04/23/2026
I understand where we are at on the police station. I also understand that we need to find funding to maintain and attract officers. We are 30 officers short, that’s a very large problem. In my opinion, we need to hold the administration accountable on this. We have the money allocated in the budget for these officers, however, people do not want to work for our city. We need to have a root cause effect analysis to determine WHY. This should be first steps. We have currently $2,000,000.00 plus annually in savings from our retiree’s Medicare Advantage plan which would be earmarked to pay the money back for the bond for the police station according to the mayor’s plan. The problem with this is two fold; how long will that money be available and if it has to be used for our retiree’s health insurance in the future, then what? We should be looking for OTHER funding sources to build a police station. We also need to push the administration to trim the fat off the building. I look at the Senior Wellness Center and ask myself why did we spent so much money on luxury items that were not necessarily? We have fancy wood appointments, tile, chairs etc. and we couldn’t reuse equipment from the old Senior center at all even though it was useable. Using money from Capital Outlay budget which is desperately needed for building repairs for every city building needs to not be considered. We are stealing from Peter to pay Paul. The lack of ADA compliance at the library and city hall is shameful. The buckets at the library to catch rain water is embarrassing. It is apparent we don’t use library millage funds appropriately. To seal the glass atrium cannot be that expensive. I blame the mayor’s office for this as she is in charge of managing this city.
We need a professional grant writer, a forensic audit and a total revamp of how we spend money by the commissions. Money that is appropriated to the library, PRDA, parks and rec, Greenmead, etc is being approved separately in some cases without consistency and transparency. No one knows, especially council. That is our main job, the money.
Environmentally, we must be prudent on the location of the police station. It’s common sense not to build on wetlands especially since the police chief has said that the current building was built on a creek and there are water problems.
Nothing is guaranteed for the wetlands area until you start digging.
We need to pause and make sure that we are doing this right.
Livonia Police Officers Association
