Fairfield Considers Cutting Police Department to Save Money
The Fairfield City Council recently made an unconventional move: they voted to get rid of their police department in an effort to save money. But some city leaders say it’s a shortsighted response to a big budget problem.
The city lost its two largest economic engines in the span of six months — a Wal-Mart Supercenter and the U.S. Steel plant. Now the city council says they’re struggling to crawl out of an $8 million deficit. In response, members want to get rid of the city’s law enforcement.
“If I had to cut anybody, the police department would be the very last department that you would cut from a city,” says Fairfield Mayor Kenneth Coachman.
The current cost of running the police department is roughly $2.5 million a year, and the majority of that’s eaten up by benefits, Coachman says. If the department is dissolved, the city’s alternative would be to contract with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office at an estimated $80,000 per deputy per year, he says. The sheriff’s office would then be responsible for benefits and retirement.
Coachman also is considering Chapter 9 bankruptcy as another option to help the city out of its debt crisis.
Chapter 9 provides financially distressed municipalities with protection from creditors by creating a plan to resolve debt. Coachman briefly discussed this option with other city leaders after Wal-Mart closed in January, but no action was ever taken, he says, adding that he’ll recommend it to the city council again “soon.” The only other option for Fairfield is annexation into Birmingham.
“I don’t want to be annexed,” says Fairfield City Council President Darnell Gardner. “And I can’t stress that enough. I think Fairfield can be saved … It’s my home. It’s where I was born, where my house is. It’s where my mother’s house is.”
Annexation and Chapter 9 bankruptcy would both be last-ditch options, says Gardner. But he also says cutting costs by methods like getting rid of the police department is the first step toward saving the city, though he admits he and the rest of the council are in the dark about many things:
“Still today, as president of the council, I don’t even know how many police officers we have.” He adds that what he calls a lack of transparency makes scrutinizing the city’s finances difficult.
Fairfield Police Chief Leon Davis and representatives from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office declined WBHM’s requests for comment.
The Fairfield Police Department is expected to close its doors on April 1. City leaders have asked the sheriff’s office for 12 deputies to patrol Fairfield, Gardner says. This would cost the city roughly $960,000 a year, a potential savings of just over $1.5 million. This is just a drop in the bucket for what Gardner says is truly needed to save Fairfield.
In a first-of-its-kind decision, an AI company wins a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by authors
U.S. District Judge William Alsup's ruling this week, in a case brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson last year, opens a potential pathway for AI companies to train their large language models on copyrighted works without authors' consent — but only if copies of the works were obtained legally.
RFK Jr. says U.S. will stop funding global vaccine group over ‘vaccine safety’ issues
The secretary of health and human services said that funding will be curtailed until Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, takes into account the science of vaccine safety in its campaigns.
Senators question Trump plan to kill federal funds for PBS, NPR and some foreign aid
Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee pushed back against the Trump administration's bid to rescind federal funding for public broadcasting and international aid programs.
Judge orders Trump administration to resume distributing money for EV chargers
Congress designated money for building new EV chargers, but the Trump administration put a freeze on those funds. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the program to resume.
Judge sees no reason to keep holding Abrego Garcia pending criminal trial
Despite the court order, if released from prison, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is likely to be immediately taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Expert panel picked by RFK Jr. will scrutinize the vaccine schedule for kids
The advisory committee makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the nation's vaccine schedule. Any changes could affect vaccinations for millions of children.
