As the new Assembly prepares to take office -- I'd like to offer some food for thought.

In the past year there have been repeated attempts by some to blame union employees for the city's budget problems. In the midst of the worst international financial crisis in decades, which impacted the city's investment funds severely, the city's budget woes were somehow the fault of the city's employees.

Ask yourself -- does that make sense or does it sound more like trying to find someone to blame? To place the blame on city employees and their unions is to deny reality.

Our contract, signed in late 2008 during the much-examined end of the Begich administration, in fact involved a number of cost savings for the city. APD employees gave up a better, more generous health plan to join the newer municipal plan that immediately saved the city money. A few months later, your police employees voluntarily gave up $6.7 million in wages. This concession was requested by the municipality and ratified by my members, as I said we would do, if necessary.

Much has been made over the "long-term" nature of the contracts approved by the Assembly in late 2008. Nevertheless, Mayor Sullivan himself settled a four-year contract with the machinists' union soon after taking office, recognizing the fiscal sense of long-term contracts. Stability works equally well in government and business.

Another point that merits reexamination is the fervor surrounding staffing cuts as a suitable substitute for good planning and leadership.

Consider this: In its effort to save, our city has eliminated police academies that would have brought new officers onto the force. The Anchorage Police Department, like any other city department, experiences regular and predictable attrition. Few people realize it takes nearly two years to get new officers through an academy and all the requisite testing and training before they are serving on the streets.

At the rate we're going with this machete approach, we'll be back to pre-2007 staffing levels by the end of this year. When that is compounded over the next few years by the fact that there are no new officers in the pipeline, we have the recipe for major overtime and operational issues.

In 2007 the city paid nearly $1.5 million more in overtime for APD than it did in 2009, when staffing levels were higher. We went from 14.2 percent of police pay dedicated to overtime to 10.2 percent in the same period. Retaining a reasonable staffing level actually saves the city money.

We might feel OK about cutting APD's officers if our department were already overstaffed. But data from comparable cities doesn't support this. Even in 2008 when staffing levels were higher, APD had a total of 553 police employees, 408 of whom were sworn officers. Meanwhile in Buffalo, N.Y., a city with over 8,000 fewer residents than Anchorage, there were 943 police employees and 800 sworn officers. In St. Paul, Minn., which is basically the same size as Anchorage, there were 799 police employees, of which 598 were sworn officers. With today's staffing levels there is likely an even a greater discrepancy.

To top it off, in those cities, overlapping jurisdictions with other county and state law enforcement agencies means police coverage is more comprehensive than these numbers reflect. So we're not overstaffed when compared to similar-sized cities in the Lower 48.

APD started 2009 with 413 officers and will predictably fall below 360 officers by the end of 2011. We will all notice that difference.

The employees of APD have a long-term relationship with Anchorage that isn't limited to a single contract or political term. Our city doesn't have the time to wait and reverse this downward staffing trend over the next two years. We need to take action now.