Police Department gets budget increase if approved

The Columbia Police Department could be seeing some new officers if the 2014 budget is approved on Monday.

The budget allows for a $62,000 budget increase for the Police Department, which would get them two more officers and one more sergeant.

But Dale Roberts with the Columbia Police Officers Association says the sergeant is actually already hired, so Columbia would only see an additional two officers.

Tony St. Romaine with the City of Columbia says hiring the 35 requested officers is just simply not in the budget for next year.

He said Columbia can either incrementally add officers by getting a few more each year, or propose another tax increase to get a large number of officers at once.

Roberts believes the two officers would be most useful on patrol duty.