PORT ANGELES — Speeders are getting a free ride in Port Angeles.
“Certainly, we are not enforcing traffic laws to the extent we used to,” Police Chief Terry Gallagher said Friday.
“I know there are certain people that benefit from that.”
Due to staffing issues, police no longer dedicate time to monitor downtown and neighborhood traffic with radar guns, conduct patrols to be on the lookout for scofflaws or monitor traffic lights for speeders, he said.
And that’s not likely to change in 2015.
“Essentially, the police department here has our finger in the dike,” Gallagher said.
“We have little traffic enforcement that occurs in the city of Port Angeles.”
Most traffic tickets are written as the result of vehicle mishaps, he said.
Revenue from traffic tickets, which is routed to the city general fund, has declined from $48,248 in 2013 to $41,354 through the end of November, a 14 percent decline with one month to go in the year, according to the city finance office.
“We get calls all the time for traffic enforcement in neighborhoods that we are not able to provide,” Gallagher said.
Port Angeles has 30 officers on duty now. It has 32 positions, two of which are new hires who have not yet started work.
That compares with 36 officers in Aberdeen.
That city has the same square mileage of land mass as Port Angeles, a population of 16,860 compared with Port Angeles’ 19,120 and the benefit of help from police departments in nearby Cosmopolis and Hoquiam, which shares a border with Aberdeen.
“They’ve got a bench they can draw help from, and we don’t have that,” Gallagher added.
Aberdeen has the highest officer-per-thousand rate — 2.14 — among 29 cities in Washington with populations between 10,610 and 23,190, according to the state Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
Port Angeles has 1.67 officers per 1,000 residents, sixth-highest among the 29 cities.
The city also has the fourth-highest crime rate, meaning more serious crimes such as burglary — much of it driven by heroin users — must be dealt with that don’t get the attention they deserve, Gallagher said.
So, if a Port Angeles officer is sick or in training, it creates a hole in daily staffing, Gallagher said.
Port Angeles has three or four officers at the most on duty at any time.
“Our ability to respond to neighborhoods where there is speeding, such as N Street, to send a cop there with a radar gun is not going to happen,” Gallagher said.
Officers sometimes show up in neighborhoods at reported problem times in high-speed areas.
They include West Fifth Street around A, B and C streets; the 800 to 1,000 block of West Fifth Street; and West Fourth Street at Crown Park and Peabody Street, Gallagher said.
But with some officers facing a 15-report backlog and devoting time to criminal investigations, it’s a rarity.
“Our ability to do that is very limited and probably not at a level [citizens] would like it to be,” Gallagher said.
“People do complain. They complain about the speeders, and they are not always pleased with our ability to respond,” he added.
“We prioritize all our calls, depending on where that fits with whatever is happening at the moment.”
It’s also not uncommon, for example, to receive complaints about drivers running traffic lights.
“Drivers in our area seem to have lost respect for red lights,” Gallagher said.
“To take a third of our workforce and sit at Front and Ennis [streets], it might control that light, but a whole lot of the rest of Port Angeles also needs attention.”
In addition, random patrols are no longer conducted.
If someone sees a patrol car, the officer is on his or her way somewhere, Gallagher said.
More staffing is not expected in 2015.
The Police Department budget is $5 million in 2014 vs. $5.3 million in 2015, not including dispatch services provided by Peninsula Communications, commonly known as PenCom.
Gallagher said the biggest contributor to the budget increase is a 2 percent salary hike the City Council approved for all employees.
He said “in the neighborhood” of 38 officers would address his staffing issues, but that would cost on the order of $500,000.
“The money is just not there to do that,” he said.
The city has put a hold on all position covered by the general fund until the City Council, beginning in January, sets priorities on 2016 spending, City Manager Dan McKeen said Friday.
“Only after a thorough review of critical-position needs will any hiring take place,” McKeen said Tuesday in an internal memo to city employees and council members.
It was issued following the announcement Monday that Nippon Paper Industries USA was scaling back production and laying off workers.
The city is expected to lose $360,000 annually in utility tax revenue from Nippon, which consumes 60 percent of the electricity provided by the city’s electric utility.
“Basically, our revenues don’t keep up with our expenses,” McKeen said Friday in an interview.
Gallagher is not alone in doing less with less.
“Terry is doing what every department does because we have a finite amount of resources,” McKeen said.
“Each department needs to go through what are the important things they need to accomplish with the resources we have.
“In a way, what Terry is doing is a small part of what the council will be doing at a bigger level on a more permanent basis.”
The council priority-setting process should be completed by mid-2015, McKeen said.
In the meantime, many speeders will have their way in Port Angeles.
“I believe as long as we continue to staff the Police Department with 32 officers, our ability to do more than just reactive police work is very difficult,” Gallagher said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
