INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Faced with a tight budget and widespread public concerns about violent crime, Indianapolis officials this year could consider a new revenue source to help fill the police department’s depleted coffers: charging a security fee at some of the city’s biggest events.
Police officials estimate they could raise as much as $1 million a year by charging for the police protection they have long provided free for conventions and big events, including the Indiana Black Expo Summer Celebration, the 500 Festival and the Indianapolis 500.
The idea, though controversial in a city whose name is synonymous with its world-famous race, isn’t far-fetched.
As public safety budgets across the country tighten, cities such as Louisville, Kentucky, and Salt Lake City have re-examined whether they should offer free event policing.
Other big convention cities, including Las Vegas, have charged vendors for years.
But it’s not a plan without consequences. Some of the city’s biggest draws, such as the Summer Celebration and the Indianapolis 500, which attract tens and even hundreds of thousands of people every year, also incur the highest security costs - more than $200,000 for Expo and nearly $140,000 for the race, The Indianapolis Star reported (https://indy.st/1fUNoWb ).
While organizers of the events did not return calls for comment, tourism officials worry that a security fee could have a chilling effect on attracting new events, even smaller ones for which security might not be as expensive. And such a plan could face tough scrutiny from city officials who are sensitive to business needs.
“We are in an extremely competitive marketplace,” said Republican City-County Council member Jack Sandlin, a former Indianapolis police officer. “Thirty years ago, we made a decision to attract sports and other events. The extra cost was part of that. Could charging for police services cause us to lose events?
“That’s something to think about.”
Troy Riggs, the city’s director of public safety, said he understands the benefits to the city, but with the police force understaffed, the city is increasingly pulling officers from neighborhood patrols and incurring large amounts of overtime to cover special events.
Last year, the city paid for the police, fire and emergency presence at 341 events at a total cost of about $1 million.
Whether the city covers an event depends on a number of factors, said Indianapolis Department of Homeland Security Director Gary Coons.
For the city’s largest gatherings, such as the Indy 500 later this month, police deploy at least 200 officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel to direct traffic, provide escorts or initiate medical services for people in need.
City officials sometimes deploy patrols for other large events, such as the National Rifle Association convention that came to town last weekend, attracting an estimated 70,000 people.
While organizers of such events typically provide security inside the convention center, “really big” conventions sometimes require additional patrols downtown, said Al Larsen, Department of Public Safety spokesman.
“We do have to shift a few resources around just to account for what’s going on around the footprint,” Larsen said. “It’s pretty rare that we would have to do that.”
Riggs said the price of such services goes far beyond basic salary costs.
“We’re still using our vehicles. There’s wear and tear. We’re still using our people,” Riggs said. Racking up overtime for big events can put a strain on officer well-being and morale. And it comes at the expense of shored-up patrols in neighborhoods.
“Fewer people get a day off now, and that’s tough on families,” he said, “and we want to value our workers and their family life.”
And sometimes the services are far from routine. During the NCAA Sweet 16 round in March, police escorts accompanied Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino and Kentucky coach John Calipari - all on the city’s dime.
While police officials say they can’t advocate for a fee, they suggest it may be time to discuss the issue.
“We kept watching Indianapolis grow, and the way they pulled people in was, ’Come to Indianapolis, and we’ll provide you this and this. We’ll give you free services.’ And one of the free services happened to be the Police Department,” Riggs said.
“At some point, I think we’re getting a little too far out there.”
Riggs, the former assistant chief for the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department, said officials in his hometown implemented a plan to recoup at least some security costs years ago.
Today, Louisville officials don’t charge for everything. But Churchill Downs, the site of the city’s flagship event, the Kentucky Derby, is required to reimburse about $225,000 in security costs, said Dwight Mitchell, spokesman for the department.
“The whole department is hands-on-deck,” Mitchell said, adding that the city pulls the majority of officers for the events out of neighborhood patrols to avoid amassing large overtime costs.
Other cities have further-reaching procedures. Las Vegas seeks complete reimbursement for most large events, such as concerts and boxing matches, said Lt. Roxanne McDaris, who is in charge of event planning for the Las Vegas Police Department.
The vendors of those events are billed the cost of overtime for LVPD officers, she said.
“It basically came down to: If they need our services, we can’t use on-duty resources,” McDaris said. “Our city has gotten too big and too busy.”
Security for some of those events can be pretty steep. For example, the annual Electric Daisy Carnival, an electronic dance music festival held in Las Vegas in June, attracted 230,000 people last year. McDaris said hundreds of officers were deployed on overtime to cover the three-day event.
Insomniac Events, the company that puts together the festival, was charged a flat rate of $69 per rank-and-file officer, more for sergeants and captains. The city was reimbursed more than $1 million for its services.
In Salt Lake City, about half of the city’s 400 police officers are deployed every year to work the Salt Lake City Marathon, said Cody Lougy, a detective with the department.
The marathon hosts pay full freight: about $75,000.
The city provided such services for free until the economic downturn.
“We looked at billing some of these organizations for these events,” he said, “because it’s very costly for our city.”
Not all cities bill vendors for security services, however.
Like Indianapolis, the Nashville Police Department pays for major special events, such as the city’s New Year’s Eve bash downtown and the annual Country Music Association Music Festival in June.
The budget for those events comes out of a line item in the police department’s budget, said Don Aaron, public affairs manager for NPD - a cost of $1.2 million the city picks up every year. Event coverage is done on an overtime basis to keep from pulling officers out of neighborhoods.
A security fee is not the only revenue source people are considering.
A City-County Council task force has recommended $29 million in tax hikes, a proposal that would add 286 officers to the force by 2020. The annual cost in new taxes for most Marion County residents would be about $100, money that could boost the department’s ranks to 1,813 officers, the most it has ever employed.
That’s money that would be added to the more than $191 million already in IMPD’s annual operating budget - $106 million of which is spent on officers’ salaries.
Chris Gahl, vice president of communications for Visit Indy, said a surcharge on events for police protection could dent the city’s armor as a low-cost place to do business.
“We are recognized as a city that is easy to hold events in because we are affordable, and we are constantly doing anything we can to stay competitive,” Gahl said. “At the same time, we know how important it is to make sure the events are safe.”
Gahl said that without seeing a specific plan, he couldn’t comment on whether a fee for police would deter conventions.
Gahl did note that events pay a certain amount already for security out of their own pockets: “Most of them have a budget line dedicated to security.”
Sandlin, the City-County Council member, said charging for the events is a tricky proposition. Though Summer Celebration and the IMS races are home-grown events that are unlikely to bolt for other cities, he said there could be “a ripple effect” to other events considering Indianapolis.
Sandlin said the city might consider something of a compromise, as some other cities have.
“They have people they employ for a lot of those crowd duties, like traffic control, that isn’t as expensive,” he said. On the other hand, he said, since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, large events demand a large police presence.
Last year’s Boston Marathon bombings prompted Indianapolis officials to heighten security around the city’s biggest events. Coons, the homeland security director, said the city re-examined how it was positioning patrols around the 2013 Mini-Marathon in the wake of that attack.
“There really isn’t any way around that,” Sandlin said. “That’s the world we are living in.”
If a fee is possible at all, it will have to clear some pretty high political hurdles. Mayor Greg Ballard’s spokesman, Marc Lotter, said charging organizations for police protection would discourage conventions from coming to Indianapolis and would “hurt the city’s economy.”
“It doesn’t make economic sense, and it would cost the city in the long run,” he said. “It would make it more expensive for these events to come here.”
Lotter said the council voted only 16 months ago to capture tax dollars from event-goers when it approved a hike in gate admissions taxes and the rental car tax.
The increase created a new revenue stream for public safety agencies that provide police and fire coverage at the Capital Improvement Board’s facilities. Those include Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse and the Indiana Convention Center, which are also used by Black Expo.
Public safety got the full proceeds the first year (estimated at $6.7 million) and will get 25 percent a year after that.
Council President Maggie Lewis, a Democrat, said charging a fee is at least worth discussing, but she said she would want organizers to consent to it.
“I would support it if the Black Expos, for instance, came along voluntarily,” she said. “But if they said it was too much of a burden, I would be concerned about imposing something on them.”
To do so, she said, could create conflict.
“That wouldn’t be good; IBE is part of our city’s fabric,” Lewis said.
Council member Joe Simpson, a member of the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee, said he generally thinks organizers “should pay if they want the service.”
“I know a lot of other cities are going that way,” he said. “I am most concerned about all the taxes and fees, little by little, that keep adding up for the taxpayers. Many of them, they don’t even know about.”
Valerie Washington, the assistant deputy of public safety, said whatever fee the council considers would need to balance the department’s costs with tourism concerns.
“We certainly don’t advocate for anything that’s going to hurt convention business,” she said. “We do think that there’s probably some sweet spot in the middle, so we can still recoup some of our costs and still be a city that groups want to come to.”
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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, https://www.indystar.com
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