Christina Jedra

The News Journal

Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki declined a federal grant that would fund 15 community policing officers, the city announced Tuesday.

The $1.8 million federal Community Oriented Policing Services grant would have required a financial contribution from the city that the mayor said it can't afford: $3.5 million over the next four years. The Mayor's Office said Wilmington is facing multimillion-dollar deficits through fiscal year 2020.

“These federal grants are not free money,” Purzycki said in a statement.

Purzycki had held off on making a decision on the grant until he hired a new police chief. Chief Robert Tracy was appointed last month and has advised the mayor that the Wilmington Police Department has a sufficient number of officers, 314, even with the elimination of five vacant positions proposed in the mayor's budget, the city said.

The mayor's decision is supported by a 2015 state crime commission report that said the department had sufficient monetary and operational resources to adequately fight crime, the city said.

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Funds like the COPS grant are also not ideal because they put elected officials in the unpopular position of eliminating public safety staff when the grant funds are spent, the mayor said.

“In theory, when cities accept these types of grants and add more police officers, they should do so with the understanding that the number of officers will be reduced by an equal amount through attrition when the grant expires," Purzycki said.

But that doesn't always happen, the city said. The police and fire departments have been "inflated" over the past decade through the acceptance of federal grants, Purzycki said. When officials try to eliminate positions to cut costs and bring staffing back to normal operational levels, "it is met with opposition," the city said.

The mayor has recently faced criticism for proposing the elimination of 16 vacant firefighting positions, but the mayor has argued that most of those jobs were on the chopping block already. In 2012, the city accepted a federal grant that increased firefighting positions by 13 with the understanding that the positions would eventually be eliminated, but when the grant ended in 2014, the positions remained.

“We are breaking with that irresponsible fiscal practice as of today by not accepting this latest grant,” Purzycki said.

The COPS grant Purzycki is declining is a holdover from the administration of former Mayor Dennis P. Williams. The city won the funds in October, but the Williams administration asked for a last-minute extension to push the decision to accept to the Purzycki administration.

Contact Christina Jedra at cjedra@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2837 or on Twitter @ChristinaJedra.