What’s the difference between Chillicothe and Peoria?
In Chillicothe, they actually hire new police officers when the city expands.
That ninth full-time officer would be the first increase to the police force in at least 30 years, says Chief Steve Maurer.
“If you want to measure the growth here, when I started there was one stoplight in town. Now there are three, and we’ve always had the same staffing levels,” said Maurer, who has worked for the department since 1979. “You can’t stop the growth of the Police Department, it needs to grow, too.”
I don’t think they are paying for it with garbage fees on their water bills, either.
The City of Peoria is getting ready to work on it’s next budget, and I am told that this is the year they finally figure out a way to adequately fund police and fire departments without a dodge like the garbage fee and make institutions like Peoria’s three huge hospitals and Bradley University start paying for the public safety services they get from the city.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Wow! Another 800lb gorilla for us to ignore. That question can't be answered honestly in our current environment.
As they say in Missouri: "Show me". I'll believe the rhetoric when they deliver. And speaking of rhetoric: if you'll look at the historical police officer numbers over the last 15 years, I think you'll be surprised to learn that the number of police officers has actually increased during that time period. So there is a correlation between growth in the community and growth in the police force.  Though it's a nebulous one – the real correlation should be in crime reduction (but there is plenty of research out there to show that doesn't correlate as most people would like to thing).  I'll give you the fact that they paid for some of the "hot spot" police through funds from the garbage fee – but no one said at the time – "No, don't hire more police.". They were and are still needed.
Has Peoria's population grown in the last 30 years? Have we expanded or annexed any land in that time?
Raoul:Peoria's population has been declining since 1970. From a high of 126,963 (1970) to 124,160 (1980) to 113,504 (1990) and 112,936 (2000). Can't find as much data on size but 1990 census land area is 40.89 and 2000 is 44.40.
So shrinking population and increasing land area.
Increasing staff in a city with a declining population does not seem to make sense. Have the "high crime" areas spread out or is most of the crime still concentrated in small areas? Would an annex of surrounding growth areas add enough to the tax base to hire more police?
Chillicothe just added more officers so they could control all the Sodomites that take over Three Sisters Park every summer. Wonder if Bushnell is harassing the hippies this week as much as the Chillicothe police did over Memorial Day weekend???
As a releative newcomer (11 years) to Central Illinois, I would look at this and say that Peoria keeping the force at the same levels during the population loss, which appears to be over 10% in 30 years, is quite an accomplishment. Based on the logic that "Chillicothe has expanded, thus the police force needs to expand", then one could make the case that Peoria should be able to reduce their force by 10%. I'm guessing nobody would go for that.
Oh, and Vonster, does EVERY conversation with you have to come back to race?
[...] reason we’re losing population (and I did get it wrong in an earlier post) is that there are serious questions about the quality of our schools, violent crime and the [...]