Council Meeting

Council meeting was actually shorter than I thought it would be.

We passed an ordinance lowering the late fee for water bills from 10% to 5%. We all thought it to be a good way to help out the residents, or as I called it, "Our stimulus package".

We looked at a lease agreement for some property the village owns at the lagoons that has been farmed for a number of years. I actually voted no on this first reading. I didn't care for the changes that were made at the meeting to the agreement. It did pass however.

Our chief will be off this week and next and God willing will be able to resolve his health issues. We all send him our best wishes and prayers. The chief provided a letter with his recommendation of how to cover his shift during the next two weeks. No one seems to have a problem with his recommendation, but the issue of the sheriff's department came up again. I guess I have it wrong in that the suggestion was that we only use the Sheriff if it's an "emergency" because we just can't get anyone to be here. There never would be an emergency like this if we went back to having a second officer work day shift. When our current chief was a sergeant, he worked the day shift with his chief. At one point his chief was off for approx. a year with an illness. Tim took care of business and called the chief when decisions needed to be made. Now that we have only two full-time officers (Chief on first shift, Sergeant on third), we find ourselves in a situation where if either of them needs to be off for any length of time, there is little wiggle room to cover those shifts. We have placed ourselves in a dangerous situation.

Well, it becomes a dangerous situation because not everyone is willing to pay for police protection, or simply willing to pay more.

The reserve officers, those who work for free in order for us to hold their commission, simply cannot fill these open shifts. I keep hearing from different folks about our reserves, that many are not fulfilling their shift obligations. Except every time I hear this I call the Chief, and ask him if this is true and every time he tells me EVERY TIME (as recently as today) that there are TWO of NINETEEN, that are not. One of the two is excused because he is available here locally in an emergency such as when an officer is in trouble while on shift, which has happened recently.

Now that leaves 17. Two of those are not currently working because of their own medical reasons and one is right now serving us in Iraq.

I have nine part-time employees and at any given time there are at least two who are not available to work for me for whatever reason. Excluding the officer serving in Iraq, the chief and I both have the same percentage of workers available and doing what they are supposed to. Not bad I say. Good scheduling and good leadership. You can't ask these officers who already have other full-time jobs to simply pick up the slack or we pull your commission. There are other places they can go to work for free. However a paid employee in any job is going to be much more willing to come in and help when it is not normally scheduled for them.

Here is a half decent comparison for you. Your church calls you and says "We are short on help and you need to be at church for the next three Wednesday nights to help or else we will revoke your church membership". The drive and inner spirit to help your fellow man reaches a point and then you decide you could go to church somewhere else.

We keep saying we need to move the village forward. It seems to me that that concept has been falling short in some areas. It's time to move the Police Department forward. The manpower cutbacks that we have maintained over these years, are now coming back to haunt us.

Remember last week when I said that if you simply maintain what you have and do, you will find yourself behind?