Our city is the regional service provider for Police Services, and it is time to renegotiate service contracts. I am having difficulty articulating costs in a way that the neighboring council and the public can understand (or the converse is possible; I have a flaw in my logic or calculation not apparent to me). For argument sake assume the total PD budget is 1,100,000 and I have eight employees, simple math that is being argued is that we should take the “standard” 2,080 hours per year per employee and divide by total costs to estimate costs for 66.10 per hour. However, the difficulty for me is demonstrating that costs are nearly 150/hour on a contract basis, as I am always “stocking extra product”, having appropriate service levels, etc., and covering OT, multiple response, etc. The neighboring jurisdictions contract on an hourly basis at a rate of 71.28 hour, for 160 hours a month of patrol AND 24/7 response. I think I am not communicating the 24/7 costs for standby, etc….essentially when simple math says total budget / total worked hours is costs. Thoughts, ideas, help! Thanks.