Dorchester requests deputy

Dorchester may get its own designated deputy starting next year after the village board voted last week to officially request a law enforcement officer from the Clark County Sheriff’s Department.

The Clark County Board of Supervisors still needs to approve the new position, but Sheriff Scott Haines is hoping that approval will come easier if the village picks up the tab.

“If it doesn’t look absolutely painless to the county board, they could easily say no,” Dorchester’s village president Kurt Schwoch told the village board at a special meeting on Aug. 11.

The village, which has been without an active police department since July of last year, will have to pay roughly $184,000 to get the new position started through the county. That will cover the cost of hiring of a full-time deputy and purchasing a fully equipped squad vehicle and other equipment. After the initial start-up costs are covered, the annual expense will drop to about $118,000 to cover the deputy’s wages, gasoline, overtime and motor vehicle maintenance.

(Editor’s note: The initial cost of a new deputy was previously reported as $178,000, but that was based on an error in the sheriff’s department calculations.) Sheriff Haines and chief deputy Jim Hirsch had previously proposed that the new deputy be shared by Dorchester and the village of Curtiss, but Curtiss officials are unsure if they can afford part of the position at this point. Dorchester’s elected officials believe they have the money in their budget to cover 100 percent of the position on their own, but they left open the possibility of sharing the position with Curtiss in the future.

At the start of this year, Dorchester had just under $97,000 budgeted for police protection for all of 2021. About $32,000 of that was spent on contracting with the sheriff’s department, which provided a reserve deputy to patrol the village for the first six months of the year. That contract was terminated by the sheriff’s department in June due to manpower issues, leaving Dorchester with about $64,700 left in its police budget.

The village also has $29,500 set aside for the future purchase of a new squad car, which will not be necessary if it con- tracts with the county. Dorchester will also be receiving about $5,500 back from the sheriff’s department for all of the items it purchased to equip the deputy in the first half of the year.

Altogether, the village will have $94,700 available for law enforcement going into next year. If the board budgets a similar amount of new money for police protection next year, the combined total should be enough to cover the initial cost of establishing the new position.

After that first year, the village would have to budget about $118,000 per year to keep the deputy. In July, deputy clerk Christie Erikson said the village had been budgeting about $116,000 annually for its police department when it was still active.

However, because the police budget for this year was under $100,000, the board would need to come up with an additional $18,000-plus per year to keep the position going past the first year.

“We still have time to look at the budget,” Erikson said. “We’re just going to have to play with the numbers.”

Even if Curtiss doesn’t sign on to share the deputy right away, there’s a possibility that the village could be a partner with Dorchester in future years.

Erikson said she spoke to someone from Curtiss who said their village may be interested in sharing the deputy in the future, and also reimbursing Dorchester for a portion of the startup costs.

The Colby-Abby Police Department has also offered to provide police protection for the village, but at a substantially higher cost for round-the-clock coverage. The CAPD’s annual charge would be $207,000, which would cover the cost of hiring two full-time officers in order to offer patrols 24 hours a day for seven days a week.

Trustee Eric Klemetson cast doubt on whether the village truly needs 24/7 coverage, noting that former police chief Gary Leichtman did a good job with 40 hours per week.

Trustee Julie Goldschmidt said village residents can still get a police response anytime, day or night, by calling dispatch and getting a Clark County deputy to respond. The only difference is that an assigned deputy will spend all of his or her time in the village and be able to enforce local ordinances.

In her motion to request the deputy position, Goldschmidt specified that the village would like the deputy to work 12hour shifts. According to the sheriff’s proposal, this would amount to 2,190 hours a year, (42 hour per week).

“I like the 12-hour shift because then people can’t necessarily predict their schedules,” Goldschmidt said.

Board members said they liked the idea of having a specific deputy assigned to the village so that residents get to know the person. Schwoch said the deputy will provide a crucial link to the rest of the sheriff’s department, which could lead to more attention for Dorchester.

“I think more information is going to get back to the county, which is going to lead to more county deputies coming this way just to check stuff out,” he said.

Erikson said it’s possible that the county could take on 10 percent of the cost, but then the odds of the position getting approved go down based on reluctance by the county board.

Trustee Tom Carter wondered about the possibility of the county cancelling its contract with the village, just as did earlier this year.

Schwoch said both sides will want at least a yearly contract in place for budgetary reasons, and he believes it could be written to protect the village from early cancellation.

“I don’t see them doing that, but who’s to say what’ll happen down the road,” Erikson said.

Klemetson said the county is “going above and beyond just to hire an officer for this area,” so he doesn’t foresee any problems with the village losing that person once they’ve been hired. He predicted that the designated deputy will “absolutely love” working in Dorchester rather than having to spread themselves out over the entire county.

“As soon as we post that we have a Dorchester cop back in town, everything’s going to calm back down,” he said.

Klemetson said he also likes the fact that Hirsch included a high-end estimate for the deputy’s wages, rather than starting with a wage at the bottom of the pay scale.

“That tells me that he’s not trying to sugarcoat it,” Klemetson said.

At the county level, the proposal will first go before the finance committee today (Aug. 18), and eventually go to the full county board for approval. Erikson said the village likely won’t know until November if the position has been approved for 2022.

Schauer said criminal activity is “getting out of hand” in the village since it lost a regular patrol deputy.

“We need something,” she said. “Things can’t keep going the way they’ve been going.”

Other business

_ The board voted to accept a $1 million Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), which will be used to replace water and sewer mains on sections of North Third Street, South Third Street and Front Street, along with one of the village’s lift stations.

_ The board approved a $20,000 contract with Cooper Engineering to administer the CDBG money and oversee the grant-funded projects.

_ The board approved a resolution authorizing the clerk-treasurer to apply for the annual state recycling grant. Previous resolutions had included the clerktreasurer’s name, so the board would continually have to update the wording whenever a new person was hired.