The report is pretty straight forward in that shared costs formulas do not paint a viable picture for Grand Chute residents. The writing was on the wall by doing simple math from the budgets and different formula scenarios provided in last week's post. Grand Chute residents would pay anywhere from $1.7 million to $14.2 million (over the next five years) more with a merged department.
Now that the numbers don't come out, I expect the push for merger approach to change to an increase in specialized services justification. A request will probably be made that all cost formula scenarios be thrown out the window, and a contract of services agreement looked into, something that had previously been rejected as not optionable by the Town Board when Outagamie County Sheriff's Department had submitted an RFP.
Much has been made about Grand Chute police being a reactive instead of a proactive department. This claim has been a point of frustration for many officers in the Grand Chute police department who say this is a biased and false statement. They spend many hours on proactive policing in the community. A small sampling of proactive policing includes:
- Neighborhood Watch
- Business Watch
- Citizens Police Academy
- Crime Prevention Activities w/kids
- Bike Rodeos
- Halloween Trick or Treat Bags
- National Night Out for Neighborhood Watch
- Bicycle PatrolCommunity Development officer/Liaison
- Prevention with local banks on incidents involving robberies
- Grand Chute I.D., Program established years ago for tellers/clerks checking two forms of ID and how to decipher fake I.D.s
- Licence Premise Checks
- Grant Projects related to speed enforcement, alcohol enforcement & seatbelts
- IRS Projects
- Fox River Mall Patrol/crime prevention
- Roadstar Inn targeted patrol for Drugs, underage drinking etc.
- Apartment complexes ALL in Grand Chute receiving letters for Apartment watch where nightly officers routinely walk through the complexes. This includes 3321 Woodman Drive which recently had a homicide.
- High Accident Intersection of Wisconsin/41 which led to officer's monitoring intersection and seeking out violations. This led to reduction in accidents at this intersection
Virchow Krause's analysis also discovered that Grand Chute's police department is adequately staffed. This was a huge turnaround from the $800,000 figure stated in the town newsletter mailed to all Grand Chute residents this past spring. Remember this post?
The panel's next meeting is scheduled for January 27th. Committee members will be able to give presentations or speak their thoughts at this meeting with one another. This is something that really hasn't been available due to time restraints at past meetings. I will be busy the next couple of weeks sorting through all the information.
