Scott Swanson
Sweet Home has sent the city of Lebanon a bill for more than $60,000 to cover training costs for two police officers who left the city to take better-paying jobs with the Lebanon police earlier this year.
City Manager Craig Martin said the city sent the bill Dec. 22 after it became apparent that Lebanon was hiring three Sweet Home officers, including two who had been trained within the last three years.
Justin McCubbins, Taylor Jackson and Chad Christenson resigned in December to take positions with Lebanon, moves that left Sweet Home Police Department down four out of the 10 officers it had most of last year.
The fourth position was vacated when Officer Randy Gill resigned, and the department was planning to leave it open for budgetary reasons.
Their departures followed a period of tense negotiations between the city and the Sweet Home Police Department Emergency Services Union, which ended in early November when union members voted to approve an agreement providing a 3-percent raise for police and dispatch employees for the 2010-11 fiscal year, no increase in 2011-12 and a 3-percent increase to salaries in 2012-13.
Their decision came after the city found out that its police budget would be $283,000 short, thanks to declines in property values and increasing tax compression that seriously reduced city revenues.
Martin said the fact that two of the departing officers were recent trainees was the reason Sweet Home has been able to take advantage of a 2009 law that provides for reimbursement in such situations.
The law provides that when a law enforcement officer who is employed in a position that requires specific training moves to another agency to take a job that requires the same training, the hiring agency must reimburse the original employer for all or part of the training costs it incurred, based on how recently the training occurred.
Martin said Lebanon has been billed for $60,522.84. That includes 100 percent of the training costs for Officer Chad Christenson, who had joined the department on June 1, 2010 and finished training Jan. 31, 2011, whose training costs totaled $46,132.33. The rest of the bill was for Taylor Jackson, who joined on Nov. 7, 2008 and whose training lasted till June 27, 2009. Per the statute, which allows reimbursement of 33 percent for officers whose training ended between 24 and 36 months before leaving, that bill is $14,390.51.
The sliding scale in the law provides reimbursement of 66 percent for training that ended between 12 and 24 months.
Martin said he was aware of the law when it passed, and it became part of the city police policy in 2009, but he hadn’t given it much thought until the departure of the three officers.
Officer Justin McCubbins also left in January, but because he finished training more than three years prior to his departure, the city couldn’t collect on any of those expenses.
Martin said Sweet Home isn’t the only municipality that has lost newly trained employees, which is why the the law was passed.
“Unfortunately, that was going on quite a bit,” he said. “(The law) was intended to help in these situations, to help local cities recover those costs.”
Oregon, unlike other states, requires that police recruits be hired before they can be trained at the state police academy.
“If you go out and get a criminal justice degree at a college, that’s not enough to be a police officer,” he said. “You see movies like “Police Academy,” but that’s not how it works in Oregon.”
Martin said Lebanon and Sweet Home officials have been corresponding back and forth since December, when it became evident that Lebanon was going to offer the three positions. He said the Lebanon officials apparently were unaware that they could be billed for 100 percent of Christenson’s training costs and that communication with Lebanon city officials over that has been ongoing. Letters have been exchanged between Martin and Lebanon City Manager John Hitt and City Attorney John Kennedy, in which they requested substantiation for the charges.
Hitt has also protested that Lebanon has not budgeted for the cost of reimbursing Sweet Home and has questioned Sweet Home’s interpretation of the law as it pertains to the situation involving Christenson and Jackson.
“This is especially true in light of the fact that the police officers involved came to us seeking employment under the sincere belief that their positions with the Sweet Home Police Department were, or very shortly would be, eliminated,” Hitt wrote in a March 7 letter.
Sweet Home Police Chief Bob Burford said Sweet Home Police staff were notified on Oct. 14, the day they received word that tax revenue would be substantially less than officials had expected, that in a worst-case scenario, up to five full-time employee positions could be at risk. A day later, staff members were notified that the potential for fund transfers within the city budget would “reduce the depth of potential staff cuts,” he said. On Oct. 25, the City Council made that official by acting on staff recommendations to do so, and “SHPD staff was notified that only one officer position would be lost and that was via attrition, as Randy Gill had already resigned to return to the private sector,” Burford said.
Martin said Sweet Home has billed Lebanon only for the costs of actual training and not for time spent supervising trainees by its veteran officers.
“This is what the costs are to us of getting them walking in the door to the point where they are self-sufficient.”
He noted that Lebanon likely saved “well more than $150,000” in hiring three certified officers from Sweet Home and that, even if Lebanon pays the $60,000 bill, “they are still $90,000 ahead.”
On the other hand, Sweet Home will have to pay roughly $150,000 to replace those officers, though, he said, “the $60,000 will help defer some of this cost.”
Burford said that the departure of the three has resulted in moving two sergeants from supervisory shift, which allowed them to spend half of their 12 hours on duty with the day team and half with the night, to one of the vacant patrol shift. Det. Jason Ogden, who had been primarily working on narcotics enforcement, is back in uniform covering one of the other shifts.
Both Burford and Det. Cyndi Pichardo “routinely respond to help provide backup due to officer shortages,” he said. “In addition, we have used overtime to have officers come in on their days off to cover for sickness and other unanticipated absences that leave us too short to provide adequate officer safety.”
In a March 13 letter to Hitt, Martin noted that the departure of the three officers also cost Sweet Home “significant” overtime pay for its existing officers “as became necessary to maintain adequate police coverage.
“Even though we have recruited, tested and hired replacement officers, it will likely be near the end of this calendar year before they will be ready to potentially operate independently. The unanticipated costs for these replacement officers, in addition to the additional overtime expenses, will far exceed the amount of reimbursement we have requested,” he wrote.
Burford said Sweet Home will have three fewer officers on the street during the nine months it takes to train new recruits and overtime will be more frequent.
“In addition,” he said, “we have one officer with a longtime pending retirement. He has agreed to stay on to help provide adequate officer safety until the new hires can operate solo.”
Martin said any negotiations on the billing amount will require Sweet Home council approval and the matter may come before the council at its next meeting, March 27, depending on how Lebanon responds this week.
Burford characterized the working relationship between Sweet Home and Lebanon police as “excellent.”
“Nothing here will harm that relationship,” he said. “I don’t believe there is any argument that Sweet Home is in a far worse revenue position than Lebanon. This billing is codified in State Law and is just business. Part of my job as chief is to protect the interests of the Sweet Home taxpayer and that’s all we’re trying to do here.
“We do not pay near as much as Lebanon or, for that matter, most other agencies. However, at this time we’re doing all we possibly can. We don’t have to pay at the top of the scale but we must strive to be competitive.
“Lebanon does not have to contend with a temporary operating levy, can pay more money and recognizes that Sweet Home selects the very best recruits, trains them properly and demands integrity.
“They are thus making wise hiring decisions when recruiting away our officers. Hopefully. they can see the value to reimbursing us for the quality they’re receiving.”