By “Citizen Harry” Gatjens
The Edmonds Police Department provides backup services to the Town of Woodway for police protection. Woodway has police protection eight hours a day, and Edmonds police answer calls outside of those hours.
For the past several years, Edmonds has been charging Woodway on a per-call basis. The amount per call was based upon a guesstimate of what those costs were. Earlier this year, the Edmonds City Council asked to review those costs to make sure Edmonds charged Woodway an appropriate amount.
Council President Strom Peterson worked with the police department to come up with an appropriate charge. There is no “perfect” way to make this computation, so Peterson and EPD divided total police department expenses by the total number of calls answered.
The costs to run the Edmonds Police Department, under the 2012 budget, was $8,714,217. The total number of calls Edmonds police responded to — including those for Woodway — was 30,413. This makes the average cost per call $286.53. Edmonds has been charging Woodway $137.50 per call.
On average, the Town of Woodway has been receiving Edmonds Police Department response to just over seven calls per month for the past four years. Peterson tried to come up with a monthly fee that would cover the average cost for those calls. As a cushion, to make sure that the full average costs were covered, he calculated the $286 cost per call and multiplied it by 10 calls per month. In the event that more than 10 calls were covered in any one month, he had a permission to charge an additional $300 per hour beyond that 10-call limit.
Under this plan, Edmonds would receive $34,320 per year for the services provided Woodway. Assuming the average call volume remained the same as it has been, this would work out to an average of $407 per call.
As mentioned above, there is no perfect way to compute the actual cost of the service provided. However, it seems reasonable that taking the entire costs of the police department and dividing by the total number of calls would provide a fair cost.
Bear in mind that there are many police department expenses that are not directly related to the number of calls. For example, the Edmonds Police Department does not provide patrols in Woodway, but only responds to calls for help. Also, Woodway is predominately a residential community; it does not have the motels with prostitution and/or drug problems that are in Edmonds, nor the commercial districts on Highway 99 that bring traffic issues. On the other hand, by providing the police services Edmonds is — in essence –providing an insurance policy for the Town of Woodway.
On Aug. 7, Edmonds City Council rejected the proposal negotiated agreement between the Mayor of Woodway, Council President Peterson and the Edmonds Police Department. Council President Peterson was asked to come up with a proposal that further covered the costs and the “insurance” benefit that Woodway receives.
On one hand, councilmembers felt that the taxpayers of Woodway should bear more of the costs. On the other hand, Peterson incorporated all the costs of the Edmonds Police Department, not just those related to calls. The argument can go either way.
Food for thought: Woodway pays $473,638 for fire protection services, for 50 calls per year. This is not for “back-up” protection, but rather for primary protection. While the cost per call for fire calls would obviously be far higher than the cost for a police call, a large part of the cost is for the “insurance component” of fire protection. Not an apples-to-apples comparison with the police contract, but just a point to ponder.
Peterson is presenting a new proposal to the Edmonds City Council next Tuesday, Aug. 21.
Edmonds resident “Citizen Harry” Gatjens provides regular reports and commentary to My Edmonds News on the workings of the Edmonds city government. Gatjens, an accountant, also offers insight into the city budget.
Harry, in your research what is the same fire calulation for Edmonds? Woodway pays about $9k/call. Working the numbers backwards, if you divide our fire cost of $6.3m by $9k that would mean at the same rate paid by Woodway we paid for 700 calls. Do you know if we had anywhere near 700 calls? Not apples to oranges because Edmonds provides some building space for the stations and Woodway does not. So are we getting a better fire deal from FD1 or is Woodway? My guess is not, Woodway has been very clever and getting services on a marginal cost basis not not paying their share of the fixed costs.
FD1 responded to 4,974 calls in Edmonds in 2011.
Ron, It would seam hard to understand your data vs Harrys. 50 vs 5000. Harrys measurement sounds different from yours. Are you saying we had 100 times more calls than Harry reported???
Another way to look at your data vs Harry’s is Woodway paid $9000 per call and Edmonds paid $1300 per call. How could that be so widely different.
Harry reported the number of calls in Woodway; my figure is for Edmonds, and it is correct.
You’ll have to ask FD1 to explain their charges. One councilmember told me that Woodway’s contract with Woodway is for $660K and there were only 15 calls.
My numbers came from a discussion with our Police Chief who was reading directly from the contract for 2012. There is an escalation for 2013 but I don’ t have that figure in front of me.