Town of Chapel Hill Passes Budget, Allocates $14M to Police Department

The Town of Chapel Hill passed a resolution to create immediate reform of its police department’s activities – prohibiting certain uses of force and ending traffic stops for low-level violations – but they’re not done yet.

97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck spoke with Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger about steps the town is taking to address their police budget over the next few months

Last week, the Town of Chapel Hill established its budget for the 2020 to 2021 fiscal year beginning today, July 1.

The final budget for the upcoming year is over $111 million dollars.

In the approved budget, police spending makes up 13 percent of the town’s total spending – or around $14 million dollars. To put this in perspective, only one other government-run sector received more funds in this year’s town budget. Transit claimed 22 percent of the funds, making up almost $25 million dollars’ worth of Chapel Hill’s spending. Trailing behind is Chapel Hill Fire with nine percent of the budget allocated and Parks and Recreation with seven percent.

For the 2019 to 2020 fiscal year, the budget for the police department was just over $16 million.

Alongside this budget, Chapel Hill Town Council adopted a resolution last week at its final meeting before a summer break. This resolution aims to develop new community approaches to public safety and improve racial equity – but issues surrounding defunding the police and reassessing budgets still need to be addressed.

Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger said this is because the budget had to go into effect immediately and the town needs more time to properly assess and change their police budget if needed.

“We’re going to revisit our budget,” Hemminger said. “We have to pass the budget by the end of June – that is a state requirement.”

Hemminger said because of COVID, it’s hard to know how the town is going to come out of this fiscal year as they only just got March’s sales tax numbers. Because of this, it’s hard to know what funds they can work with if they are still evaluating what the financial impact of the pandemic is.

“So not knowing that is the biggest swing for us right now,” Hemminger said. “That and hotel occupancy is way down, which we get money from that as well.”

The resolution passed alongside the budget requests the Town Manager collect data on the police department’s staffing, 911 call data, Crisis Unit activity, and reasons for deployment of the tactical response team.

After compiling this data over the summer, a full report will be shared with the council and published on the town’s website by September. Hemminger said the council will then revisit the issue and discuss if any reallocation of funds from the police department is possible.

To listen to more of Aaron Keck’s interview with Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger, head on over to our Conversations with the Mayors Podcast.

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Town of Chapel Hill Passes Budget, Allocates $14M to Police Department

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