Albany should pay for county sheriff patrols in city

To the Editor:
Last year, in response to alarming increases in violent crime in the city of Albany our county sheriff’s department began providing extra patrol and dispatching services within the city limits. As members of the county legislature, we supported these special efforts because all of us in the county want the city to be a safer place.

But now, the city of Albany is ignoring invoices from the sheriff’s department and is refusing to pay its fair share for these extra patrol and dispatching services.

Paying for these additional services provided above the norm is standard practice for other municipalities in the county. In fact, just this month, the legislature unanimously approved the terms by which the sheriff provides five different towns EMT [emergency medical technician] services. Those towns — Bethlehem, New Scotland, Berne, Westerlo, and Rensselaerville — have no problem paying their fair share for special services received.

The irony is that the city of Albany has more than enough money on hand to pay its bill to the county. Just this year, it was awarded $80 million in federal money under the American Rescue Plan, which is more than all the other municipalities in the county combined.

It spent millions of dollars of that money for pay raises and bonuses for its own employees. Yet, it has refused to pay the county for critical public safety help, leaving taxpayers in the towns and smaller municipalities to foot their bill.

While the sheriff is doing more of the city’s work, the city is not filling a large number of long-term vacancies in its own department’s sheriff patrol and dispatch units. This allows the city to, in essence, partly defund its own police force while the county — and its taxpayers — are forced to take up the slack. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the county, the sheriff’s department is being stretched thin by its added city work.

A Republican-sponsored resolution calling for Albany to pay its bills, estimated at $1.1 million for 2020 and 2021, was defeated at the Dec. 6 legislature meeting. Every Democrat in the legislature opposed the bill. Incredibly, the resolution was not even referred to committee for review, which is the legislature’s standard practice.

Legislators from the city of Albany attempt to defend the failure to pay by stating all of us in the county are one family. That may be, but in our families no sibling would ever attempt to pass their debts and bills on to others in the family, particularly when their own bank accounts have expanded greatly with new-found cash. 

If we are all one county, we cannot allow this unfairness to stand. Please make sure you contact county legislators and ask where they stand on this. We have not given up on the matter. It is time to speak up!

Mark Grimm

Jeff Perlee

Albany County Legislators

Editor’s note: Mark Grimm represents part of Guilderland while Jeff Perlee represents Altamont, Guilderland Center, and part of the Hilltowns in the Albany County Legislature; both are Republicans.

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