What did they know and when did they know it?

George Hartzman, who lost his bid for the District 3 seat on Greensboro City Council, has a lot of questions for sitting council members. Most recently, he's asking when council members knew that the police department wanted a fifth patrol district. A recent story in the News & Record pegs the cost of an additional patrol district at $18.5 million.

The question of police coverage came up during Hartzman's race. Jay Ovittore, another District 3 candidate, advocated for putting more patrol officers on the street during the campaign.

“We have 639 officers on the street,” he said during a Sept. 28 candidate forum at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in College Hill. “Right now, Chief Bellamy says we need 950 officers. So essentially what the police department is doing is pretty laughable. We’ve got crime in this neighborhood and a lot of people complain; they put resources over here and they take resources from over here. Back and forth and back and forth. We need more officers and we need more coverage.”

Incumbent Zack Matheny downplayed funding as a factor in police coverage in rebuttal to Ovittore.

“You might hear a police officer say, ‘You know what, we could use more police officers’; You might hear the police chief say, ‘You know, we could use more police officers,’” Matheny said. “Have you ever heard a police officer or a chief say, ‘We don’t have enough money’? No, you don’t hear it. Ladies and gentlemen, if there were a hundred people outside on South Mendenhall Street waiting to become police officers for the city of Greensboro, what do you think the city council will do? We’ll find the money.”

Ovittore was knocked out in the primary. Matheny prevailed over Hartzman in the Nov. 3 general election.

During a Dec. 8 briefing for new council members that was attended by Mayor Bill Knight, Mayor Pro Tem Nancy Vaughan, at-large Councilman Danny Thompson and District 2 Councilman Jim Kee, police Chief Tim Bellamy said the police department would like to have a fifth district. He noted that the western district is 42 square miles and the patrol officers in the eastern district have to drive through the county to reach annexed areas near McLeansville. He said that adding a fifth patrol district would entail adding 78 new officers, including commanders. The chief, who is retiring next year, added that over the next five years the department will need an additional 250 officers.

Vaughan expressed support for the chief's request four days later at the council's retreat.

“I think we need the fifth police district," she said. "McLeansville – that is really way out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know how we can serve them.”

The council voted to approve a $7 million financing plan for the planned aquatic center on Dec. 15, a point of contention for Hartzman.

Matheny was quoted in the News & Record on Dec. 20 saying something that sounded very much like support for the additional patrol district: “If we’ve got a plan to cover more territory, I think city council would support that initiative going forward. If it helps District 3, it’s got to help the other four districts citywide. We’ve got to cover more territory.”