BOZEMAN — The Bozeman Police Department’s budget can be broken down into three different categories: personnel, operations, and capital.
Personnel covers staff salaries and makes up the largest part of the budget.
There are some differences between last year’s personnel budget and this year’s requested amount.
“The difference this year in the submitted budget is in personnel, for example, is a request for an additional school resource officer. That’s been tied to the opening of the new high school,” said Bozeman Police Department police chief Steve Crawford.
“And then as well as a part-time police officer position for a position that is assigned to court security in the municipal court.”
The request for personnel funding is up from $7.6 million to $8.2 million dollars.
Chief Crawford says there were no major changes to operations cost, but the budget asks for around $13,000 more than last year.
“The four big categories for expenses for us within our operating budget is contracted services,” said Crawford.
“That includes things like a contract we have with the Heart of the Valley Animal Shelter for animal control services, another one is our community-based crisis response program, paying for that, as well as medical services to Bozeman Deaconess Health and then also like psychological services for our background checks.”
The request for capital funds for 2021 is down from last year, from $458,000 to $274,000.
“Capital is larger, more expensive, more permanent items, and in the case of the police department, they’re generally vehicles or other high dollar items.”
Bozeman PD says a lot of thought goes into requesting a budget, especially when considering the city’s rapid growth.
“We reduce in some areas and increase in others as we determine kinda what those costs are in the current year when we start budgeting for the next year,” said Crawford.
Late Monday night, City Commissioners decided on a city budget for 2021, cutting more than a million dollars from the overall requested budget.
Commissioners supported the Bozeman Police Department’s 2021 budget request but decided to delay the purchase of a police car costing around $61,000.
