By Tim O’Meilia
For months, Manalapan town commissioners discussed ways to beef up police presence in Ocean Inlet Park and Bird Island to shoo away trespassers and turn down the beach volume.
Adding a marine patrol unit, expanding the beach patrol with another all-terrain vehicle, hiring more officers and even adding cameras on the beach were in the mix, as commissioners spent more than eight hours on four separate days in September hashing out police “enhancements.”
In the end, the bottom line ruled. The commission dialed back many of the security measures that would have puffed up next year’s tax rate by 15 percent and settled on a rate that will cost landowners 5 percent more in town taxes for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
Commissioners also revived a discussion of contracting for police service from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office — although Police Chief Carmen Mattox recommended against it — and will investigate outsourcing police dispatch services.
Commissioners approved a tax rate of $2.90 per $1,000 of taxable property value, up from this year’s $2.78 rate, an increase of 4.3 percent. But because property values in the coastal community increased by almost 1 percent this year, the nick to the wallet of Manalapan homeowners is slightly more than that.
The commission briefly considered dipping into the town’s $1.7 million reserves to reduce the tax rate to this year’s level but decided against it.
The votes on both the tax rate and budget were 5-1. Dissenting Commissioner Donald Brennan wanted the rate lower and complained that “60 percent of the taxes come from 50 people,” referring to oceanfront landowners.
“This beast is getting very tough to feed, especially when they’re not getting all the services they need,” Brennan said during a Sept. 11 workshop meeting. “My instincts say this is all leading to a very unhappy outcome.”
The commission approved a $3.3 million general fund budget, about $58,000 more than this year, and a water utilities budget of $5.4 million. The utilities budget includes $3 million for improvements in the distribution system.
The general fund budget includes a 3.5 percent pay increase for town employees, although an agreement with the police bargaining unit, the Police Benevolent Association, has not been reached.
The commission sliced $143,000 from the proposed budget, including a $23,000 phone system, $25,000 in landscaping at Town Hall and on Land’s End Road and $40,000 for improvements to the council room communications and dais.
Police coverage top issue
The focus of much of the budget discussion was police. Proposals to spend $60,000 to contract with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office for weekend marine patrol, $27,000 for a new police car, $11,000 for an ATV and $21,000 for a part-time police clerk were eliminated.
Commissioners later put $41,000 in a contingency fund that could be spent on a marine patrol for the summer or toward either the ATV or the police car. They made no decision last month.
Commissioners wrestled with the marine patrol issue, questioning Mattox about the sheriff’s office’s response to calls at Ocean Inlet Park, where the sheriff has withdrawn park rangers over budget concerns.
Mattox said that deputies responded well during stepped-up patrols over the Fourth of July and Labor Day weekends. On other calls, Mattox said deputies respond on a case-by-case basis but that their response is not guaranteed.
Mayor Basil Diamond said most of the offenses at the park are noise complaints, underage drinking and other misdemeanors. “We haven’t really had criminal activity,” he said during the Sept. 11 workshop. “We’d be better off not giving up what is already available to us.”
But at the Sept. 25 final hearing, he suggested that a contingency fund could be used for the marine patrol in the summer.
“I think we need to consider what some of the citizens want on the marine patrol.”
Mattox will get an additional part-time officer, will fill the vacant lieutenant’s position and assign one of the eight full-time officers to detective work.
PBSO deal criticized
The lengthy budget discussions also reignited talk of the sheriff’s offer to take over police operations in the town for $1.17 million annually, compared with the $1.46 million police approved this month, not including a new vehicle.
Brennan pushed the idea, and Diamond said the sheriff was never asked to respond to the specific concerns that Mattox said town police raised, including code enforcement, checks of dark houses and manning the camera system the town uses at the entrance to Point Manalapan.
Brennan said that professional law-enforcement experts have told him that the town’s force cannot match what the sheriff can offer for $300,000 less.
But Commissioner John Murphy said the sheriff’s higher pay scale means the sheriff cannot match the town’s cost after the initial two-year contract.
“It’s phony. You know it, and I know it,” Murphy said of the sheriff’s offer. The commission took no action.
But the commissioners did ask Town Manager Linda Stumpf to seek proposals to provide police dispatch service. The town spends more than $200,000 for three full-time and four part-time dispatchers, but records show the police deal with only about 50 emergency calls to 911 per month.
Mattox noted that 911 calls from cellphones, which cannot pinpoint locations, aren’t included in the count because they are first routed to mainland police stations because that’s where the cell towers are.
“Why not eliminate dispatch and let the sheriff or someone else do it?” asked Commissioner David Cheifetz. Ú
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