Missoula Police Department seeks training, drones in FY27 budget
Martin Kidston
(Missoula Current) Citing public safety and changing technology, the Missoula Police Department is seeking a budget increase of roughly $450,000 in the new fiscal year, from staffing needs to training.
The Missoula City Council this week kicked off its annual budgeting process, bringing forward various departments to detail their funding requests in FY27. The police department submitted nine requests, including one new police officer, the restoration of its training budget and an investment in aerial drones.
Chief Mike Colyer said the new officer represents a step in hiring several new officers over the coming years to help cover losses when other officers take time off, are injured on duty, deployed with the military or on family medical leave.
Last year, the department lost 241 days to on-duty injury and 27 days to family medical leave. The request for one additional officer comes with a budgetary increase of $126,800.
“At least five positions are recognized in this unavailability,” said Colyer. “To be able to meet our staffing needs, response times and proactive and reactive time for officers, is to grow by 8%.”
The police department, with 118 sworn officers, responded to 57,000 incidents in 2025. Among those, the SWAT team was deployed around 10 times and the explosive ordinance team went out 25 times. However, while the calls have increased, the budget for special teams has not gone up since 2017.
Colyer is seeking $57,000 for special teams.
“We're behind the curb with inflation and staying up with the budgetary process,” Colyer said. “We've essentially doubled our deployments in the last couple years. When operations go up significantly, it leaves less in the bucket for training.”
The department is also seeking to restore its prior training budget for regular officers. The $50,000 request would recover the training budget that saw cuts in 2025 and 2026 to help the city with its own budgetary challenges.
Colyer is also seeking a one-time increase of $67,000 to expand the department's drone program. The system was launched in 2024 and last year, it flew 171 missions. That included a hunt for the suspect of a violent assault and a river rescue, among other things.
The request carries an ongoing cost of $18,000.
“They're great at providing over-watch. They're an excellent force-avoidance tool and provide general efficiencies for our operations,” Colyer said. “This would help fill in our coverage and assign drones to pilots. We think assigning drones to pilots increases our coverage and keeps our hardware in a more ready state.”
Earlier this week, the Missoula Fire Department also submitted its budget requests for FY27. The $880,000 requested increase would enable the department to hire an assistant chief, purchase new protective equipment and install a new station alerting system, among other things.
City Council will continue hearing requests next week and is expected to debate and adopt a new city budget in July and August.