The DCED report: A Flawed and Defective “Analysis” of Jenkintown’s Police Service

Fortunately, the DCED report was free, because Jenkintown taxpayers got what it paid for.

The report prepared by the DCED in response to Jenkintown’s Letter of Intent is seriously flawed. It is incomplete, it is based on flawed financials, it does not address all issues, and it completely ignores any community input.

Costs but No Benefits

The report, although titled “Cost to Benefit Analysis”, fails to address the benefits of having an independent police force. In fact, it contains no analysis whatsoever of the benefits. While the report’s Executive Summary includes the statement “The final part of this paper explores the question of ‘benefit.’”, the final part of the report says nothing about the benefits. It conveniently segues directly into the question of sustainability (one of Council’s favorite buzzwords) and “exploring options” without ever discussing the benefits of having an independent police force.

Further, the report is based on self-reported, incomplete and unannotated 2023 audit results.

• Jenkintown’s auditor had serious reservations regarding the 2022 audit, stating it did “not present fairly … the financial position of the Borough of Jenkintown”.
• While there is a Summary Financial Statement as well as an Independent Auditor’s Report on Financial Statement for 2022, no such documents are posted for 2023. One wonders why?
• The Borough uses a cash basis for its financials instead of using an accrual method, which is the required method according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). 

Cash vs. Accrual

A recent article in The Atlantic explains how cash accounting gets municipalities into trouble. Accrual is explained this way:

Imagine you purchase a car for $20,000 in 2015, but under a special promotion no payments are due on your bill until 2018. In what year did you incur the $20,000 bill? Most people would say 2015, the year you acquired the car. That’s the answer mandated under accrual accounting… But many state and city legislatures…operate with the conviction that a bill is not incurred until the money leaves your bank account to pay it. So if you choose not to pay the bill for your car until 2018, for accounting purposes the bill will only appear that year.

Cash accounting records revenue when the money is received and records expenses when the money is paid out. Therefore, while the Borough is more than $3 million in debt, that liability is not included in the financial statements; only the payments made on the debt are reflected. Cash accounting does not provide an accurate picture of the financial state of the Borough. The DCED allows municipalities to utilize cash basis accounting.

Not only does the DCED utilize inaccurate data, but they chose to use a single staffing analysis formula to calculate staffing needs  instead of utilizing multiple methods as was done in other reports. Using only one formula results in a one-dimensional result which does not accurately portray staffing needs. The formula used in the Jenkintown report is based solely on Jenkintown’s 2022 population, the time necessary to handle an average incident, and an estimated average number of incidents. It fails to address minimum coverage requirements. 

No Community Input

Other reports prepared by the DCED regarding policing services utilize multiple other methods to determine staffing, including minimum coverage requirements. In addition to formulae used to calculate staffing, one of the other reports also observes that “…the service level desired by the community is a major factor that must be considered when determining these levels.” [emphasis added] No community input was sought from Jenkintown residents.

The DCED report completely ignores the circumstances surrounding the very issues they were asked to analyze. It ignores the fact that Council is determined to dissolve the police department. It ignores the vote of no confidence. It ignores the fact that neither Abington Township nor Cheltenham Township are willing to assume policing responsibility for Jenkintown. And it completely ignores the fact that Council has done no analysis of the cost of replacement services, even if such services were available. 

Analyzing the COSTS and BENEFITS of police service in a specific municipality should include at least a cursory review of the circumstances surrounding the existing situation and what led the municipality to request such an analysis. These circumstances would include inaccurate financial information, a deep budget hole of Council’s own making, and a chief of police who has severely demoralized the officers he is supposed to lead. 

In preparing the report, the DCED conveniently disregarded everything except for the inaccurate costs reported by Council, thus producing a report which provides Council exactly what they wanted: justification to begin dismantling the police department by laying off officers.