The St. Cloud Police Department will add four officers to its ranks if the mayor's proposed budget is approved by the City Council later this year.
St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis unveiled Monday the preliminary 2022 budget, which includes an 8.4% increase in the city's public safety budget. Kleis attributes the need for additional officers to growth in the city and region.
"We've more than doubled our commitment to public safety in the last decade because, as a regional center, our daytime population exceeds 180,000," Kleis said. "And that's the police force that we budget for — even though the population of our city is only 68,000."
Part of the increase includes funding for three full-time officer positions previously funded by a partnership with St. Cloud State University and St. Cloud Technical & Community College that isn't being renewed due to the colleges' declining enrollment and a decline in other funding sources, Kleis said.
"We are not reducing the amount of public safety staff," he said. "We are being somewhat defunded in that area but we are not defunding it at our level."
The preliminary budget also includes a 17% increase to the information technology budget and an 11% increase to the public works budget.
"Despite a very challenging year, we're able to put significant resources into our top two priorities: public safety and infrastructure," Kleis said.
The city slashed the 2021 budget by more than $2 million to account for pandemic-related income loss. The 2022 preliminary budget will rebound to pre-pandemic levels — and accounts for the projected 4% growth in the city's tax base in 2022.
