Seven New Police Officers...

...And one less head of parks and cemetery maintenance.

Those are a few of the details in Mayor Dan Mylott's budget, which was fully unveiled yesterday.

The maintenance head, Don Champagne, is being laid off, three months after he was suspended for three days. Mylott says the two are unrelated, and also still won't say why Champagne was suspended. Huh. We're not sure we 100 percent believe the first part, and really wonder about the second.

It's no secret the city needs more policy officers, and encouraging to see that as a priority in the budget. We're still a little skeptical about the new vehicles, but hopefully there's a good breakdown at some point of needs and uses from the PD.

Finally, we tried today to get an electronic version of the budget. The Mayor's Office shuffled us off to the Auditor's Office, which was very helpful (the Auditor's Office, not the shuffling). Unfortunately, the budget document is too big to e-mail. The office, however, was accomodating and offered to let us come by and check it out. It's tough for us 9-to-5ers to do, but we may try to get a hard copy somehow.