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From Uptown to Downtown, covering Chandler like the sun.
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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
‘Exhausted’ police ask Chandler officials for help
INSIDE
This Week
NEWS ................................
April 18, 2021
BY KEVIN REAGAN Arizonan Staff Writer
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Tempe Union seniors will get a gala prom.
COMMUNITY .......... 29
BASIS Chandler senior invents new blood scan.
BUSINESS ................... 32 Northup Grumman scores huge missile contract.
NEWS ....................................... 3 REAL ESTATE ......................... 21 HEALTH & WELLNESS ..........27 COMMUNITY ...................... 29 BUSINESS ..............................32 KIDS CAMP ...........................35 CLASSIFIEDS ........................ 36
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handler Police Chief Sean Duggan is pleading for help from city officials to improve his department’s staffing levels amid an inexplicable strange spike in violent crimes. Protests, shootings and a pandemic have plagued his department for the last year and the wearying job conditions have been making it harder to recruit new officers, he said. Duggan said he’d like to fill 15 vacancies just to get the city up to its staffing capacity but Chandler is having to compete with
Chief Sean Duggan
every other Valley city for the same pool of suitable candidates – and that pool is becoming smaller. “There aren’t many people that are willing to do the difficult job of being a police officer,” the chief said. The hiring conundrum comes at a time when Chandler is grappling with a sudden uptick in shootings and homicides. In 2020, the city logged 75 shootings – 16 more than the previous year – that resulted in 26 injured victims and nine deaths.
see POLICE page 17
Kyrene faces $6M budget hit with little relief in sight BY PAUL MARYNIAK Arizonan Executive Editor
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riven largely by a projected enrollment decline of about 1,250 students, Kyrene School District faces a nearly $6 million budget hole in the coming school year that two upcoming rounds of federal pandemic relief won’t come close to covering. That sobering news was delivered to the Governing Board March 30 by district Chief Financial Officer Chris Hermann, who focused solely on the district’s 2021-22 revenue picture – leaving until later this spring Kyrene’s plans for addressing the shortfall. Nevertheless, Hermann indicated that the board faces some tough decisions over the
next two months as it crafts a spending plan for next school year. “This means that we do not have the financial resources to address all of the budget shortfalls that we’ll be facing this year as well as next,” he said. Compounding the impact of enrollment decline on revenue is the wide disparity among Arizona’s school districts in the amount of pandemic relief funds that will be coming in two waves. Kyrene is getting the short end of a multimillion-dollar stick, Hermann demonstrated. “These amounts have not been distributed equally or proportionately across all public schools,” he said, adding what Kyrene is likely to receive “will unfortunately not be enough to completely stabilize all of our fi-
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nances through this pandemic and address all the areas that have created shortfalls in this year as well as next year’s budget. “This includes offsetting the loss in funding that was due to enrollment and funding reductions for distance learning, funding for additional resources and services to address learning gaps and learning loss, addressing all the financial and economic issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing the capital needed in our facilities, supplying the technological infrastructure to support our students as well as hiring and retaining all of our valuable staff through this crisis period.” Multiple pressures are at the heart of
see KYRENE page 10
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