By Rick Rouan, The Columbus Dispatch, and staff
COLUMBUS – Columbus mayor Andrew Ginther’s first operating budget is about 5.7 percent larger than the one he inherited from his predecessor, thanks to brisk income tax collections.
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As income tax revenue rolled in faster than expected this year, it set Ginther up for a robust budget that is heavy on some of the priorities he laid out during his 2015 mayoral campaign.
“The future of the city looks bright,” he said.
The budget boosts spending in the city’s largest department, Public Safety, by $20 million — a 3.5 percent jump — to $576.9 million. That makes up nearly two-thirds of the city’s entire general fund.
The larger public safety budget will help the city pay for two recruit classes each for the city’s police and fire departments. Each police class will have 35 recruits, and each fire class will have 40, said Ned Pettus, the city’s Public Safety Director.
The city needs more firefighters to staff a new fire station it will start building next year on Waggoner Road on the Far East Side, the first new fire station in the city since 2003.
“We believe that the response times aren’t what they ought to be on that Far East Side, it’s one of the fastest growing parts of our city,” Ginther said.
The city’s fire ranks should grow from 1,548 in 2016 to 1,588 next year.
The budget also earmarks money to outfit police officers with body cameras. The first officers will start wearing cameras before the end of this year, and the city plans to hire six employees to process video and deal with public records requests.
Ginther said more money will be available in the capital budget in the spring to buy cameras and other equipment, but it’s still unclear how long it will take to roll out the cameras to 1,432 officers.
“I want it to get done as quickly as possible, but it has to be done well,” Ginther said.
“There are also resources out of our general fund budget to help support the deployment of the body-worn cameras, particularly personnel in the city attorney’s office and public safety to help deal with public records requests, redactions, making sure we’re keeping sensitive information of officers or people they interact with private,” he said.
The $869.5 million spending plan, which must be approved by City Council, includes $150,000 to distribute the anti-overdose medication naloxone to all first responders. Ginther says a pilot program, begun in June on the South and West Sides in June, provided the drug to 115 officers and resulted in 42 victims being revived.
Ginther says that, according to Coroner Dr. Anahi Ortiz, an average of one person per day dies in Franklin County as a result of an opiate overdose.
He hopes that local officials begin to receive some help from federal and state governments in the battle against heroin overdoses.
“What are we doing on the prevention side, the education side and the treatment side?” he asked. “This [naloxone] is a great tool for our first responders but it is only one tool.”
The budget proposal also includes:
Neighborhoods
$4.63 million for the newly-formed Department of Neighborhoods
$770,000 for the newly created Land Redevelopment Division to repurpose vacant, abandoned and blighted residential and commercial properties
Education
$4.7 million for early start opportunities with the goal of providing high-quality pre-K to 1,000 students by the end of 2017 – on the city’s way to universal pre-K for all four-year olds.
$389,000 for after-school programs
Parks
$51.86 million for Recreation and Parks
Diversity
$1.5 million for efforts of bringing diversity to recruitment in city offices and minority participation in contracts
The plan puts $2.2 million in the Rainy Day Fund, keeping the city on track to restore the fund to $75 million by the end of 2017.
Ginther says he has also ordered an independent review of city spending practices, the first such review since 2001, and a diversity study.