Whats the deal?

Yesterday I saw a cruiser with a new LED bar, is your agency now ganna buy new light bars? I thought the city was so broke? I would trade my agency light bar for the strobes you guy have.

are you serious? who the hell cares! please stay off our board.

Our new vehicles will include the new light bars. The old cruisers will keep their old light bars.

Hold on a second guys. He might have a point, can someone please tell me what is wrong with the strobe bars that we have now? They are highly visible. Now we are ganna place them by the way side the LED light bar? What is that costing the P. D.? I'm sure it well over 1,000 a light bar.

That is money they could use for raises or better equipment. I would personally prefer to have strobes in my front headlight. I think they are great for visibility when clearing an intersection. (say that you are going north on 49th St. You get to the Blvd the light is red you are 10-18, there is a semi to your left blocking eastbound traffic on park from seeing your strobe bar. The first thing they will see is your corner light.) If there was a strobe there it would be safer for all involved. However I see no reason as to why need a new light bar when the strobes work great. I rather have the raise.

Heck for that matter they can issue me a marked Impala and give me the money they saved from the Crown Vic. We hardly ever chase. The S.O. chases 20 times more than we do and they drive them.

The new bars save batteries because they draw next to no amps.

The old bars were eating our car batteries alive.

By the way...Just out of curiosity, have you noticed how many other agencies are also switching......All of them..

FHP...St. Pete....Largo....Clearwater....Tampa...Hillsboroug h County...Pasco County....I am not sure about Pinellas. All switching to LED Light Bars.

Also, Our PD doesn't make the call, Fleet does over at the garage. I am sure they had a cost reason to do it. If your not sure, go ask Larry.

As for the Impala issue. We have been down that road. We tested Impalas when they first came out. They were small for our tall officers and not a lot of room. If your gonna switch, change to the Chargers...Then maybe I side with you.

Hey...I think the agency should buy us slingshots instead of handguns...

I could take that money to the bank....

I'd even take my slingshot made out of sticks.....

$$$$$$

Come on guys...Be proud....The light bar is an improvement...Isn't that want we want....Improvements...

Actually...what we would like is to be paid a FAIR AND JUST WAGE. Not asking too much there are we?

Didn't we just go over the whole wage issue during contract negotiations. Why then are already bringing this back up? The new contract hasn't even taken effect yet. I think we all agree that we should and need to be paid higher in the future. However, I don't think that lightbars on about five new police vehicles this year cost us our raise.

Hopefully this referendum vote in January is dead in the water which will give the city some breathing room to discuss wage increases next year.

As for the lightbar, take a look at the led debate on policeone.com.

http://www.policeone.com/police-product ... es/118422/ (http://www.policeone.com/police-products/vehicle-equipment/light-bars/articles/118422/)

Also, just FYI...I hear we pay about 600 dollars less for the new lightbars as opposed to the old ones. Prices apparently have fallen very quickly on these new bars which made them very affordable. Enjoy the new technology folks.

Sure beats those loud rotating lights of the past.

Oh, are you referring to that rectum stretching we were forced to sign off on? The negotiation when we are told "you are getting d1ck....best and final offer!" I guess it's a good thing we hurried up and jumped on that whopping 3% just in time to learn about the many millions of NEW tax revenue the city will start geting on Oct. 1.

In case you missed it:

Mayor Bill Mischler said the new budget represents a sound fiscal plan with slightly reduced services and no employee layoffs.

Dan Katsyiannis, budget director, said the city’s taxable values increased by $230.3 million to a total of $3.7 billion. Taxable value of new construction and annexed properties came to $68.8 million while tax rolls jumped $181.5 million or 5.2 percent over last year.

The millage rate went from 4.9788 per $1,000 of taxable valuation down to 4.7872, mainly due to the legislature’s tax package that was approved last year.

While some municipalities went as far as to lay off some workers and cut services, Pinellas Park elected not to go that route. City officials instead pared slightly more than $1 million in operating expenses by eliminating job positions through attrition and reducing costs.

Katsyiannis said the city receives only a small percentage of the tax dollar. The rest goes to Pinellas County, the school district, the Juvenile Welfare Board, Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority and other taxing authorities.

While homeowners feel the tax bite, especially when coupled with ever-increasing property insurance costs, commercial and industrial taxpayers actually carry about 60 percent of the tax burden.

“Without this diversified tax base our residential taxpayers would be paying much more,” Katsyiannis said.

Among the commercial and industrial heavy hitters and their valuations are Cardinal Health PTS, $48.7 million; Transitions Optical, Inc., $26.3 million; Progress Energy, $24.6 million; Verizon Florida, Inc., $21.4 million and Wal-Mart, $19.2 million.

How can a city with the busiest outdoor shopping center in the county along with hotels restaurants and shops popping up like mushrooms be so "broke?" The best part is that we have all been duped by a city manager that is probably not as educated as a McDonald's manager.

Same ole $hit every three years. Well, I guess it is City Manager 2, PPPD ZERO! Better luck next year :)

Thank you for pointing the article out.

However, what you failed to mention is the following...

Tax base increase by 5.2% true... However legislative tax rollback - 5%.

Total net gain this year .2% I believe that equates to roughly $40,000 since I think I heard only about $20,000,000 of the budget comes from property taxes. Police Department salary increases alone cost the city roughly $180,000. That puts the city budget in worse shape than last year.

In addition, city has to plan for additional tax cuts. Legislators have said that they intend to retool the referendum language and once again put it on the ballot in January. Also, they stated that even if the referendum vote fails, they will force additional cuts legislatively in the next session.

Bottom line, as far as the tax issue is concern, the city is playing it conservative. I don't like the lack of pay anymore than you, but I can't fault the city for slow playing this. Point the finger at the Christ and Rubio. They are leading this big charge.

Let us hope this all goes away by the time negotiations start next year.

You make sense, nice to see that from a poster on here. I do agree with you.

They have never planned for the wage increases they know are coming each year, never. They claim to be caught off guard and to hvae less money each time.

Who should be accountable? When does the guy in charge of the whole thing, the guy with the highest pay, get the blame?

Save it for January.

This is pointless to debate this again until then.