Public safety, buses won't escape trims

The ax finally fell on the Colorado Springs budget late Wednesday as officials settled on budget cuts and other financial adjustments to bridge a $16.8 million gap left by falling sales tax revenues.

The money represents a fraction of the city's $228 million in spending projected for this year, but members of the City Council warned it will have a big effect on services. Just how deep the cuts feel for residents will depend on the services they use.

Riders on the free downtown DASH shuttle will notice the buses running less frequently and only during morning and evening rush hours. The reduced service will chop the cost of DASH from $355,000 to $177,500.

Drivers who use parking meters will notice a difference, too, as the city expands the hours during which plugging a meter is required. Details weren't worked out, but the idea is to raise enough extra money from the meters to keep DASH going.

The 25 or so daily riders on the bus to Fort Carson will see their route eliminated. Route 30, which costs about $100,000 to run in addition to the fares riders pay, has the fewest riders in the Mountain Metropolitan Transit system. People headed to the Army post will have to take other routes to the south campus of Pikes Peak Community College, from which they can walk to the main gate, city officials said.

But the trims to transit services are a small part of much broader reductions to city services. The City Council spent several hours Wednesday approving large-scale reductions to services and then haggling over some of the details. A final vote to set the cuts in stone is expected Tuesday. The debate followed about six weeks of back-and-forth discussions among city staff, residents and the council. The cuts involve laying off 80 city employees, about 4 percent of the total.

The biggest cut, $7.9 million, came from a 14.5 percent reduction to most department budgets. The police and fire departments each took a 1 percent hit, or a total of $1.2 million. That's in addition to a 1 percent reduction already imposed on police and fire because of declining revenue from the Public Safety Sales Tax, which is dedicated to those departments.

Two council members, Darryl Glenn and Scott Hente, opposed any cuts to public safety agencies. Other council members said they were reluctant to impose police and fire cuts, but they considered the cuts necessary to preserve other city programs.

The reduction means the police department will eliminate five uniformed positions and stop support for three nonprofit organizations, including Pikes Peak Crime Stoppers. For the fire department, it means eliminating two office specialists and five firefighter positions.

The council took other, smaller steps to preserve programs they consider essential and to bring in additional money. The water "sprayground" at Deerfield Hills Community Center will be kept open, for example, funded with $22,000 in savings from reduced hours at city swimming pools. The council told the police department to start auctioning firearms seized in criminal investigations, which is expected to bring in $10,000. Police have been destroying the weapons after they were no longer needed as evidence, and they had recommended against an auction. Vice Mayor Larry Small said he sees no reason not to sell the weapons, and all the council except Jan Martin agreed.

"I think that's an item that has value, just like the automobiles we sell," he said.

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Call Swanson at 636-0187