Loyal police committee approves portable radios, gun range prep

By Valorie Brecht Pending council approval, the Loyal Police Department will soon be getting new radios to help the officers better carry out their job duties.

At the last police committee meeting Oct. 10, Police Chief Matt Kubista requested his department be approved to purchase two new portable radios for $4,011.76 each.

“We have had more issues with them recently, with them cutting in and out. We had them repaired twice in the last year… Malachi (Askeland) was out directing traffic during the fire and he was having a hard time hearing because it kept going in and out,” said Kubista. “They’re just getting to that point where they need to be replaced.”

The two new radios would replace the ones Askeland and Kubista are using. Kubista said Officer Jacob Schar’s radio was still working fine, because it was purchased more recently.

The Motorola radios are to be purchased from Northway Communications in Wausau. They will be matched up with what the county has. Kubista said there should be enough money in the police budget to cover the purchase, but if the department should happen to go over budget, they would use salvage inspection money to cover any remaining cost.

Greg Brock made a motion, seconded by Kris Schultz, to approve the purchase of two new police radios for an amount not to exceed $4,011.76 each, with the money coming out of the police budget and any additional funds needed coming out of the salvage inspection fund. The motion carried, with one member of the police committee absent. The matter was referred to the city council, which had its meeting on Oct. 15, after deadline.

Also at the meeting, the committee discussed a potential gun range for City of Loyal police officers. Kubista said there was a local property owner, who wishes to remain anonymous, that offered his property as a place for Loyal Police Department to practice shooting. Currently the Loyal Police Department goes to the Greenwood range for training, but Kubista said it would be nice to have another option so they didn’t have to ask Greenwood all the time.

The Loyal property owner is within a 10-minute drive from town.

“It would only be for law enforcement, and we could go out there whenever we wanted,” said Kubista.

He was asking the committee’s permission for the city to do the cement work to get the site set up as a shooting range. He anticipated it wouldn’t cost any more than $4,000, along with the city workers’ time.

“The only negative would be, if anything went bad with it, we’d have put money into it that we can’t get back,” said Kubista.

He said the city workers could go there during their available times and if an issue came up in the city, that would take precedence.

“We might even possibly be able to go this fall. But it does take some work to get it set up. We’d have to go, measure and mark the spots,” said Kubista. “But once we have it set up, we could plan to do trainings there once a month. We could just pop over.”

“I see no problem with it. It sounds like a win-win,” said Brock.

Kubista also said the cost for the cement work would come out of the police department’s salvage money.

He said the shooting range could be used for qualifying testing that police officers are required to complete every year in order to maintain their officer certification.

Brock made a motion, seconded by Schultz, to approve up to $4,000 and the city workers’ time if they were available to prep the shooting range. That recommendation was forwarded to the council.