Police Budget Cycle

Every year, the most important statement the government makes is the approval of their budgets because it reveals in financial terms what their priorities are. A budget is defined as a plan expressed in dollars. It is the use of financial resources to meet the needs of organizations. All police agencies operate within a budget. A budget can also be defined as operating and capital. An operating budget usually covers a 12-month period and is covers salaries, fringe benefits, uniforms, crime scene supplies, and ammunition, training and telephone service. A capital budget takes place over several years, such as acquiring land and building a new police station. At the heart of a budget, there is a budget cycle. The budget cycle is crucial for carrying …show more content…
The budget is built by combining the budget request from smaller units to form the budgets of bureaus or divisions. The most important element in a police budget is people and their support cost, such as salaries, medical insurance, life insurance, and pension benefits, as well as overtime and training. Usually personal and personnel costs may consume 80 percent of the budget. In small police departments, those with roughly 10 or fewer officers, the chief's role in budget preparation is minimal. Most frequently, strong mayor or city managers will have several conversations with the chief and formulae the budget themselves. In larger departments with seven or eight layers of hierarchy, the budget process is more formal. When all requests are accounted for, the budget goes into the process of being …show more content…
Execution means doing the things for which public funds have been appropriated. This step is broken down into three aspects: budget execution objectives, budget execution adjustments and budget execution control. Budget execution is the action phase of budget where plans contained in the police budget are put into operation. During this phase police chief's must rigorously pursue achieving the goals of the agency, document service gaps, the distance between the types and amounts of service delivered planned for the versus actual demand, provide information on expenditures, program accomplishments and milestones for the CIP projects to senior appointed and elected officials, as well as the legislative body, such as the city council, with appropriated the budget, publicize police department success, and maintain budget execution control. The common methods of budget execution adjustments include reallocating funds from one category to another, seeking a budget amendment to provide supplemental found some months into the execution phase when it is clear that anticipated demands for the police service are outstripping resources, freezing expenditures when the city or country's revenue collection may be slower than anticipated, and cut in the budget due to significant shortfalls in revenue collection. Police chief can seek budget adjustments by freezing expenditures. However, freezing expenditures and cutting budgets is ordinarily