Is Grand Traverse County shouldering a disproportionate share of costs for township and city services?

That’s the argument County Administrator Dave Benda is making as he proceeds through two key contract negotiations: setting the amount local townships contribute toward community police officers (CPOs), and determining how much the city of Traverse City should pay toward the region’s Records Division.

In the case of CPOs, nineteen Grand Traverse County deputies on the county payroll are assigned to patrol specific townships including Acme, Blair, East Bay, Garfield, Fife Lake, Paradise and Peninsula. The townships help pay for the direct costs of their officers – but calculating those costs has become an increasing source of tension between the county and townships.

At a county board meeting tonight, Benda will propose charging $79,816 per officer in 2015 – a five percent increase over 2014 – and basing future payments on an “average cost per officer,” calculated by averaging the direct personnel cost of all deputies.

“The agreement has always been that the townships will pay the direct costs for their officers,” says Benda. “They’ve been paying less. We didn’t put the officers on the force, the townships requested them…and we are subsidizing them.”

But East Bay Township Supervisor Glen Lile – who bristles at the term “subsidizing,” noting the townships pay county taxes and the county would have to service the townships anyway if CPOs weren’t in place – is organizing a counter-proposal. Along with other township supervisors, he’s proposing setting the 2015 CPO rate at $77,509 and limiting future annual increases to either five percent or the Consumer Price Index – whichever is less.

“I don’t think any township is looking to get something for nothing…but it needs to be fair and equitable,” Lile says. “If we didn’t pay for CPOs, (the county) would still have to be out there handling arrests and accidents and everything else they're doing now.” Lile plans to ask county commissioners tonight to delay adopting Benda’s plan until township boards have had a chance to approve the counter-proposal, so both plans can be reviewed together.

Determining an equitable cost-sharing arrangement is also at the heart of negotiations over the Records Division, the department providing law enforcement clerical services for both Grand Traverse County and Traverse City. According to Benda, one-third of department staffing hours are dedicated to servicing the city, but the city only pays 17 percent of the department’s $900,000 annual budget. He’d like to see that figure increased to 33 percent, or a two-third county/one third-city split to reflect actual services rendered.

“The agreement we had in place for years was based on population, and that doesn’t make sense to me,” Benda told commissioners at a February board meeting. “I’m proposing we base it on who’s being serviced. That would result in a substantial increase to the city.” Comparing the situation to that of the CPOs, Benda notes the city – like the townships – has argued it contributes to county coffers elsewhere through taxes. But Benda says those tax dollars cover an array of county services utilized by all residents, and that CPOs and the Records Division are “additional services that have an additional cost.”

While Traverse City Mayor Michael Estes is open to reviewing the city’s contributions for the Records Division, he’d like to see the scope of discussions widen to include the entire county-city relationship, including space-sharing arrangements at the Governmental Center, the law enforcement center on Woodmere and the Commission on Aging at 520 West Front Street.

“I can understand where the county’s coming from, but there’s a great deal the city also provides that hasn’t really been discussed,” says Estes, citing as examples the numerous parks and events for which the city bears costs but the county benefits and the reduced pressure on the Sheriff's Office because of the TC Police Department. “We should go through all of these agreements and look at the big picture…the total relationship between the county and city and all the services that are provided.”