Who should pay for the 19 Grand Traverse County sheriff deputies who patrol area townships -- the county or the townships themselves?

Grand Traverse County Superintendent Dave Benda – who is working with county commissioners to address a projected $700,000 2015 budget deficit – notes that the majority of the county's discretionary spending goes toward public safety via the sheriff's office. Nineteen of the department's officers are community police officers (CPOs), assigned to specific townships including Acme, Blair, East Bay, Garfield, Fife Lake, Paradise and Peninsula.

Townships help pay direct costs for their officers – an average  of $76,015 per officer in 2014 – while the county covers the remaining expenses, including uniforms and accessories, vehicles, gas and oil and overhead. Benda estimates the actual direct cost per officer is $110,265, with indirect costs (including building and administrative costs) increasing the total to an estimated $121,000 per officer last year. He's proposing the county stop paying the difference out of the county's general fund and instead require townships to fully reimburse the county for their officers.

“Everybody in the county is subsidizing those particular townships,” Benda tells The Ticker. “The county is not charging what it should. City residents are paying for Garfield and Peninsula and East Bay officers.” At a county budget meeting Monday, Benda told commissioners: “It's really inappropriate for us to be subsidizing these townships through our police department with general fund dollars.”

After a five-year period in which the annual township contribution rate remained the same, the county board approved a 2.5 percent hike in township fees last year. This year, Benda is recommending a five percent rate increase – but says he'd prefer to see commissioners do away with the county's contribution entirely. Alternately, Benda says, the county could offer to provide a percentage of an officer's time to each township commiserate with what they were willing to pay.

“Normally how it's done is you set a rate per hour (for the officer),” says Benda, “Then you ask the township how many hours they want.”

Acme Township Supervisor Jay Zollinger says he understands “reasonable increases for inflation” for CPO fees and says he's open to meeting with the county and other townships to figure out “a deal” that works for everyone. But Bollinger also believes it would be “very hard” for some of the smaller townships to pay the full cost of a CPO.

“That would be very expensive,” says Zollinger. “I don't think it can happen.” The supervisor also questions whether Acme Township residents are being doubly taxed for law enforcement, since they pay both a county tax that supports the sheriff's department and a township millage that funds Acme's CPO contribution (other townships' residents are similarly taxed, as are city residents, who pay for both the Traverse City Police Department and – via the county tax – the sheriff's department).

Zollinger warns that the county needs to consider the consequences if townships decided to walk away from funding their CPOs entirely.

“The county would inherit all of the costs for those officers,” he points out. “Then if you start cutting people...that's just not how you keep a community safe.”

That scenario also concerns Grand Traverse County Sheriff Tom Bensley. In the last decade, both Long Lake Township and Green Lake Township stopped funding their CPO positions – thus eliminating the deputy positions altogether. Yet the county continues to provide law enforcement services to those areas. Bensley worries that the CPO positions could be cut in township negotiations and also that county officers already stretched thin could be forced to take on geographical areas now largely covered by CPOs.

“My concern is keeping officers on the street,” says Bensley. “If you cut people, you cut services. The townships don't have to pay a single dime if they don't want to. So if it's forced on them, and they go away...we have a problem.”