In response to concerns about staffing, salary and retention issues for Cobb public safety personnel, Commissioner Bob Ott said last week he has a few plans to save money. One of them calls for not having a public safety director.
At his town hall meeting at the Catholic Church of St. Ann, Ott drew applause from constituents when he said that “I won’t be voting for the position of a new public safety director.”
Sam Heaton retired as the Cobb Public Safety Director last week, and a replacement hasn’t yet been nominated to succeed him.
But Ott said he thinks the county should go back to having each of the public safety department heads—police, fire/EMS, 911, emergency management and animal services—report to the Cobb County Manager, as has been done in the past.
Heaton is a former Cobb fire chief who was named public safety director in 2014, and was making $156,000 at the end of a 33-year career with the county.
He replaced Jack Forsythe, who resigned in protest, citing a lack of resources and staffing shortages that have come up again as commissioners prepare for the fiscal year 2020 budget.
At their last meeting in March, commissioners were pressed by current and past public safety employees and citizens to address what they called a “crisis.”
Among the pleas were to be more proactive in filling 82 open police officer positions, out of a total county sworn-officer force of 700.
Ott said the county receives around 100 applications a week for police officers, but a typical batch that size is whittled down to around 25 who meet Cobb’s qualifications.
The cost of filling all 82 positions is estimated at around $10 million. All five Cobb Police precincts have open slots in what are called patrol “beats,” including Precinct 4 in East Cobb. Cobb Fraternal Order of Police head Steven Gaynor said Precinct 4 is the least-staffed of all, with eight officers for 10 beats.
(Public safety staffing also has been cited by those pressing for East Cobb cityhood, with police and fire proposed as municipal services.)
Ott’s priority would be to fill the open beat positions. “How many of these 82 slots are needed to have all the beats [in the county] being covered?” he said.
Police officers have said having take-home cars is important for them. In the 2016 Cobb SPLOST, Ott said there was a $9 million line item sum for new police cars, and that last year he offered another $9 million, but his request was taken out of that wish list.
The biggest difference Ott said he has had with how public safety spending has been used is over compensation, benefits, raises and retention incentives.
(He’s expressed his concerns over these matters before, especially after last year’s budget adoption.)
Although he has voted for salary increases for police officers and sheriff’s deputies as part of recommendations from a consultant’s “pay and class” study in 2017, Ott said the practice is not sustainable.
He regrets the “pay and class” vote and prefers implementing a “step and grade” process for public safety employee raises that’s similar to what’s done at the Cobb County School District.
He said he and fellow East Cobb commissioner JoAnn Birrell have been discussing such an option.
Ott also would like to move all county government employees to a defined-contribution retirement system “because defined benefits don’t work.”
Ott and Birrell voted against the fiscal year 2019 Cobb budget that included a property tax hike, and Ott insisted last week the resources to address public safety shortages existed before that.
“There’s money all around, which is why I didn’t vote for the budget and millage rate increase,” he said.
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