Oakland County will require the cash-strapped city of Pontiac to prepay the county on a monthly basis for police services that it is set to begin providing next month.
City and county officials signed a $10 million contract to have Oakland’s sheriffs take over Pontiac’s police services, starting Aug. 1.
Pontiac, which is under emergency management, expects to save $2.2 million by hiring Oakland sheriffs to provide public safety services to the ailing city’s residents.
But after Pontiac emergency manager Michael Stampfler last month warned that finances are so dismal that the city could file for bankruptcy, Oakland County commissioners revised the police contract to force the city to pay in advance.
The commissioners also approved an amendment that allows the county to terminate the contract if the city files for Chapter 9, according to a report in the Detroit News.
“When the contract was initially negotiated, nobody dropped the 'B’ word,” County Executive L. Brooks Patterson was quoted as saying in the story. “If Pontiac is headed toward bankruptcy, I have to change the contract.”
Stampfler later said that the city is working on “other solutions to the budget” to avoid bankruptcy.
