2009/09/16 Council Agenda Packet

wry urce: nacxgrounu anu riwaru iviei.nouoiogy rage z. 01 1 4 Recovery Act from which CHRP funds are allocated is: 1) to preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery; 2) to assist those most impacted by the recession; and 3) to stabilize state and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases. To meet the intent of the statutory requirements noted above, the COPS Office incorporated fiscal health, crime rates, and community policing related measures into the CHRP application. The program development staff, in consultation with experts in the fields of policing, criminology, and public finance, developed questions that attempt to measure the relative fiscal health of law enforcement agencies and their local government entities, information on the number of reported crimes, and planned community policing activities. These questions include such factors as changes in budgets for law enforcement agencies and local governments, poverty, unemployment and foreclosure rates, and reported crimes for the previous calendar year. In asking a variety of fiscal health questions, the COPS Office was attempting to obtain a complete view of the fiscal distress being experienced by applicants through objective and verifiable indicators that all agencies, from rural communities to large cities, can accurately report. Please see the CHRP application and application guide for information regarding specific questions. Selection Methodology A key policy question in allocating the existing funds was how to balance the economic factors against reported crime and community policing factors that were gathered in the CHRP application. It was determined that fiscal health factors would account for 50% of the total score and reported crime and planned community policing activities would also account for 50% of the final score. In this manner, the COPS Office evenly valued the importance of fiscal distress against reported crime and community policing strategies. This 50/50 split was chosen because it strikes the best balance between the purpose of the Recovery Act, which highlights the role that community policing plays in economic recovery, and the underlying COPS statute and historical mission of supporting public safety and community policing. Each individual question was assigned a score based on the overall weight given to each category (fiscal health, reported crime and community policing) based on a 100 point scale. Specifically, the questions pertaining to fiscal health were constructed to sum to equal 50 points, the reported crime and community policing indicators to sum to 50 points. Because of the requirement to award 1/2 of CHRP funds to agencies with populations greater than 150,000 and l/z to populations less than 150,000, all eligible applicants were split into these two population groups. Applicants in each group were then ranked on each individual question compared to all other applicants in the group. This individual rank on each question was then multiplied by the assigned weight to that specific question. State Minimum Requirement Methodology The COPS Office is required to ensure that at least 1/2 of 1% of the hiring funding available (in this case $5,000,000) is allocated to each state or territory with eligible applicants. To accomplish this, every state was first awarded $5,000,000 in funding to their highest ranked agencies in the state. Each list of agencies (large and small) was then allocated up to their $500,000,000 limit. Capping Methodology The COPS Office intentionally did not impose a cap on officer requests because of the uncertainty with respect to how high the actual demand for officers would be. However, because of the 123 http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/print.asp?Item=2267 8/26/2009