Washington likely to buy new bodycams, funding TBD

Members of the Washington City Council showed their support for new body camera equipment at a council meeting last week, but have not yet settled on a way to pay for it.

Mayor Jaron Rosien suggested the delay in funding decisions given the absence of two council members.

“It’s my preference that we have six of six as we navigate specifically the part about the funding,” he said. “(It) has been a group discussion, a group decision, and I want to see that continue.”

In any case, the equipment upgrades seem likely. Council members voted 4-0 on a motion to authorize the equipment purchase “with funding to be determined later.”

The motion covers 13 bodycams, five in-car video systems, a multi-bay docking station, and a year of digital storage expenses.

City officials have their eyes on three possible financing options for the nearly $39,000 upgrade: COVID relief money from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA,) Local Option Sales Tax (LOST,) or a combination of the two.

“For the ARPA funding, it is truly the easiest solution, it’s 3.6% of the total allocation, it appears to meet the requirements and it’s good one-time-use funds,” City Financing Director Kelsey Brown said. “I did also do an analysis of our LOST funding. Using our current projection, we can use up to 50% of that for public safety … which leaves us about $65,000 left of LOST funds.”

While ARPA spending faces less red tape, uses of the one-time federal allocation have faced more deliberation.

“This is a once in a generation opportunity with these moneys,” Council Member Danielle Pettit-Majewski said at a meeting in November. “Rather than just having these things come up to us randomly every meeting, we need to be having a bigger conversation about what we want to do and how we want to invest this money.”

City officials have also expressed reluctance to spend the cash on fragmented department proposals without a comprehensive plan.

“If that’s the precedent we set, we can look forward to another department head with another request in the next two weeks, and then another,” Rosien said in November. “All of which are valid, but it’s up to council to decide how they want to steer these funds.”

The alternative funding source, LOST, isn’t without downsides either. The city had planned to use the local tax to pay off its new city hall building by July 2022. While that timeline has already been pushed back for unrelated reasons, further delay may trade off with other projects.

“Our end-of-the year fund balance for the general fund is not as healthy as it was originally projected,” Brown said. “It’s OK to still pay it off next year, but the longer that we prolong paying it off … that prolongs (other) planning items as well.”

Andy Grapp, a manager of Getac Video Solutions which produces the equipment, attended the meeting to speak on several city officials’ concerns, chief among them the ongoing fees associated with the gear, which exceed $6,000 a year.

“To compare it, any body-worn system today, even if it (can) do on-premise storage which we really don’t have an option for … it would be about $4,500 in this example,” Grapp said. “For roughly $2,500 more you’re getting all those features. It is maybe unfortunate that you can’t store everything on-premise, but it is just the reality that the cloud is that much more secure and that much more beneficial.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com