People who work in Charleston will see more of their paychecks going to the city sooner than originally planned.
Charleston City Council on Monday voted to move up the next 50-cent increase in its weekly user fee, also called a service fee, by two years. The fee will increase from $2.50 per week to $3 per week beginning Jan. 1, 2018.
Under a bill passed in 2015, the fee wouldn't have increased to $3 until January 2020.
Mayor Danny Jones told council moving up the increase would allow the city to hire 10 new police officers in the spring. Jones said Chief Steve Cooper and the police department could use 30 more police officers. In a speech from the council chamber floor, he said additional officers were needed because of the city's "criminal vagrants."
"They're victimizing our chronic homeless. If you don't believe me, I'll show you video of a woman being set on fire and her running in the street and she died," Jones said, referencing the death of woman sleeping on a West Side porch earlier this year.
Cooper said with the additional officers, he would add one- and two-person roving hybrid patrol teams that would work on foot, on bikes and in police cruisers in places like Kanawha City, North Charleston, the West Side flats and the 1500 block of on Charleston's East End.
"They will rove, they will be a ... sort of quick-strike solution to problems that come up," Cooper told the finance committee.
The teams have been effective in other parts of the city, he told the committee.
Councilmen Andy Richardson, Courtney Persinger, Jerry Ware and Cubert Smith voted against moving up the increase.
Richardson said he would like to have seen the city make cuts and reallocate money to support hiring the police officers.
"I really wasn't against the user fee itself," Richardson said. "I certainly am not against hiring police officers. I'm just in favor of at first, before we start getting into the pockets of people again. ... You know who's going to have to adjust their budgets? The folks that work in the city of Charleston."
The city's user fee was $1 per week when it went into effect in 2004 and increased to $2 per week in 2008.
In other business, city council:
n Passed a resolution to renew lease agreement with the Kanawha County Board of Education for the continued used of a space in the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center at 314 Donnally St. to conduct a Head Start program.
n Passed a resolution agreeing to a lease with the Charleston YWCA for the continued used of a space at 201 Donnally St. to operate a Child Enrichment Center.
n Passed a resolution allowing the mayor and city manager to enter a five-year lease with the nonprofit Religious Coalition for Community Renewal to provide affordable housing for low and moderate income residents through the operation of Smith Street Station at 801 Smith St.
n Passed a resolution to enter a lease with the YWCA for property at 1418 Washington St. East for the purpose of operating Sojourner's shelter.
Reach Lori Kersey at lori.kersey@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1240 or follow @LoriKerseyWV on Twitter.
