The city should change PD recruitment and retention practices

The cost of funding the Truth or Consequences Police Department is rising, emptying more and more of the public’s purse.

Costs are likely to be really high this year since a new police building was acquired for about $400,000 and it needs to be renovated to law-enforcement needs.

Those costs weren’t budgeted.

About 20 percent of city voters signed a petition to give the people veto power over the city commission’s decision to borrow up to $2 million to renovate the building and to pay back the cash used for its purchase taken from public coffers. The special election is slated for February 2025.

Beyond those costs, the newish Chief of Police Luis Tavizon’s recruiting and hiring practices are costing more than before, but he may be helpless to contain those costs.

A recent survey by the National Police Foundation showed the average police department’s turnover is about 14 percent, “with some departments having rates as high as 20 percent.”

Tavizon was hired as chief November 2022. In those two years he has hired at least eight out of the current number of 15 police officers. The number of officers hired and gone within Tavizon’s tenure is unknown, and the number of empty positions that he filled is unknown. Just looking at current numbers, there has been a 27-percent turnover rate a year in the last two years.

Since 2006, when I started reporting on this area, recruiting, training and keeping officers have been ongoing problems. Patrick Gallagher, chief nearly 15 years ago, convinced the city commission to pass a .25 percent local gross receipts tax to be used to up officers’ salaries in order to compete—to attract and keep already trained officers.

Gallagher wanted to hire already certified officers. It would be cheaper to offer higher salaries than to pay their salaries for a year while they train at the police academy in Santa Fe and then get more on-the-job training here, only to leave shortly afterward. Gallagher said other states paid officers more in general.

The tax was put into effect, but there is no evidence the city ever used it to up officers’ salaries. The city used it to purchase the current animal shelter around 2018. Nearly $1 million was used to plug deficit spending in the general fund two years ago. Every year the city uses it to pay for “corrections” costs—prisoner housing and medical fees. Now the city commission wants to tap that revenue to pay off a $2-million, 20-year debt for the new police building.

Tavizon probably wasn’t even told what the .25 PD GRT was for and resorted to other means to attract officers. The city commission gave him permission to hire out-of-town officers. Their families don’t want to live here, he has said. Police cars would be used for their commutes.

Gas and maintenance and fleet size appear to have increased as a result, with no evidence that this recruitment/retention tactic is alleviating turnover and training costs.

The 15 officers on staff do not include four support staff, a code enforcement officer or animal control officer(s).

Of those 15 officers, three live in T or C, two live in Elephant Butte and two live in the Village of Williamsburg. Seven or 46 percent of the force does not commute. Five officers live in Las Cruces, one lives in Silver City, one lives in Arrey and one lives in Radium Springs. More than half, 53 percent of T or C’s officers commute. Only three, 20 percent, live in city limits.

According to public documents, fuel costs since the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1, through Nov. 1, are nearly $100,000, which is about $25,000 a month. The city commission approved $57,000 for fuel in the budget, far short of the likely $300,000 it will cost.

Maintenance on the vehicles in the last four months has cost about $14,000, which comes to about $42,000 a year, if costs remain the same.

Four of the 15 current officers are in training and are being paid $38,400 over the year to complete 672 hours of training in Santa Fe. Once they finish training, their salary goes up to about $49,030. Three officers, all hired in 2023 by Tavizon, probably went through a year of training, earning about $38,400 each last year. In the last two years, the city has probably paid about $268,800 in salaries for officers not on the street, or about $134,400 a year.

If the last two years are indicative of yearly recruiting and retention costs, they are $300,000 for fuel, $42,000 for maintenance and $134,400 for salaries, or about $476,400 a year.

The .25 percent PD GRT brings in about that same amount a year in revenue. The $476,400, evenly spread among the 15 police officers, would increase their salaries by $31,760 a year.

Paying much higher salaries, hiring only certified officers and insisting they live in T or C, as Gallagher proposed, would probably stop turnover more effectively and be cheaper. It would transform officers’ lives. They would establish homes and families here that would long benefit the community, economy and public purse.

The city commission should use the PD GRT as Gallagher wisely intended.