Denver failed to deliver on promised cost savings when it persuaded voters to approve a modern downtown jail in 2005, Mayor Michael Hancock said Tuesday.
The Downtown Detention Center was built after voters approved a $378 million bond referendum to pay for the jail and a new courthouse. Voters were told the design and technology at the jail would increase efficiency so extra staff members were not needed.
“It was sold that way to the voters as well as to all of us,” Hancock said during City Council hearings for the 2015 public safety budget.
The mayor’s comments came as interim Sheriff Elias Diggins asked for 49 new employees to relieve soaring overtime costs at the downtown jail.
Councilman Charlie Brown slammed the sheriff’s department’s management for failing to ask for additional staffers years ago and for allowing 2014 overtime spending to exceed $5 million.
“Something is not right, and I don’t know why it wasn’t fixed,” Brown said.
That’s when Hancock stepped into the conversation and said, “Councilman, you aren’t going to get any argument from us that it is unacceptable.”
When city officials pitched the bond referendum, they told voters that the new jail’s design would reduce the number of staffers. The opposite turned out to be true, Hancock said.
“I’m not trying to make excuses,” he said.
The Denver Post reported last week that the sheriff’s department had paid $4.9 million in overtime for the first eight months of the year. The department’s annual overtime spending has increased more than 40 percent between 2013 and 2010.
Deputies at the Downtown Detention Center work the majority of overtime hours, The Post’s analysis found.
Steps are being taken to reduce the overtime budget.
A new class of 50 deputies will come online this year. And the 2015 budget request includes $2.5 million for 34 new deputies and $1.1 million for 15 new officers who will backfill vacancies left when deputies attend training, according to Diggins’ budget presentation.
Still, overtime is projected to hit $2.5 million in 2015, Diggins said.
Tuesday morning’s budget session also included presentations for other agencies that fall under the city’s Department of Public Safety. Highlights from those presentations include:
• The Denver Fire Department next year will study ways to reduce the number of non-emergency calls its staff answers for minor medical emergencies, Fire Chief Eric Tade said.
• The Denver Police Department wants $1.3 million to field body cameras for its patrol and traffic officers and $188,000 to pay for three new employees to run the program.
• The police department also wants $222,400 to buy 200 new Tasers as it begins providing a Taser to every officer. Currently, there are 366 Tasers shared among about 800 cops.
• The police department also plans to have two recruit classes of 50 officers each.
Noelle Phillips: 303-954-1661, nphillips@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Noelle_Phillips
