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Sheriff Bud Olson presented Victoria city councilmembers on August 12th with the new plan for providing police service in Carver County. He referred to a massive study conducted over the last five years that resulted in a new plan for the county's 11 contracting cities.
"The question we needed to answer was, how are we going to police Victoria for 2005?" stated Sheriff Olson. "We've got great challenges that we face. Over the last four to five years, there has been a lot of dialogue.
"We've got all this growth in the county but our contracts remained stagnant. We hired an outside consultant and we did a year-long study of the results. We built five recommendations. The new plan has not been done before anywhere else in Minnesota or even across the nation.
"For the first time we've defined the mission of the Sheriff. I'm here to go through that plan with you. One thing I've learned is that figuring out what policing a community needs is a complex thing.
"We looked at other communities that are relatively the same size, and we worked closely with city staff. We looked at costs and a strategy plan for five years from now.
"This has been a shared partnership. The Sheriff has certain statutory obliga-tions plus some services at an enhanced level belonging to the community. Under contracting we can give local policing services with a town cop."
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Sheriff Olson said Carver County and its various cities first adopted a contract-ing system in the mid 1960's.
He continued, "What I've seen is that the Town Cop model is what communities want now, where we'd be assigning depu-ties that will only work in your communi-ty. In Watertown they've already gone this route and our initial feedback is that it's tremendous.
"Your town insignia goes on the police car. We're proposing that same concept for Victoria, bringing policing to the local level. There will be a deputy that works the day shift, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. We're also proposing an evening deputy with some type of hours. When deputies are off-duty, we'd have contract time for early morning through the night hours."
Bud said that a Community Service Officer can work in the areas of nuisance calls and dog calls. "It doesn't take a licensed police officer for this," he said, "We're building this into a county-wide plan for communities.
"We factored in overtime for events --such as the Fourth of July Parade in Chanhassen. This contingency fund would be financed by you [the various cities] and not by me [the county]. There are always issues of overtime.
"You have spikes in a day that are similar in all communities. Our work-force is pretty much a reactionary police force. There is time in this plan for a pro-active approach."
Bud explained more about a CSO if Victoria were to include such an officer in the future. "Your vehicle would be a truck or a van marked as Community Service Officer. We provide that vehicle. This officer enforces the city ordinances of Victoria. The CSO would issue a community tag, and fine money would come back to the community. It's a sheriff's office employee, but they would liaison with your city staff.
Daily supervision would come from the county. There will be a night watch-man. Behind this plan are the countywide deputies rolling through the area as well. We patrol county roads without particular cost to a city. If a Victoria deputy is called out for an emergency, we'd credit it back to Victoria."
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In response to the presentation that evening, Mayor Jerry Bohn said he liked the concept of a Town Cop, "but we have to see how much of a budget increase we can sustain this year."
Councilmember Richard Tieden said his concerns lie mainly with the hours after dark, when most problems such as burglaries or break-ins occur, and yet those are the hours where there is no Town Cop or Community Service Officer planned to be on board.
Bud said he believes there is some opportunity for flexibility in this regard. He also said that once there are regular officers on duty in a community, there is a flow of information that helps prevent problems in a community. "It's the nature of the beast," he said.
Projected policing costs for Victoria for 2005, as recommended by Sheriff Bud Olson, is $293,266. Looking ahead into 2006, that number becomes $359,029.
The city's 2004 budget for police service was $112,193, according to Jylan Johnson, the city's finance director.
Bud said he'd like the city to make its decision regarding the policing plan prior to September 15th, so that associated costs can be part of the city's budget for 2005 ...
Click here to continue the Town Cop story.
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