CHOCOWINITY – Washington Councilman Doug Mercer is a registered Democrat, but he shrank from the suggestion he was in enemy territory Thursday night as he prepared to address the Down East Republicans.

“They’re all citizens,” Mercer said before the meeting at a local restaurant. “I don’t really put a lot of stock in labels.”

Mercer found a friendly audience.

“Doug is a person I can relate to in a lot of ways because I like what he does,” said Al Klemm, a GOP Beaufort County commissioner.

Larry Britt, chairman of the county Republican Party, praised Mercer for “thinking outside the box” and said residents should expect their elected officials “to not accept the status quo.”

In his remarks to approximately 18 club guests and members, Mercer revisited his exploratory efforts to obtain information on outsourcing city police services to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.

Citing numbers provided by Harry Meredith, Sheriff Alan Jordan’s chief deputy, Mercer said moving to a more county-driven approach to policing would save the city around $1.1 million a year.

The numbers were generated at Mercer’s request, according to the chief deputy and the councilman.

Mercer indicated he understood changes like this one would cause a stir, if the council pursued them.

“You’re going to hear it because you’re going to lose somebody’s job,” he said in reference to a proposal to outsource city emergency communications to the sheriff’s office.

Letting the sheriff’s office take control of communications could result in the loss of seven city jobs, Mercer suggested.

That move would require the cooperation of the Beaufort County commissioners.

Speaking of communications outsourcing, he said, “It’s our goal with the commissioners’ cooperation, and I hope we’re able to do it this year.”

The full council hasn’t started its budget deliberations yet.

Outsourcing all city police functions may or may not come up for a vote as the council prepares the city budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“I think there are real possibilities in looking at that,” Mercer told his Down East listeners. “Whether we’ll go anywhere with it I don’t know.”

Mercer insisted drastic steps are necessary to grapple with an expected budget crisis as the state shifts cost burdens to local governments to deal with a budget shortfall, complicated by slow income-tax revenues and other slow-to-expire effects of the Great Recession.

He said the City Council already is reducing transfers from Washington Electric Utilities’ electric fund by $200,000 a year, and likely will continue reducing the amount transferred from the electric fund to the city’s general fund each year. The council’s goal is to eliminate that annual transfer of funds.

Yet, the police outsourcing idea is the one that promises to garner the most attention if it goes forward.

In an unscientific poll on its website, the Washington Daily News recently asked readers to weigh in on the issue of whether the city council and the commissioners should work toward outsourcing city police protection.

Of those who took part in the poll, 24 percent – 58 people – said “yes,” and 73 percent – 177 people – said “no.”

Seven people, or 3 percent, chose the “don’t know” option.

To date, it appears the poll is the only available numeric measure of public opinion on the outsourcing matter, and it isn’t known how most city residents feel about this issue.

In a series of interviews early this month, six of the seven Beaufort County commissioners who could be reached for comment took a wait-and-see approach to Mercer’s concept.

“Until I could sit down and see where it was feasible to do it I have no plans of doing it,” said Commissioner Ed Booth, a former Washington councilman and current county commissioner.

“Money-wise, it could possibly make sense,” Klemm said at the time. “Politically, it probably doesn’t make sense. There would be lots of obstacles to it.”