$66.2 million budget gap<\/a>, Sacramento City Councilmembers on Tuesday said they are prepared to reduce the police budget by cutting overtime and vacant positions.<\/p>\nThe council received a report last week outlining wide-ranging options to balance the budget before their June deadline.<\/p>\n
Multiple leaders expressed interest in cutting or freezing the number of vacant positions in the police department.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m gonna say honestly, police will be touched. We will look at vacancies,\u201d City Manager Maraskeshia Smith told the council.<\/p>\n
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Councilmembers Mai Vang and Roger Dickinson urged city staff to bring forward an ongoing audit into how vacancies are used in the police department.<\/p>\n
Currently, the police department keeps some positions vacant, and redirects the funds that would be spent on those positions to cover the cost of overtime pay, Dickinson previously told Abridged.<\/p>\n
Police department often has high vacancies<\/p>\n
The department frequently has a high numberof vacancies. There were 138 vacancies in the department, out of 830 full-time budgeted positions, as of Novermber 2025, according to the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething that I raised last year, and I think is still meaningful this year \u2026 is to do a careful analysis of our vacancies,\u201d Dickinson said. Dickinson is also the chair of the council\u2019s Budget and Audit Committee.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Lisa Kaplan suggested that the city consider freezing some of its vacant positions for a year, rather than cut positions.<\/p>\n
Options outlined for the council so far range anywhere from reclassifying some positions, to removing upwards of 150 police positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no proposed layoffs and this isn\u2019t a hiring freeze,\u201d said police Sgt. Justin Boyd.<\/p>\n
More details around the police budget are expected to emerge next Tuesday, when Police Chief Kathy Lester is slated to provide a police budget presentation to the council.<\/p>\n
Under the most severe scenarios, as many as 350 total city-funded positions are on the line. Staff cuts are also being weighed for parks maintenance employees and the Sacramento Fire Department.<\/p>\n
Felicia Alvarez is a reporter at Abridged covering accountability. She\u2019s called Sacramento home since 2015 and has reported on government, health care and breaking news topics for both local and national news outlets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: Sacramento City Manager Maraskeshia Smith said she is considering cutting vacant positions in the police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122,65250],"class_list":{"0":"post-203381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-sacramento","9":"tag-sacramento-headlines","10":"tag-sacramento-news","11":"tag-secondary-highlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}