Surprise's own consultant says the Police Department needs 115 more positions over five years and Fire-Medical needs 74 more over 10. The budget the city is working under this year adds 13: 11 for police and two for fire.
Citygate Associates gave the City Council those numbers June 16, in a public safety master plan the city commissioned. Both departments are strong and both are strained, the firm said, and about 35,000 more residents are on the way.
Nothing in the plan has been adopted. No cost for the positions has been presented in public, and the staffing recommendations have not come back to the council since.
In the meantime both departments are covering the gap with people they already have. In April the council moved $7 million out of contingency to pay for police and fire overtime it had not planned on. The Police Department is taking school resource officers off campuses and putting them on patrol and in investigations.
What the city has funded is mostly what can be built: a $35 million police substation and an $18.5 million fire station.
"That's just a building until we put highly trained personnel in there," Councilmember Nick Haney said of the substation in May.
What Citygate said it would take
Citygate's Tom Woodward called the Police Department "a strong department, but it's very strained." Staffing has grown, he said, but "it simply hasn't kept up."
His recommendation came in two parts. To meet the demand the department already has, 22 more positions in the first year, on top of 17 sworn positions the council had already approved and funded. He recommended no further patrol officers in that first year, calling the 17 "a good start."
Then growth. Over five years, in phases, Citygate recommends 115 positions, a number Woodward tied to "the 35,000 additional residents over the course of the five year period." The total includes civilian jobs such as dispatchers and crime analysts. Woodward said 53 of the positions are for patrol.
Patrol accounts for 38% of the department's sworn staff, Woodward said, against the 60% recommended by the International City/County Management Association. School resource officers should not be counted toward that share, he said, because they are not available to answer calls.
For Fire-Medical, Citygate's Stewart Gary said the department "is currently at its limits" and over 10 years "could easily need" 74 additional full-time personnel, along with three more fire stations and a public safety center. He described the 35,000 residents as "a city within a city" that would "trickle in over time."
Nine or 10 of the fire positions are headquarters jobs in areas such as radios, breathing equipment, protective clothing and training, where Gary said the department is "very thin." Three of those, he said, are needed "as soon as possible in the next fiscal cycle."
What the budget added
Finance staff told the council May 5 that the fiscal 2027 budget would add 19 positions paid from the general fund, 11 of them for police and two for fire. That was six weeks before Citygate presented. The adopted budget kept those numbers; counting utilities and other funds, it adds 33 positions citywide.
Neither of the two fire positions is a firefighter. The budget book lists them as a radio and communications technician and a public safety logistics technician, support jobs of the kind Citygate said the department is short of. Fire-Medical's roster grows by four on paper, to 244, but the other two are an emergency manager and a fleet technician transferred from other city departments. The number of firefighters, engineers, captains and paramedics does not change.
The 11 police positions are seven officers, a lieutenant, a sergeant, a jail transport supervisor and an animal control supervisor.
Police Chief Evan Becher described that in June as nine sworn positions and two professional staff, plus seven over-hires, which he said the department had never used before.
The department had asked for more. Becher told the council in May it had sought 27 to nearly 30 officers.
"Even though we're getting 11 FTEs with the Police Department, hopefully, this next fiscal year, there's still a wide range of gaps," he said, citing "the north substation coming on board" and population growth.
One year of a budget is not a fair match for a five-year or 10-year total. But the pace can be compared. Spread evenly, 115 positions over five years is 23 a year, and Citygate's own first-year figure for police was 22. Fire-Medical's 74 over 10 years is about seven a year. The plan's year-by-year phasing is in a written report the city has not posted.
Fire-Medical has been hiring firefighters, but into positions it already had. It brought on 20 recruits in 2026 and by June had nine people hired above its authorized positions, in anticipation of departures and of a new station. Interim Fire Chief Kevin Spirlong told the council in April that the department lost 12 people last year when it had expected six, many of them paramedics, and that 22 more are in the state's deferred retirement program, which means they have set a date to leave.
How the gap is being covered
The council voted April 7 to move $7 million from the city's contingency fund into this year's police and fire budgets. The amendment, Resolution 2026-49, put $3.9 million toward Fire-Medical overtime, $2.35 million toward police overtime and $750,000 toward police supplies.
"These kind of things need to be baked into the budget, so we shouldn't have to come midyear and say, OK, we've got a $7 million shortfall," Councilmember Chris Judd told the two chiefs.
Spirlong did not describe it as a one-off. "Some of this is one time, some of this is right-sizing it, but some of this is who we are," he said. "We're just a bigger organization now."
After the amendment, overtime makes up 16% of Fire-Medical's personnel budget, city finance staff told the council. For police the figure is 8.2%.
Overtime exists because calls start before staffing does. Hiring and training a firefighter takes, in Spirlong's words, "the better part of a year," and a paramedic course runs 1,400 hours on top of that. Judd said overtime is not necessarily a bad thing and can cost less than hiring. Council member Jack Hastings put it differently: "This is not sustainable, and we have to get you guys some manpower".
The police version of the same trade is in the schools. The May budget presentation said departments had been asked to stay within their base budgets and that "we need to reduce some service levels and programs." For police, that meant moving officers out of school resource officer posts, with off-duty officers paid through a state grant covering those campuses. Asked what it would take to restore the posts, Becher said: "If you want a short answer, yes, we need more police officers".
Service has not failed. The city's goal is to answer urban fire and medical calls within 8 minutes 30 seconds, 90% of the time, and its estimate for 2026 is 7:43. Becher told the council in June that the department would have more officers on patrol after its next shift change than at any time in his tenure, and aims to have 12 squads, each with a sergeant, by January.
Recruiting does not appear to be the constraint. Vice Mayor Earle Greenberg asked in June what happens if the city builds a station and cannot find people to staff it. Both departments answered that applicants are plentiful; the fire department said it had about 500 in its current hiring round.
Buildings are funded. Positions are not.
The police substation going up on 163rd Avenue south of Happy Valley Road is budgeted at $35 million and was projected in January to be finished in summer 2027. A 10th fire station, at $18.5 million, is funded and in design. City officials have said voter-approved bonds secured the money.
The city's own planning figure for the substation, carried in its capital plans since fiscal 2021, is a staffing increase of about 94 "sworn and non-sworn personnel and vehicles" to go with the growth the building is meant to serve. A staff report to the council Oct. 6 repeated the number.
The money that builds a station is not the money that staffs it. Development fees and bonds can pay for construction, but generally not for salaries or overtime. Finance staff told the council in May that construction sales tax goes to "roads, fire stations, police substations," and that ongoing revenue has to pay for ongoing costs. Woodward made the same distinction in June: new positions are "an ongoing expense."
The council took up the capital side at a budget retreat Aug. 25. According to the city's summary minutes, it heard proposals for a public safety operations center, two more police precincts built for about 60 officers each, and a fire station in north Surprise. No costs were attached, and the Citygate staffing numbers do not appear in the minutes. City Manager Andrea Davis told the council that later retreats would take up operating needs and how to pay for them.
Still unanswered is which of the consultant's staffing recommendations the city accepts, what each year of them would cost, who would pay, and when the plan returns for a vote.
The substation is due to open next year. Whether the officers the building was planned for are on the payroll by then is a decision the council has not yet made in public.