Dart to cut graffiti, K-9 units
In Cook County Board budget hearings Monday, Sheriff Tom Dart laid out the cuts he’ll need to make, saying he’ll have to eliminate the graffiti and K-9 units.
“There’s a lot of suburbs who depend on us doing that function,” Dart said of the graffiti unit, adding that it is also “very valuable” in the “tracking of gangs” in the suburbs.
Yet, with Dart trimming $81 million from a projected initial budget of $485 million to get down to a $404 million budget he agreed on with Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, he said he had to cut 100 positions, and those units were luxuries compared with essentials like staffing the county jail and courthouses and patrolling the county.
Democratic McCook Commissioner Jeffrey Tobolski and Republican Elmwood Park Commissioner Peter Silvestri, both also mayors of their communities, bemoaned the loss of the units, but seemed resigned to the realities.
“You’re going to really break the hearts of all the mayors of the municipalities with that graffiti unit,” Silvestri said.
Elmwood Park was among the leaders in graffiti incidents handled by the unit in 2010, along with Evanston, Des Plaines and Palatine in the North and Northwest suburbs, all with more than 200. Mount Prospect and Schaumburg were among the suburbs with more than 100 graffiti incidents.
The graffiti unit concentrated on the categorization and removal of graffiti in the suburbs, for instance telling a local police department when a new gang appeared to be moving into the area.
“We use you guys all the time on major things,” Tobolski added of the K-9 unit.
Dart said there were eight separate K-9 crews countywide. The dogs will be retired and the officers reassigned, although the Sheriff’s Police will retain its bloodhound.
Dart said he had been cutting positions and making the Sheriff’s Police more efficient throughout his first term in office, but added, “We’re at the bone,” especially with court-settlement requirements to hire more correctional officers at Cook County Jail.
He again addressed the potential of closing suburban courthouses on weekends as a potential long-term fix, saying it would save 50 positions a day on Saturdays, but not for the 2011 budget being considered by the County Board this month.
Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans, who followed Dart in budget hearings, said he was open to closing the suburban courthouses on weekends “as long as we can give people a hearing they’re entitled to.”
Evans added, however, that “it places an additional burden on the municipalities,” in that local police officers would have to transport weekend arrestees to downtown Chicago to the Criminal Court at 26th Street and California for bond hearings.
Dart said he was saving an additional $9.5 million through bookkeeping by shifting jail and courthouse custodians to the Facilities Management Department. The custodians, however, are not armed, and that wouldn’t change with the shift in departments.
Evans said he and Dart were making progress in talks about electronic monitoring of nonviolent prisoners to cut the daily population at the county jail, and that he expected State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to address the issue at her budget hearing Tuesday.
Evans said he’s trimming his budget $25.4 million to meet Preckwinkle’s call for 16 percent cuts. Dart, like the State’s Attorney and the Public Defender’s Office, has received permission for lighter cuts, agreeing to a 12.5 percent reduction.
The budget has to be balanced and passed by the County Board by the end of the month.