuck Paprocki, who said the city needs a "paradigm shift" that moves Carbondale away from being just "fast food restaurants and heavy policing." Others who spoke on behalf of Carbondale Spring during the budget discussion included Clare Killman and Sonja Krueger.

The current year's budget includes more than $10 million to pay for the police department, accounting for roughly a third of the city's overall expenditures. The police department employs around 80 people, which Smaligo has consistently said is far more than other cities of Carbondale's size.

Councilman Adam Loos said he supports many of the initiatives Carbondale Spring has brought into the spotlight, but he pointed out that much of the cost of the police department revolves around pension funding, which has been a drag on municipalities across the state.

He also said there is a widespread perception that crime is too high in Carbondale, and that will be a challenging notion to overcome.

"You've got an active group of folks who are very dedicated and coming here to talk to us about this," Loos said. "You've got a not particularly active but possibly much larger group who will howl and complain if we were to cut the police budget significantly. So that's what you're working against."

Loos said he wants to hear more about the issue, as well as more information that might corroborate or contradict the figures Carbondale Spring has reported.

"Are the numbers we're hearing here, are they accurate?" Loos asked. "We need some sort of metric to be able to tell us."

City Manager Gary Williams said that over the past decade, the police department has shed about 9 percent of its staff. During that same time, however, operational costs have increased about $2.3 million - a figure Williams laid at the feet of the ongoing pension problem.

Williams also pointed out that crime continues to be a problem in many parts of the city.

"There's a lot of violent crime," he said. "We have gun incidents nearly daily."