Mayor: Police officers will keep their vehicles
August 19, 2010
Belen Mayor Rudy Jaramillo announced at the end of Monday’s city council meeting that police officers will continue to take their vehicles home, after at least one city councilor wanted the vehicles to stay in Valencia County.
In late July, Councilor Mary T. Aragon questioned whether or not police officers should continue to take their vehicles to their homes outside of Valencia County because the city continues to experience budget problems.
Aragon requested that the issue be placed on an agenda in August for a vote of the city council. That didn’t happen.
Instead, Jaramillo made his announcement Monday night that he believed the decision could be made at the administrative level.
Aragon and Jaramillo exchanged words, with Aragon accusing Jaramillo of potentially exceeding his authority and not living up to the spirit of democracy by making a unilateral decision.
Jaramillo defended the action, saying the council decided to fund the take-home vehicles in this year’s budget. He also said he gave the former police chief, Mike Chavez, his word that police officers would get to keep their take-home vehicles.
Had the council wished to rein in take-home vehicles it could have done so as a part of budget discussions and the multiple discussions and votes before getting the city’s final budget in place.
In fact, in May during the budget workshop, when the issue came up, no one expressed opposition to a deal between Jaramillo and Chavez that meant Chavez would resign and his salary would be put toward continuing to allow police officers to take their vehicles home, even if they lived in places like Albuquerque, Socorro or Mountain Air.
Under the Torres administration, the take-home policy was intended as an added benefit and recruitment tool for officers. Under the current budget woes, however, some in the public and in city government have advocated taking them away to save money.