The idea of charging police officers to take their squad cars home at night doesn't please Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini. But the mayor won't veto the plan, passed by the City Council earlier this week.
That means officers will sue the city, probably within a week, according to David Greer, head of the police union.Corradini can veto any line-item she doesn't like in the budget the council passed on Tuesday. But aides said later that she doesn't have enough support on the council to keep her veto from being overridden.
The council passed the budget 5-2. It can override any veto with five votes.
The plan calls for all city employees who take home city cars to be charged $15 per month - $30 if they live outside city limits. The fees will hit a variety of city workers, including several from the Public Works Department. But the fees will hit police officers particularly hard. In past years, the city granted a car to every officer in lieu of higher salaries.
Angry officers say the fees violate the two-year contract the union signed last year.
"The fee that they're charging is not provided for in the contract," Greer said, noting officers believe the city is adding another deduction half-way through the two-year contract.
Thom Dillon, executive assistant to the mayor, said Corradini thinks the fee came at a bad time. Police officers already were upset about plans to reorganize the department and to hire fewer new officers than expected.
"She did not feel this was a good time to add this to the concerns of the police officers," he said.
But the mayor hasn't made her feelings known in any of the public meetings on the budget. Officials said she may have worried about upsetting the City Council, which passed the rest of her proposed budget virtually intact.
The monthly fee was expected to raise $133,000, enough to hire four additional officers. But Greer said if the officers decide to leave their cars downtown, the city won't receive that money. He also said residents may lose some protection.
Officers originally voted to leave their cars downtown and not pay the fee, but Greer said that may need to be reconsidered as it would be a hardship for some.
He said city residents will suffer for the fee.
"There will be no off-duty officers in Salt Lake City with the ability to respond to incidents," he said. Response times will be longer, there will be more backlog of calls, and some calls will simply not be responded to, he said.
"We rely very heavily on the off-duty officer's presence," he said. The city gets all of that service for free, but as of July 1, that may end. Off-duty officers would be without radios and other equipment, and when responding to or investigating possible crimes they would have no way of reporting the crime or calling for help.
Greer hopes the lawsuit either will cause the council to reconsider the fee or to delay its effective date. The new budget is expected to take effect July 1.