Kennewick’s Police Paychecks Come Up $15 Short
A budget cut with no ordinance behind it left the city marshal and patrolman refusing their January warrants—and the council scrambling to steady the boat.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The municipal boat wherein ride one mayor and seven councilmen tipped, dipped and bobbed up and down a bit just after the opening of the regular council meeting Tuesday evening. The calm, blue surface of the municipal pond had been disturbed and the stage set for a little squall by the refusal of City Marshal C. E. Copeland and Patrolman J. B. Haydon to accept the warrants which were handed them for their January salaries, because said warrants bore certain numerical abbreviations and failed to look like good old “home cookin’” to them.
It seems that when last year’s council got out the official pruning shears and started in to work over the expense budget to make it fit the revenues, they lopped a slice off the city clerk’s salary, sheared the pay of the city attorney and duly recorded their action in an ordinance. When the police department was reached they made the marshal’s salary look like $75 instead of $80 and the patrolman’s pay $65 instead of $75, but they failed to make provision for these reductions by ordinance. The salaries of $80 and $75 were fixed by ordinance while this year’s budget carries a reduction of $15 a month in these two items.
So, there you are. What’s the poor council going to do? The ordinance says they must and the budget says they can’t. Is it any wonder the boat tipped a bit? The task of rowing the craft into placid waters was assigned to Councilmen H. R. Vibber, F. J. Arnold and R. Gilcrist, who were named as a special committee to investigate and report.
“The ordinance says they must and the budget says they can’t. Is it any wonder the boat tipped a bit?”
The standoff is a small-town version of a familiar municipal headache: when payroll promises collide with budget math, who absorbs the difference? Kennewick still wrestles with public-safety staffing and budget constraints, though today the dispute would likely end up in a formal pay resolution or union grievance rather than a committee of three.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.