KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is proposing a small increase in spending for the city’s police force, but far less than what the department requested.

Lucas laid out his spending priorities during his annual State of the City address on Wednesday. Public safety spending makes up 75% of the city’s general fund budget.

Citing a challenging financial year for the city, most departments will face similar spending cuts this year, Lucas said.

The 5% increase, or $17.8 million, would bring the Kansas City Police Department budget to $363 million, a sharp decline from the $417 million requested by the law enforcement agency.

“As we have recently discussed, we also ask the police board to craft ways to reduce the millions of dollars in liabilities that are straining the police budget and public safety delivery in our community,” Lucas said during his speech. “The current trajectory in litigation costs is unsustainable for the police department’s budget. The city continues to support our officers and the hard work they do each day.”

Under his proposal, Lucas wants the police department to still be able to hire 50 additional police officers and 20 new call takers and dispatchers, in addition to giving officers pay increases.

The move follows a recent memo from Police Chief Stacey Graves calling for “drastic” cost-saving measures through the end of the fiscal year, citing legal settlements and overtime costs.

Among those cuts, Graves plans to suspend overtime pay, pause all hiring for staff positions and halt all purchases for “non-critical supplies and equipment.”

Graves told the Kansas City council members the primary cause for the budget shortfalls is a combination of legal settlements and staff overtime. Several council members said there needs to be more communication and transparency between the police department and the city.

The police department has paid out $10.9 million in legal settlements over the past fiscal year.

Board materials projected budget would even out

Financial documents reveal that the Kansas City Police Department flagged several areas that exceeded their budget at the January Board of Police Commissioners meeting. Still, each area is projected to be in line by the end of the fiscal year.

Tom Whittaker, Board of Police Commissioners president, said in a written statement he was not surprised by Graves’ memo and adjustments will be needed to stay within the overall budget based on the board materials.

“Adjustments of this nature are not uncommon,” Whittaker said in the statement. “The budget must balance at the end of the year and I’m confident in Chief Graves’ operational oversight to accomplish this as she has done successfully every year of her tenure.”

The Star reached out to other members of the police board, but none had responded as of Wednesday afternoon.

The police department operates under state control by a five-member board of police commissioners, four of whom are appointed by Missouri’s governor. The city’s mayor always has a seat on the board.

Kansas City taxpayers provide millions in police funding but have little say in how those dollars are spent.

Earlier this week, Lucas said the documents’ projects that the budget would be in line by the end of the fiscal year suggested there was little cause for concern.

“You would have to almost be Nostradamus to know the level of budget concerns that would come two days later,” Lucas said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 10 and a half years. And so the suggestion that these sorts of things happen all the time? Maybe super internally, but this wasn’t just a simple internal memo between command staff.”

The board documents outline spending on contracts, health insurance, and equipment that led to a shortfall at the end of the fiscal year. These documents were provided to the police board two days before Graves’ memo.

The memo spurred a nearly two-hour meeting with city council members questioning police department leadership about the budget. Police officials have called the moves a normal process of right-sizing the budget at the end of a fiscal year.

“I saw two very different kinds of details in the police budget (during those meetings),” Lucas said. “In the police board meeting, there was almost no reason to be alarmed. You’re seeing things that, frankly, there’s issues, but more regular ones that will, in essence, work themselves out by the end of the year, whereas in the other, of course, it was anything but.”

The documents show the department’s spending on equipment and supplies, including new uniforms, is currently 10.9% over what was expected for this time of year. The overage is partly due to newly purchased uniforms.

“This is due in part to the uniform conversion and minor equipment purchases related to the conversion,” the documents read. “The percent over budget continues to decrease. It is expected this will be in balance by year end.”

Police department officials told The Star that the purchases for the uniforms were within the budgeted $1.1 million set aside for them.

Contract payments for the department’s stun guns or Tasers also contributed to the shortfall, pushing the portion of the budget covering larger equipment purchases 41.6% over, according to the documents.

“That caused the percentage over budget to spike, but will continue to decrease as we get closer to the fiscal year end due to spreading this cost out over additional months,” the documents read.

Health insurance costs for the police department were 1.31% over budget at this point in the fiscal year, the documents show. The board attributed the overage to a rate increase that was higher than originally budgeted.

The largest budget overage in the city’s general fund for the department is related to contractual services, which are currently 20.58% over budget. This increase is attributed to risk management costs and discrepancies in the timing of when services are received versus when they are paid.

Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the police department, said risk management costs encompass legal settlements, workers’ compensation, and property insurance.

Lucas said he expects the police department to reach out to the city to make up for the overspend, but noted that if there was an expected budget issue, changes should have been made instead of waiting for the city to pick up the tab.

“Should we have looked at some other tools, delaying the uniform replacement program being one example, or any other of the number of steps that we’ve looked at?” Lucas said. “It’s like our household budget, frankly, like our city budget. Sometimes you have to make different choices.”

Next steps for council

Council member Eric Bunch said he’s excited to get his hands on the budget on Thursday to see the exact numbers involved in various departments.

Bunch said that this is the first time to his knowledge that 75% of the general fund budget is going toward public safety, which is funding for the fire and police departments.

“Which is always hard to hear, because that means that only 25% of that general fund is left over for other needs,” Bunch said. “It’s hard.”

When comparing the budget fight to his first term in office, Bunch said the police department has become more responsive to the community’s needs.

“I think that we still need to get our arms around how are we spending that budget?” Bunch said. “Are there ways that they can tighten things up so that they don’t overspend this time? But it’s always a work in progress.”

Council member Johnathan Duncan said 25% of the city’s general revenue is more than enough to operate the police department, following news of the smaller increase proposed by Lucas.

“The recent KCPD budget crisis shows the department cannot manage its funds, and allocating a dollar more over the mandate is fiscal malpractice,” Duncan said.

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