Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is expected to give his budget address next week. a budget that could include staff layoffs and property tax increases to offset a more than $30 million budget gap.
That gap is the result of too much overtime in the police department, which is seriously understaffed, and other dealt with significant OT issues around the federal government's immigration crackdown in the city this past winter.
"And I'll give you the best example. When you see a squad car patrolling the street, or maybe responding to an emergency call on any given day, half of the officers in those squad cars are working on overtime," Minneapolis City Council member Michael Rainville said on Thursday.
He says until the department is fully staffed, this is how it's going to be. So, the council and the mayor have to find a way to cut spending.
"We just can't keep, raising taxes. It's hurting every low income, every fixed income person in the city of Minneapolis. We have to get a handle on it,"
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey talked Thursday, ahead of that budget address, saying he wanted to clear up what he called misinformation about how the city ended up with a shortfall.
"There has been a narrative that the overtime spent wasn't in fact necessary, and we could have avoided those overages," said Frey.
But the mayor says that's not true, simply because the department is down about 40% of officers, and those officers are working overtime constantly.
Another issue putting pressure on the city include the diminishing tax base which city leaders say is down by about $3 billion, much of that from downtown commercial vacancies since the COVID-19 pandemic changed the dynamic in the city.
Rainville says there was not enough work being done ahead of time, and they could have anticipated the budget issues with the MPD.
"When you know that you're in a shortfall of staff and yet you don't budget for the overtime, you're only setting yourself up for failure," he adds. "That's what the last police administration did."
Both of the people in charge of that department, Chief Brian O'Hara and Public Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette, are now gone. O'Hara resigned after intervening into an an internal investigation over his own behavior. Barnette was not approved for another term by the City Council and has just recently left the job.
