Kenmore and Shoreline win State Award for innovative cost savings

Shoreline Police Chief
Shawn Ledford

At its annual conference on June 27, the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) awarded the cities of Kenmore and Shoreline a Municipal Excellence Award for their shared police command model.

The AWC Municipal Excellence Award recognizes innovative projects that significantly improve the quality of life for citizens, establish partnerships, and build community support. This year, the cities of Kenmore and Shoreline entered the competition by submitting its shared police command program in the Innovative Costs Savings category.

“This is a story of officials in two cities who not only worked together to solve a problem, but who also had the creativity, leadership, and initiative to generate a partnership that resulted in significant savings and improved service delivery that would not have been realized before the problem presented itself,” said Kenmore City Manager Rob Karlinsey.

The cities of Kenmore and Shoreline contract with the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) for police services. Prior to 2011, Kenmore Police received command and administrative support from KCSO command staff located in the County’s Kenmore precinct office. This arrangement dramatically changed after a series of annexations by neighboring cities. As a result of these annexations, KCSO decided to close the Kenmore precinct and consolidate command and administrative support functions over to the precinct in Sammamish.

With the Sammamish Precinct more than 20 miles away, Kenmore was faced with a dilemma of having its mutual call response, administrative support, and supervision and command staff located too far away. That is when the police chiefs of Kenmore and Shoreline stepped up, got creative, and suggested a new partnership between the two contract cities. They proposed having the larger city of Shoreline provide Kenmore with contract city Chief oversight, shared patrol supervision, administrative support, and mutual call backup. This innovative approach is the first time in the history of KCSO contracting that another contract city has provided this type of service to another contract city.

“The new arrangement of shared supervision and resources has been very effective and has worked extremely well,” stated Shoreline Mayor Keith McGlashan. “The agreement has allowed both cities to work more collaboratively and realize great cost savings.”

Kenmore and Shoreline share resources without added staffing, resulting in contract cost savings to both cities. This particular innovative cost savings project resulted in over $600,000 saved in less than three years—and the cost savings will continue to accumulate each year and mount over the long term.

The benefits of Kenmore’s and Shoreline’s cost-savings partnership are best summarized by Shoreline Police Chief Shawn Ledford:

“This has been a creative partnership between the City of Shoreline, the City of Kenmore and the King County Sheriff’s Office. It has allowed each of our local governments to make significant strides towards some of our most important goals, which include being able to better serve our individual communities, improving and ensuring officer safety and being responsible stewards of limited public funds. 

I strongly believe that the future of law enforcement lies in this type of cooperative working relationship among local and regional agencies. These partnerships are clearly the most efficient and cost effective way to meet the growing demand for public safety, a demand consistently voiced by both our citizens and local community leaders.”