Longmont eliminates six public safety positions from proposed 2025 budget

Six full-time public safety positions that are either already vacant or will be soon have been eliminated from Longmont’s proposed 2025 budget.

Those positions include two police officers, two firefighters, one paramedic and one communications shift supervisor.

The police, paramedic and communications shift supervisor positions are all currently vacant. The two firefighter positions are filled at the moment but will become vacant in early 2025, due to two previously planned retirements.

“No current employees will lose employment due to the reductions,” James Brown, Longmont Public Safety collaborative services chief, said in an email. “This decision was not made lightly, and the goal is to restore these positions as soon as the situation allows.”

There is more than $2 million of new ongoing expenditures in the 2025 public safety fund and less than $1 million of new ongoing revenue, which triggered the cuts.

Brown said during Tuesday’s Longmont City Council study session that one of the challenges the public safety department faces is the lengthy amount of time it takes to hire new police officers.

“Especially, if it’s an officer that we have to send to the academy … they go through that training process and then we bring them into our internal training process,” Brown said. “It’s about a year-long process to just get an officer trained before they are out on the street.”

Longmont currently has 155 police officers on staff, of which 16 are in the police academy. The city also has 103 total firefighters on staff right now.

“I just wanted to make sure that it was known that we’re not, not trying to get officers,” Councilmember Shiquita Yarbrough said during Tuesday’s study session. “We’re recruiting but it takes a year because we’re just not trying to have some warm bodies at the police department.”

Longmont is in the process of finalizing next year’s $469.6 million proposed total operating budget. The City Council is expected to approve the budget in October.

“I’m still concerned about the six positions that we are losing in public safety,” Councilmember Diane Crist said at the council study session.