Brockport police chief talks budget numbers

With 92 percent of the budget out of his control, Brockport Police Chief Dan Varrenti told village officials that with the "eight percent that I can control, I have made cuts."

The majority of the police budget is salary and wage driven and is mandated by contract, but Varrenti said that with the eight percent under his purview he was able to trim $2,858 under the 2006-07 spending plan and has made further cuts under the 2007-08 plan. "This year I was able to cut $5,361 from the budget. With the small amount of the budget that I can control, I've been able to trim more than $8,000 in the last two years."

Budget figures were requested by the village manager from all department heads as village officials head into negotiations and budget talks for the 2007-08 fiscal year.

Varrenti told board members that SPARTAC member Kent Blair wrote a successful grant and received $750 from Time Warner which will be used by SPARTAC members for their community policing efforts. At the January 16 board meeting, Varrenti also told village officials that a gentleman, who preferred to remain anonymous, came to the police department and handed him a $100 bill and told Varrenti to, "use this any way you see fit for the department." The money was deposited into an account for the police department.

"This year, we increased our driving while intoxicated arrests by more than 49 percent," he said. "We made 46 arrests last year and 68 this year. Our department leads Western New York in DWI arrests."

In other matters:

• Newly appointed Fire Chief Timothy Rombaut reported to the village board that the department responded to 2,678 total fire and ambulance calls in 2006. Year to date, the department has responded to 37 fire and 75 ambulance calls. "We are averaging 7.3 calls per day," he said.
  
  
• The board is looking to institute a policy of interviewing interested candidates for open positions within village committees and various boards. The conversation came up during a discussion on appointments to the Historic Preservation Board and the Code Review Committee. "Right now our process is broken," Trustee David Wagenhauser said. "When we were told that we pull people's names out of a hat to see how long their term limits will be, we need to look at the process."
  
  Trustee Connie Castaneda said, "We have a difficult time getting volunteers for these committees and an interview process will make that even more difficult. Why would we want to discourage people from applying and volunteering?"
  
  Trustee Hanny Heyen said the village is not looking to discourage individuals from volunteering but to see what skills they can lend to a committee or board. "I agree the committees should have autonomy but we are sometimes not sure what an individual might lend to a board on which they want to serve."
  
  The discussion and appointment were tabled until village officials discussed the issue with the village attorney at a workshop on January 22.

January 21, 2007