Consolidation Study Shows High Costs of Police Department

A plan to possibly has fallen apart and both agencies have decided to go their separate ways.

But for the first time, San Bruno has made public the study that led both cities to decide to opt out of consolidating their police departments.

San Bruno Patch obtained a copy of the report that was done by consultants Municipal Resource Group, which took more than a year to complete—delayed by the Sept. 9 pipeline explosion—and proposed several consolidation options for the cities after showing that the current shared services model wasn't producing a significant benefit to San Bruno or Millbrae. Under the agreement between both cities, Police Chief Neil Telford ran both police departments, working part-time for each city. Now, he will only run San Bruno's department after Millbrae a police chief.

"Similar to (the) fire (department), we do share a great relationship and it's unfortunate that this study didn't prove to further show an advantage to consolidation," Telford told the City Council at its Sept. 13 meeting.

While the consolidation effort eventually fell through because officials decided that neither plan would offer each city enough savings, the study did provide another piece of insight: The costs for San Bruno to run its police department are significantly higher than the costs for its counterparts throughout the Bay Area.

Here are some highlights revealed about how the Police Department operates:

• The compensation for sworn officers here, currently at 43.5, is higher than for Millbrae. Most of the difference, the study found, was because San Bruno has higher wages—$162,876 plus benefits for a police commander—and pension costs. Meanwhile, Millbrae pays more in total compensation for its non-sworn staff—$94,526 in wages in addition to $45,010 in benefits for a records manager.
• When comparing San Bruno and Millbrae's general fund budgets to the budgets for four other comparable cities in the Bay Area, both cities had the lowest general fund revenues received per capita yet the highest percentage of their budgets spent on public safety.
• San Bruno and Millbrae combined have the lowest ratio of police officers per capita—.99 officers per 1,000 people—which is 16 percent lower than Pleasanton, the next comparable city.

Although the study failed to produce any results, officials said the city still plans to maintain a high level of service, especially with having officers in the streets, despite shrinking budgets and personnel.

San Bruno will actually gain $42,000 in revenue this fiscal year because, despite Telford returning to work in San Bruno fulltime, the city already put that cost in its budget. Next year's police budget is expected to stay the same, Telford said.