Last week, FYIVT examined Burlington’s continuing public-safety debate and found a city still wrestling with many of the same problems officials have been trying to solve for years.

The City Council was again debating policing, homelessness, behavioral health, drug use and downtown disorder. State Police were again walking Church Street. City leaders were again discussing social services, enforcement and measurable outcomes.

That raised a more basic question.

Six years after Burlington voted to reduce its police force by nearly a third, what actually happened to the money?

FYIVT went back through the record.

On June 29, 2020, the Burlington City Council voted 9–3 to reduce the city’s authorized police force from 105 officers to 74 through attrition.

But the resolution did more than establish a staffing target.

It directed that General Fund dollars freed by reducing uniformed officers be used for social services and social, racial and economic justice initiatives.

Unlike arguments over whether a policing strategy worked, that promise should be measurable.

Officers can be counted. Dollars can be traced.

Six years of Burlington budgets, audits and mayoral budget documents show substantial savings from vacant police positions, millions in overtime overruns, federally funded programs often associated with Burlington’s post-2020 reforms, and police vacancy savings eventually used to help rebuild the department.

What those records do not contain is a complete accounting showing how much the officer reductions actually saved and where all of that money ultimately went.

The first-year police cut was 4.85 percent

Burlington budgeted $17,926,954 for its police department in FY2020.

The council-approved FY2021 police budget totaled $17,057,451.

That was a reduction of $869,503, or 4.85 percent.

A 30-percent reduction in authorized officers did not produce a 30-percent reduction in the entire department budget. Pensions, dispatch, buildings, supervisors, vehicles and other costs remained.

Salaries, however, did fall.

Regular full-time salaries in Uniform Services were budgeted at $8,399,866 in FY2020.

By FY2025, actual spending on that line had fallen to $5,248,367.

That $3.15 million difference is the clearest measurable evidence of money being freed by unfilled positions.

Overtime went the other direction

While regular salary spending declined, Burlington Police exceeded its overtime budget every year from FY2020 through FY2025.

| Fiscal year | Overtime budgeted | Overtime spent | Over budget | |---|---:|---:|---:| | FY2020 | $686,500 | $862,120 | $175,620 | | FY2021 | $760,000 | $1,185,414 | $425,414 | | FY2022 | $899,300 | $1,404,751 | $505,451 | | FY2023 | $1,309,791 | $1,904,292 | $594,501 | | FY2024 | $1,270,000 | $2,042,096 | $772,096 | | FY2025 | $1,495,000 | $1,768,128 | $273,128 | | Total | $6,420,591 | $9,166,801 | $2,746,210 |

The cumulative overtime overrun was $2.75 million — more than three times the entire first-year budget reduction.

The staffing pressure extended beyond patrol officers.

Burlington’s Emergency Communications Center fell from 14 allotted dispatchers to four in 2022. Dispatch overtime reached $298,734 against a $90,000 budget in FY2022, then $658,554 against a $300,000 budget in FY2023, according to a later BPD report to the City Council.

One budget actually identified the police savings

The clearest accounting appears in the FY2022 Mayor’s Proposed Budget.

Its “New Initiatives and Investments” table listed five expenditures funded by either “BPD savings” or “BPD officer attrition.”

| Item | Amount | Revenue source | |---|---:|---| | 10 Community Service Officers | $825,000 | BPD officer attrition | | Expanded Mental Health Services | $400,000 | BPD savings | | Two Park Rangers | $167,475 | BPD savings | | Community Support Liaison | $105,000 | BPD officer attrition | | Public Records Specialist | $90,000 | BPD savings | | Total | $1,587,475 | |

The total was $1.59 million.

Two of the expenditures — park rangers and a public records specialist — were not social-service programs.

The largest clearly social-service item, $400,000 for expanded mental-health services, later showed $0 in actual FY2022 spending.

The city did not repeat the “BPD savings” accounting in subsequent budgets.

The $1 million racial-justice fund

The FY2021 budget also created a $1 million “Regional Programs Fund for Racial Equity & Justice.”

The following year’s budget records actual FY2021 spending from that account as $0.

Some funds were later carried through REIB-related fund-balance entries, but published financial documents do not provide a complete reconciliation of the original $1 million.

Burlington did spend substantially on racial-equity and alternative-response programs in later years, but much of that spending came from federal pandemic aid rather than police savings.

REIB’s FY2023 budget, for example, included $1.2 million in federal COVID-relief funding.

Police savings helped rebuild the police

By 2022, Burlington was trying to reverse the staffing decline.

A three-year, $1.2 million police rebuilding plan included contract changes, signing bonuses, recruitment incentives and marketing.

Approximately $1 million came from prior-year police payroll savings generated by vacancies.

The city’s audited FY2022 financial report also carried a $750,000 “police rebuilding fund”.

By FY2027, Burlington’s adopted police budget had climbed to $21,379,391 — $3.45 million above the FY2020 budget.

The city cut authorized police strength by 30 percent in 2020, accumulated substantial salary savings as positions went unfilled, spent millions more than budgeted on overtime and later used roughly $1 million in vacancy savings to help rebuild the police department.

Burlington also created new social-service and racial-equity programs along the way, many supported with federal money.

What six years of public financial records still do not provide is the ledger promised by the original premise: how much police money was actually freed, where each dollar was redirected, and whether the 2020 commitment was ultimately fulfilled.

That question grew out of FYIVT’s look last week at Burlington’s continuing public-safety loop.

Six years later, the policy debate is still going.

So is the accounting question.