Sheriff John Rutherford said Wednesday he is trying to manage his budget as the City Council and mayor have asked him to do, but without changes, 34 more officers could be laid off in March.
Rutherford said he met with every one of the 129 people he had to lay off this week. The latest round of cuts included 29 civilian jobs and 48 police officers.
“Our core competency is public safety. We have adjusted organizationally and I am confident that emergency police services will not be impacted by these cuts,” he said.
“However, citizens may experience a somewhat slower response time to non-emergency calls for service,” he said.
“Until my salary expenses are reduced to meet my salary revenue, we will continue as we are now in our staffing,” he said.
He said the latest round of cuts “was in addition to the $7.5 million in cuts that I made to my budget before I presented it to the mayor.”
He explained that the sheriff’s office will be “backfilling” the positions from the crime prevention multihousing unit, crime prevention unit, internal affairs, a mounted unit, parks, the police academy, international affairs, Operation Safe Streets, an aviation unit and inspections.
Rutherford bristled at the idea of saving money by combining City and police information technology departments, an idea that City Council President Stephen Joost plans to review.
“That’s because he doesn’t understand police IT,” said Rutherford.
”We don’t do the same thing that City IT does. Where you can combine like functions, you should, but these are not like functions. They don’t run the intelligence databases that we run. They don’t run the system that we run. We don’t duplicate anything that they do,” he said.
When contacted after the news conference, Joost said he plans to look into the possibility of combining the services.
“The main thing is we can’t leave any option unexamined. We are going to look at it and see if we can find some savings,” said Joost. “There has to be some overlap.”
Rutherford identified fleet management as an area where he could save money in his budget. He would like to join with JEA to privatize management of vehicle repairs and fuel.
This move would cover the $1.2 million in additional cuts ordered by Council and is currently hanging over the sheriff’s office.
“I told (the) City to take that out of my fleet maintenance because my intention is to privatize my fleet services, including my gas and my repairs, which is going to save me somewhere north of $1.5 million,” said Rutherford.
“If I’m not allowed to do that, there’s an additional 34 officers that will be laid off in March,” he said.
Joost has been examining the City’s fleet services and is more comfortable with keeping the sheriff’s special vehicle fleet under the service of the city department.
“The SWAT team has this, basically, armored personnel carrier and you just can’t drive down to AAMCO with that and get the transmission serviced,” said Joost. “I agree with him, we have to look at that, but we also have to look at who is left to take care of the specialty equipment.”
Both Rutherford and Joost said that neither side wants to jeopardize the safety of the community while considering budget cuts.
“We are going to look at all the options and that’s the last thing we want to do, lay off police officers. But we have to live within our budget,” said Joost.
“Our commitment to protect and serve the citizens of Jacksonville is inviolate. No matter how much we must change our operations, service to our citizens remains our top priority,” said Rutherford.
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