With Des Moines Police Chief Roger Baker retiring in June, Des Moines is looking at making changes to the police department.

Options facing the City Council include making no changes, dissolving the department and contracting police services out, merging with another city, or something in between.

Mayor Bob Sheckler began the discussion saying he did not want the city to give up its own police department. He said it would be a loss of city identity to either merge with a larger city such as Kent or Federal Way or to contract police services out.

Tukwila and Normandy Park have their own departments while Burien and SeaTac contract with the King County Sheriff's Office.

The rest of the council shared Sheckler's sentiment. Councilman Scott Thomasson said, while he was not in favor of contracting all of the services out, it would make sense to look at all of the positions and see if it makes any sense to contract some positions out.

Councilmember Melissa Musser agreed, suggesting the city hire a consultant to take an outside look at the efficiency of the department.

Des Moines City Manager Tony Piasecki said it would likely cost between $30,000- $50,000 to hire a consultant to look into the department's efficiency. When asked where the money would come from he said he would first look at the police budget and see if there were any savings there to fund the study.

At the beginning of the year five police officers were laid off after lawmakers made cuts to the department to balance the budget.

Recently police officers from the proactive Crime Task Force were redirected to patrol when four police officers were injured and had to take leave, Chief Baker said.

He said this is a temporary situation until the injured officers come back to work. But with the layoff of the five officers they do not have enough manpower for patrol and the Crime Task Force with four officers out with injuries.

"I'm not eager to spend money on an audit," Councilman Dan Sherman said. Deciding how best to organize and run the department should be the job of the new police chief, Sherman said, and that ability is something they should look at when hiring a new chief.

"We want to be able to hold the ground on the progress we have made," Mayor Pro-Tem Dave Kaplan said.

But, he said, that is going to continue to be more difficult if the budget constraints continue.

"The bottom has not fallen out yet," Kaplan said.

He predicts the commercial real estate bubble is going to burst in the next year or too, the effects of which will be felt by the city budget.

"I don't think we have seen the worst of it yet," said Kaplan.

A motion was passed 6-1 directing Piasecki to determine the scope and come up with a plan to pay for a consultant to look into the efficiency of the department. Sherman was the single no vote.