The Oneonta city administrator, it has been reported, needs to find an additional $1.8 million to pay for the budget he will be presenting to Common Council this month. Despite this, Police Chief Christopher Witzenburg is strongly advocating for growing the Oneonta Police Department with three additional officers. I invited him to join me for lunch at the Yellow Deli — their fruit and nuts salad is delicious — to tell me more.
Witzenburg came prepared. Before we even sat down, he had me reading a document, which he had prepared, showing his calculation of the officer-to-resident ratio for 16 accredited New York police departments. Oneonta was the highest with one officer for every 523 residents. Locally, Norwich came in at one-to-335. Of course, officers — while most visible to the public — are only one component of the Oneonta Police Department which also includes sergeants, detectives and a lieutenant. Witzenburg told me he wasn’t planning on making this request this year; however, “the clamoring over foot patrols and the lack of police presence downtown put me in a defensive position,” he said.
“Traditionally we have not received a lot of support from the council and the city,” he told me, “In order to balance the budget, we have cut employees, cut employees, cut employees. It gets to the point where the back’s going to break and that’s where we are. In the interest of public safety, we have to change the thinking. We have a tendency to not look beyond ourselves for best practices in other communities.
“We are at the bottom of the barrel,” he continued, “I’ve got a 60% attrition rate, I’ve got high levels of frustration, I have failing infrastructure in our building. The reality is public safety is expensive if we are going to make a commitment to public safety.”
“We have to make a decision on what the community wants,” Witzenburg continued. He pointed out that we are quite fortunate to have less than a third of the number of mental health and public intoxication arrests as compared to cities in the Southern Tier, but said he hears complaints about a lack of downtown and neighborhood foot patrols, bike patrols and community meetings. “We can’t respond to speeding complaints now,” he continued. And without more staff, he told me, the police will no longer respond to motor vehicle accidents below $1,000 in damages or to property damage complaints which he describes as having “no solvability.”
Is crime in the city up or is it down? “Compared to the ’90s, we are in a good spot but not a great spot,” he told me, “I don’t want to backslide into a bad position. Do you want people to be able to see a uniformed officer walking down the street with a smile on their face instead of driving up on the sidewalk with lights and siren, doing something that could have been prevented a half hour before if someone had been there?” When asked how we have arrived at this place, he said, “Forty years of an attitude that this is Oneonta and this is the way it has always been done.”
As the council is facing a challenging budget situation, where would Witzenburg look for the funds for these new positions? The choices are limited: 1- pay for them every year out of our savings. 2 – Raise taxes. 3 – Cut the budgets of other departments. “That’s not my job,” he replied. “That’s the legislators’ job.” When pushed further, he replied, “Taxes”.
Despite it all, he does tell me the police department is well-received and he gets a lot of positive feedback from the community, which raises the question: Why support a large tax increase when the community feels that the department is doing a good job now? Without hesitation, he asked me, “Do they want a good city or do they want a great city?”
Before finishing lunch, I asked Witzenburg to tell me of what he is most proud. “We just had our accreditation assessment, and they were very happy about what they saw. The professionalism and cohesiveness of my staff is far more than anybody could hope for. I have amazing people. I have never met a more humble group of people who have been through so much adversity and do it with such grace. I get to be part of that. I am looking to establish a legacy for the police department.”
The city administrator is on record as wanting to exceed the state tax cap to pay for his budget. The mayor is on record as wanting to use our savings to do so. The tough decisions, faced by the council, are exacerbated by the fact that the currently proposed spending is more than $4 million (25%) higher than that of the 2022 budget. That’s a lot of money!