{"id":82082,"date":"2022-06-08T19:07:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-09T00:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=82082"},"modified":"2022-06-08T19:08:37","modified_gmt":"2022-06-09T00:08:37","slug":"82082","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=82082","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

As gas prices surge, Michigan sheriff asks deputies to manage some dispatch calls by phone<\/a><\/p>\n

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With average gas prices at well over $5 a gallon, at least one Michigan police force says it is about to go over its fuel budget and is now asking officers to handle “whatever calls are acceptable” by phone.<\/p>\n

The Isabella County Sheriff\u2019s Office announced this week that it is “feeling the pain at the pump,” and has “exhausted what funds were budgeted” for gasoline with “several months to go before the budget reset.”<\/p>\n

The county, in the heart of central lower Michigan, is not alone.<\/p>\n

Local governments are experiencing the same pain as commuters and trying to make adjustments, Dan Gilmartin, the CEO Michigan Municipal League, said Wednesday. He added that the problem is likely to get even worse.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“They’re scrambling,” Gilmartin said of Michigan’s local governments.<\/p>\n

Moreover, he predicted, even more pain is likely as the cost of gas affects the cost of road construction and infrastructure upgrades. Bids out on long-overdue projects that have recently received federal funding are coming back a lot higher than initially expected.<\/p>\n

“It’s affecting them in the short term,” Gilmartin said of the high cost of gas on local governments. “But in the longer term it is going to affect them even more. And it could be significant in some places, especially with all the infrastructure work being done.”<\/p>\n

Running out of gas
\nNews reports nationwide indicate that record-setting gas prices are putting a strain on both consumers and police and other agencies.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post reported surging gas prices are leaving drivers stranded.<\/p>\n

The run-up “has motorists testing the limits of their fuel gauges,” the Post said, pointing as proof to stories of folks running out of gas and an increase in AAA out-of-gas calls.<\/p>\n

The auto club, the Post reported, took 50,787 out-of-gas calls in April, a 32% jump from the same month last year, and more than 200,000 drivers have been similarly stranded this year.<\/p>\n

And nowhere, according to AAA, has the recent surge been more acute than in Michigan.<\/p>\n

AAA, which tracks prices at more than 85,000 stations nationwide, said Michigan had the highest average weekly gas price surge of all states.<\/p>\n

Gas price at a Shell gas station on Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor on June 8, 2022.
\nAverage gas prices in the state have been going up weekly \u2014 and even daily. They were $5.21 a gallon on Tuesday, up from 5.17 the day before and $4.70 just a week ago. A year ago, gas prices were $3.01 a gallon, a whopping 73% increase.<\/p>\n

The high prices are putting Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main in a tough spot.<\/p>\n

County Administrator Nicole Frost confirmed Wednesday that 96% of the Sheriff’s Office’s fuel budget has already been spent \u2014 and there are still 3\u00bd months of the fiscal year to go.<\/p>\n

‘Do we need to meet?’
\nAs a result, Main said he instructed his deputies to manage by phone whatever calls they could \u2014 which he identified as “non-in-progress calls, non-life-threatening calls and calls that do not require evidence collection or documentation.”<\/p>\n

To reassure concerned Isabella County residents, he also said that deputies “will continue to provide patrols to all areas of the county” and “will respond to those calls that need to be managed in person.”<\/p>\n

“Any call that is in progress with active suspects will involve a response by the deputies,” Main added. “I want to assure the community that safety is our primary goal, and we will continue to respond to those types of calls.”<\/p>\n

Still, Frost said, Main’s comments on Facebook sparked some worry among some of the county’s commissioners.<\/p>\n

“There’s been a lot of communication on this issue,” she explained. “I’ve already been approached by commissioners who are concerned to the level of: ‘Do we need to meet about a budget before the next regularly scheduled meeting?’ ”<\/p>\n

The short answer, she told the Free Press, is no.<\/p>\n

The commission can help solve the problem by moving money in the budget around, and can make budget amendments up until the end of September, the end of the county’s fiscal year.<\/p>\n

Making hard choices
\nStill, Frost predicted, it’s also unlikely that gas prices will come down.<\/p>\n

Some analysts have forecasted that gas prices could reach $6 a gallon \u2014 or more \u2014 nationally by the end of summer.<\/p>\n

Frost pointed out that other municipalities are, or will be, facing similar problems, but that they don’t seem to have risen to the level of a crisis \u2014 yet.<\/p>\n

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has attempted to answer some consumer questions under prices under the headline “Increased Gas Prices? Again?”<\/p>\n

She focused mostly on gouging and price fixing, saying that many factors affect the cost of gasoline, including the “cost of crude oil, refinery processing, transportation, distribution, marketing, operating expenses, retail station operations, and taxes.”<\/p>\n

And news outlets nationally have reported that police agencies have looked to rely more on fuel-efficient vehicles, and bike and foot patrols, and temporarily moved money budgeted for other things, such as training, to fuel.<\/p>\n

This also isn’t the first time that rising gas prices have forced government agencies to make adjustments.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Michigan \u2014 and other states \u2014 faced a similar problem.<\/p>\n

Police in Sacramento, California, idled more than a third of their squad cars as a result of high gas prices, and Washington state’s then-governor ordered agencies to reduce gas consumption.<\/p>\n

And back then, Frost said, the housing crash depressed property revenues.<\/p>\n

The consequences were, she said, that public officials had to make some tough choices \u2014 as they may eventually have to again \u2014 about which government services will get funded and which won’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As gas prices surge, Michigan sheriff asks deputies to manage some dispatch calls by phone With average gas prices at well over $5 a gallon, at least one Michigan police force says it is about to go over its fuel budget and is now asking officers to handle “whatever calls are acceptable” by phone. The … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82082"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82084,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82082\/revisions\/82084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}