Suffolk County legislators voted 14 to 4 to pass a $3.7 billion budget on Wednesday.
Legislature Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey said public safety was a focus of the budget.
Twenty five new police officers will be hired, and the county will ramp up training for future officers.
“We addressed a lot of the concerns of what our residents have told us and we started with public safety,” McCaffrey said. “We added additional police officers to the county executives' recommended budget. We're going to be putting 225 police officers into training classes next year, on top of the over 200 that we put in this year alone that are graduating right now.”
McCaffrey said the budget keeps $700 million in reserves — which has never happened before.
“We've set up various contingency funds to make sure that we have money in there in the event that we need them. We finally set up a rainy day fund,” McCaffrey said. “In the past, we never even had a rainy day fund. So we're very happy to have that in place.”
The budget also funds 28 new positions in the district attorney's office and 19 cybersecurity positions. Suffolk County is in recovery from a cybersecurity attack this summer.
The Legislature also adopted a redistricting plan for Suffolk County’s legislative districts at Wednesday's meeting.
