Myriad of Topics Covered at Lively Town Meeting Dec. 17 Including Sheriff IGA, April Election, Short Term Rentals
The first topic on the agenda of the Town of Lake City Board of Trustees workshop December 17 was to continue an ongoing conversation about an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) between the Town and Hinsdale County Sheriff’s Office.Mayor Dave Roberts and trustees were presented with a revised draft of the IGA, which has undergone several revisions factoring in budget restraints, insurance, and information from other small towns comparable to Lake City, and how they make their Sheriff’s IGAs work for them.“The key to this is,” began Mayor Roberts, “we want law enforcement in our town, and we will have an IGA. The best way to explain this – when I was a trustee, when the Sheriff’s IGA would come up, it was just something we had to do, just renew it. No information, no thought put into it, really. What we’re trying to do is put together an agreement that makes sense. The old one was very strange and what we’re working on doing is putting together something that is fair between the Town and County. Nothing is set in stone yet. We’re just working on something that we can negotiate with that will be fair.”Roberts went on to say that it was suggested the Town Board compare Lake City to Silverton’s Sheriff IGA, since the towns are similar. “Their budget,” Roberts said, “is 8.3 million a year, and ours is 1.1 [million per year].”Roberts opened the floor to comments and asked Trustee Jodi Linsey to speak first. “I’m awful glad that we are not just rolling the same IGA over and over with no thought as to what it actually means in our world. From what I’m seeing [in this latest version] reflects a lot of the things that we have discussed in our workshops, so that’s good, and it’s time to lob it back to the County. Do we need to adopt an ordinance, or just give it a thumbs up?”Attorney Dan Krob, attending the meeting via Zoom, added “what we want to do is be on the same page as far as what we expect and what the County will expect. There will be hiring issues, that’s a statewide issue, and you guys being as remote as you are, it’s beautiful but that presents a challenge. So, we don’t want to put the Sheriff’s Office in a position to say, ‘we’ll give you fifty guys,’ when they can’t ever fulfill that.” Krob went on to say that the IGA should probably provide guidelines for what hours the Town expects the Sheriff to be working, and that a 3 percent increase in cost year upon year was fairly standard to other IGAs he has seen in other small towns. “But that’s completely up to you,” he said.Linsey replied with, “I think a set number of hours is going to be seen as unreasonable. The Sheriff’s Office will want to know how to track that; will there be timekeeping? I think it opens [the IGA] to issues rather than supplying answers.”Attorney Krob said, “Generally when I’ve seen these, there’s a breakdown that comes from the Sheriff’s Office that says ‘this is what our employees cost, this is what it costs to get them their vest or their car or whatever, and what we’re asking you [the Town] to pay, comes out to this amount of money.’ So I think it wouldn’t be out of line to ask the County – you [the Town] proposed $100,000 – what do we get for those services, what can we expect? I do think both sides want to work collaboratively, but I think both sides need to be on the same page as far as what is expected.”Town Manager Lex Mulhall said, “I do think [tracking] hours would be problematic and an administrative burden. As far as the cost, we had put in here $65,000, at a previous workshop someone mentioned $75,000, someone said that was too much, so we included a provision where if they provided a deputy for special events, that took place on town property, we would offer them additional compensations, they could charge us for that. I wanted your feedback on that. That way, also the non-profits wouldn’t have to hire their own security, which they had to do this year, at least for Wine and Music Festival.” Mulhall went on to say, “They [Hinsdale County] did provide additional information including dispatch fees; what’s expected for next year for just the dispatch fees it’s $69,317, plus a full-time deputy plus benefits plus overtime in the County Deputy Sherriff salary is $66,950. Undersheriff is $72,100. Also – the cost of the vehicles, which they just recently received two new Ford Expeditions, $71,500 each. I mention that because one of the other communities base the cost on one fully-equipped law enforcement vehicle. Then every three years, the cost of the IGA goes up based on a new vehicle being purchased and what the purchase price that year is for that vehicle. That is one of the ways we could approach this. If we did the three percent annual increase, and we paid the $100,548 they said they wanted next year, by 2035 we’re paying $131,193. It will keep going up more and more with that annual three percent increase, which is not really sustainable for us since our revenues aren’t going up three percent every year. Everyone’s cost goes up every year. Something that may be more manageable may be to [look at] the cost of the vehicle – $71,500 every three years, whatever it costs you to replace a vehicle, is what we pay – or something to that effect. Also in here, what was changed based on the conversation we had last time, was the insurance we changed to match some of the other IGAs that we’ve shown as examples, instead of us paying the liability insurance for a full-time police officer, which is another $8,700, we would just be adding them as additionally insured. $65,000 maybe a little
