The Vinton Police Department is ending their fiscal budget year under budget----again. 

Preliminary figures indicate that the Police Department will be returning at least $35,000 to the City's General Fund at the end of the FY09-10 budget year, which ends June 30th.

This comes after returning $42,666.06 to the General Fund from it's budget in the FY08-09 budget year. 

In practical terms, that means the Police Department operated for 12 full months on what it usually cost for 11.

"We have returned unexpended funds to the General Fund for 16 of the last 20 budget years that I've been Chief, returning in excess of $80,000 over those years, not including what we anticipate returning at the end of this budget year."  Jeff Tilson, Vinton Police Chief said.

"It costs a lot to run a Police Department, but we want the public to know that we have always been very thrifty in how we use the funds we do get.  We spend every penny as if it was our own money, not somebody else's."  Tilson added.

Most of the savings in the FY09-10 budget and the FY08-09 budget have come from delaying filling vacant positions.  Charles Campbell retired in November of 2008 after 32 years of service to the City, and we didn't fill his position until June of 2009, resulting in a huge savings to taxpayers last budget year.  A great deal of the savings in this year's Police budget resulted from delaying filling another vacancy which occurred in December of last year.