City Commissioners spent several hours during a Feb. 12 special meeting hearing about the needs of the city’s public safety departments, which are largely unchanged from their levy asks last year.

Asked whether they’d make their same levy ask in the upcoming budget process, most of the public safety department heads said no since it would be a waste of time knowing the money isn’t available and those asks wouldn’t be approved.

They did say they would be including some of those critical needs in their budget requests this year.

There’s also $644,000 of protested taxes for the first half of the year, most of which is from the Calumet appeal, according to city documents. That means those funds aren’t available to the city until the appeals are settled.

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Commissioners said they want to a create a public safety advisory committee to come up with ideas on how to fund public safety needs or what cuts to make if funding isn’t available.

The concept is similar to the crime task force the commission established in 2021 that spent months learning about local public safety challenges and needs for public safety. In late 2021, that task force provided eight pages of recommendations to the City Commission.

Commissioners and city staff spent months discussing those recommendations, which morphed into the public safety levy and bond that failed on the November 2023 ballot.

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City Manager Greg Doyon told The Electric that he and the public safety department heads are reviewing those recommendations to determine what’s been accomplished and what remains undone, though many of the recommendations depended upon additional funding for implementation.

For at least the last decade, city departments have largely been asked to propose level funded budgets, with separate requests for additional funding, known as above and beyond requests.

Annually, city departments have presented their needs to the city commission directly or through the city manager’s office.

For years, those above and beyond requests have included additional public safety needs such as police officers, firefighters, prosecutors and court staff.

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Few of those requests over the last decade have been funded by commissioners during their annual budget process.

Doyon said that a consistent question they heard during the levy campaign was why they waited so long to ask for the public safety needs.

In 1969, voters approved a $1.96 million bond to build the existing fire stations and training center.

The tower at the training center is condemned and currently unusable.

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A 2009 public safety levy failed.

Public safety agencies in Great Falls are primarily funded through the city’s general fund, which is largely property tax revenue.

Property tax revenue only makes up about 20 percent of the total city revenues.

In the current fiscal year budget that commissioners adopted in July, public safety is $30.8 million. This year’s city property tax revenue for the general fund is projected at $24.2 million.

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Since 1969, fire and emergency calls have increased by 700 percent, according to the city, but “due to staffing and a lack of resources, Great Falls’ first responders can only adequately respond to one major incident at a time – leading to longer emergency response times,” according to the city.

Doyon said the city faced a failed public safety ask followed by the collapse of Electric City Power, which cost the city millions. The city was able to extricate itself from ECP with a $3.25 million settlement that required cuts to stabilize city finances, but then lacked the resources to make significant investments in public safety, he said.

Over the years the city has reduced general fund subsidies in an effort to funnel more funds to public safety, but it hasn’t been enough, Doyon said. Those reductions included cutting the city fireworks display and Christmas tree, which have been taken on by community groups. There have also been reductions in general fund support for the library, Civic Center events, changes in subsidies for park and recreation and planning over the years.

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Some of those shifts allowed the city to add resources to public safety in a piecemeal fashion, such as a special victims detective one year, retaining four cops after federal grant funding ended and fire prevention positions another year.

All of the public safety departments, legal, fire, police and Municipal Court, said they’re operating with bare bones and having to triage calls and prioritize cases, meaning some incidents don’t get the response a caller might want or expect.

The chiefs and department heads said that what they asked for in the levy was what they needed, but know that those funds won’t be available in the upcoming budget so are shifting strategies again in an attempt to do what they can with significantly smaller budget items.

They’re also making operational changes.

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Great Falls Police Chief Jeff Newton said they’re concentrating their efforts on patrol, eliminating community presentations and the master citizens academy program, requiring more online reporting, streamlining vehicle crash reporting and transitioning to self-issued trespass notices. They’re also revisiting their alarm response since 95 percent are false alarms, he said.

“If we keep decreasing our resources, that affects our core functions. If we keep reducing, it’s not going to prepare us for future growth,” Newton said.

Great Falls Fire Rescue Chief Jeremy Jones reminded commissioners of steps they’ve already taken to improve prevention, enforce rules and fines for false alarms and code violations, and free crews to respond to major calls by not being a primary responder to non-emergent calls.

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He said that since the levy and bond failed, he’ll be asking for one additional full-time fire marshal to improve fire prevention on the front end and lessen the likelihood of major fires that require operational responses.

Jones is also proposing to increase safety requirements for public events through adopting the International Fire Code permitting, reducing EMS standby at public events, further updating fire related city codes, no longer responding to lift assists at staffed living facilities and that GFFR is unable to support development outside the current city limits, meaning annexations.

Jones told commissioners that other considerations in light of the levy failure are:

• a community survey establishing a baseline of residents current and future expectations of public safety
• hiring a third party consultant to evaluate the current public safety posture
• forced annexation of all county enclaves within incorporated city limits
• implementing special improvement districts and reducing tax increment financing districts that pull tax revenue out of the general fund for certain amounts of time
• implement a payment in lieu of taxes option for large nonprofits that have a high public safety reliance

For years, firefighters, whether officially or as individual citizens, have called attention to the strain on their operations with proposed annexations for development without additional resources.

The discussion during the Feb. 12 meeting set up a broader conversation about encouraging development while being cognizant of the limitations of existing public safety resources.

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City Manager Greg Doyon reminded commissioners that any city code changes need their approval, but it does raise questions on economic development as commissioners have said they want to streamline zoning and permit applications.

It’s “a question that only the commission will be able to answer,” Doyon said, in terms of achieving a better prevention posture while trying to speed economic development.

Commissioner Susan Wolff said that during their January retreat, they said they wanted to look at infill projects rather than expand city limits. She said that they’ll get differing opinions on those projects.

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This week, the city planning board recommended approval of an infill project off Bay Drive that is served by existing resources, but some area residents are opposing the project. The project next goes before the city commission.

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As far as hiring a third party consultant to study the city’s public safety posture, Doyon reminded commissioners that they had the same conversation during the crime task force meetings and decided against spending that money.

Wolff said that if they are going to approach voters again for a levy, they need to involved the community more. She said she didn’t think they could conduct a poll since that would cost $28,000 or more.

She suggested using free tools like Survey Monkey or Google to poll the community on public safety.

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Wolff said the community didn’t understand the public safety needs and hadn’t heard the information shared during their work session. She said the city needed to find ways to communicate with the public.

The city employs several people with public communication as part of their job duties and paid Wendt Agency $150,000 to help with the public safety levy campaign in 2023.

Commissioner Joe McKenney said that they had done the crime task force and used those recommendations to craft the levy ask, but it was a top down approach.

He proposed creating a public safety advisory panel that included a neighborhood council representative, one or two city commissioners, people who were actively supportive or opposed to the levy and others.

McKenney said it’s important that they don’t let it sit because “the needs were 10 years ago.”

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He said during their retreat they discussed creating the advisory panel to “let the community tell us what’s the best way to make an ask if we’re going to make an ask, or what reductions to make.”

McKenney said the ask probably wouldn’t be this year, but he didn’t want to wait too long.

He said the panel should also involve state lawmakers.

McKenney served previously as a state legislator and said that before joining the commission, he had no idea of the challenges facing local government.

“They don’t have any idea either,” he said.

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Commissioner Rick Tryon said they should revisit the crime task force recommendations and distill them down to actionable items.

Doyon said that he and the safety department heads are currently reviewing those recommendations to determine what’s already been accomplished and which need additional resources to implement.

Wolff said she wanted public safety staff who are boots on the ground into the panel discussions to get their perspective.

McKenney suggested creating a commission working group to nail down the panel specifics and bring it back to the full commission for action.

Mayor Cory Reeves asked about tax abatements and TIF districts.

He said he understands that they’re economic development tools but also that they take millions out of the general fund.

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Doyon said there are five TIF districts and four currently have obligations for debt service. One could be retired soon, but would only generate a few hundred thousand dollars.

McKenney said when he became a commissioner he was “incredibly disappointed” at how few tools they have for economic development and they have to use them judiciously.

Tryon said he liked the idea of payment in lieu of taxes for large nonprofits using public safety resources.

Doyon told The Electric after the meeting that staff was reviewing whether that was a legal option for the city and how they’d administer such a program.

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Tryon said he wouldn’t support another levy ask this year, but that he also wouldn’t support another ask until they had demonstrated that the city had looked at every available option to fund public safety.

He said that from the Feb. 12 discussion, the asks mentioned for the upcoming budget totaled $740,000.

Tryon said if they can’t fund that out of their budget, how could they ask the community to pay more.

“Somebody is going to have to sacrifice somewhere,” Tryon said.

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In July 2023, during the city budget process, Tryon said that when he first took office in 2020, he thought the city needed to rein in spending, but that after several budget cycles, he believed the city has fiscally conservative staff who have kept the budget lower than other Montana cities.

“If you want to cut things out, you gotta understand you’re going to also be cutting services so you gotta tell me what services you wanna cut,” Tryon said in July.

A handful of people attended commission meetings over the summer to object to any increase in taxes.

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To some who criticized the city during the July 18, 2023 meeting, Tryon said it was easy to sit back and criticize, “but when you get into the numbers and actually have to dig in and do the work involved” to balance budget “it’s not quite so easy.”

Doyon said that he wanted commissioners to understand that if they were talking about cuts in the general fund, they were talking primarily about the administration group and Park and Recreation.

A reader told The Electric that there was a memo about cutting Park and Rec already.

The memo was notes for a staff meeting referring to a plan for possible cuts to their subsidy, according to Park and Rec director Steve Herrig.

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Herrig, Doyon and the city human resources director said that there were no current plans to cut Park and Rec staff. Doyon said that the department may not be able to hire as many new positions for the new aquatic center though depending on the budget.

During the meeting, City Attorney David Dennis said that the legal office has a high case load for prosecution and needs another prosecutor, especially as the second municipal court has come online.

The city legal office has been telling commissioners about their high case load for years.

Dennis said they’re seeing increases in criminal citations, particularly disorderly conduct, assault, theft and shoplifting.

“There are fairly big challenges in front of our department,” he told commissioners.

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Asked whether he would request the needed positions in this year’s budget, Dennis said “I don’t think that the money is going to be in the budget,” but that the levy ask would be the basis for his budget request.

Dennis said that they are dismissing more charges now and “we can’t appropriately take care of the crime that’s occurring because we don’t have the resources.”

He said it seems easy to set a limit on things like not prosecuting $5 or $10 shoplifting cases, but if that was a known policy, then what happens if there are no consequences for crime.

GFPD Chief Newton said a challenge is that “until it becomes personal, it’s there, but it really doesn’t resonate,” in terms of the public’s understanding of crime and safety needs.

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Newton said seizures of fentanyl were up 148 percent over last year and there’s more gang activity in schools.

He said they’ve had challenges staffing sexual assault nurse examiners; overdoses and suspected overdose deaths were up at least five percent; and shoplifting was up 65 percent.

Newton said assaults on officers were up 21 percent, the highest level in five years; and that GFPD is using data to focus officers where they’re needed most.

GFFR Chief Jones said that mental health is a significant factor that is not being addressed in the community.

Jones and GFPD are working with the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office, Many Rivers Whole Health and other agencies to get grant funding to build the core infrastructure for crisis response.

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He said that mental health crisis stress alone is impacting public safety resources.

His fear is the city has no funding for major equipment and they’ve funded all recent engine, ambulance and safety equipment purchases for GFFR at least in part with grant funds.

They don’t yet have a solution to replace their training facility, despite several ongoing efforts, and “we’re setting ourselves up for failure,” Jones told commissioners.

He said their call volume has increased and about 60 percent of their calls are medical.

Over the years, “whatever is not a law enforcement problem has become a fire department problem,” Jones said.

Judge Steve Bolstad said the increase in shoplifting calls is due to a 2017 change in state law that reduced the crimes that carried jail time.

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He said their case load is directly related to GFPD and the prosecutors office; and the court has about 7.000 outstanding warrants at any given time.

Bolstad asked for a compliance clerk in the levy and said he’ll ask for it in this year’s budget.

He said in 2023, the court ordered 8,126 hours of community service as a jail diversion.

The total hours completed? About 11 percent, or 872.75.

“We have nobody to follow that and to basically make it happen,” he said.

They also asked for a jury clerk since they have trouble getting people to show up for jury service, slowing that system and forcing mistrials.