Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

The Pinckney Village Council is scheduled to meet Monday evening, amid talks the police department could fall victim to budget cuts.

"The president and council seem to have it in their heads that the best way to reduce people's expenditures for the village, their taxes, which is a good thing reducing taxes, is to cut the police department and contact with the county sheriff. That has been met with a lot of opposition," Chief Jeffrey Garrison told WHMI News.

Garrison says his department is currently staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, mainly by himself and a lieutenant. Otherwise, Pinckney Police has four full-time officers and two part-timers, with a proposed budget of $600,000 next fiscal year.

"They seem to think because the police department's budget is what it is, that it's the best place to cut money out of the budget to reduce taxes," Chief Garrison said of a public meeting this past Friday.

"What I heard from residents is a lot of support for the police department and people repeatedly saying don't touch the police department, if you have to raise taxes to fund them, do so."

Chief Garrison argues calls for service is up substantially during his tenure.

"Since I've been here, they've gone up from about 2,500 and last year, we pushed over 4,000 calls-for-service in the village," he said. "A lot of those are self-initiated, subdivision patrols, traffic detail, things such as that."

"But we've also had some big incidents like the Pinckney Chrysler break-in, where they're currently charging seven different individuals."

Monday's Pinckney Village Council meeting is scheduled for 7pm. The agenda is linked below.