Everest Metro Police Joint Finance Committee

Meeting Minutes of Joint Meeting of the Everest Metropolitan Police Department Joint Finance Committee and the Everest Metro Municipal Court Finance Committee, dated 10/16/19 Present: Wally Sparks – President; Village of Weston Nathan Fiene – Trustee; Village of Weston Mark Maloney – Trustee; Village of Weston Denny Richmond – Alderman; City of Schofield Kari Carroll – Alderman; City of Schofield Kregg Hoehn – Mayor; City of Schofield Milt Olson – Chairman; Town of Weston Clay Schulz- EMPD Police Chief Shane Heilmann – EMPD Operations Captain Nick Aldrich – EMPD Administrative Captain Kristy Isberner– EMPD Administrative Assistant Keith Donner – Administrator; Village of Weston Jessica Trautman – Finance Director; Village of Weston Jenna Trittin – Deputy Finance Director; Village of Weston Absent: I. CALL TO ORDER A. President Sparks opened the meeting at 1600 hrs. Roll call. B. Approval of minutes of meeting held, August 1st, 2019. *M/S/P Fiene/Maloney II. NEW BUSINESS – EMPD A. Discussion and possible approval of union contract. Chief Schulz passed out a copy of the Union Contract. President Sparks explained that he, Chairman Olson and Mayor Hoehn had met with the Union and came to an agreement. Some of the highlighted changes included the shift differential going from $0.50 an hour to $0.75 an hour, the Special Investigative Unit and K9 positions being added to special duty pay ($1,000 impact to budget), and allowing 24 hours of sick time a year to be used for the illness of a child. The other major change was instead of turning in receipts for officer uniform allowances, each officer would be issued a check at the beginning of the year to cover uniform expenses. The wage increase was a 2% increase in January and a 1% increase in July for the full three year contact. A motion was made to approve the Union Contract as presented. *M/S/P Maloney/Fiene B. Discussion and possible approval to order two 2020 Ford Explorer Police Utility vehicles for 2020 - Chief Schulz passed out two quotes for two new squad cards. One was from Langlade Ford for $32,771 per squad and one was from Kocourek Ford for $33,694 per squad. Langlade Ford also stated they would pick up and drop off the squads for all warranty work that needed to be done. All other maintenance is done locally at Schofield Auto Clinic. Chief Schulz also passed out an estimate from Belco for approximately $9,600 for outfitting the new squads because none of the cages or equipment will fit in the new squad due to changes made by Ford. A motion was made to purchase the two new squads from Langlade Ford. *M/S/P Richmond/Olson C. Chief’s Evaluation – President Sparks stated the Executive Committee, which is made up from Chief Sparks, Chairman Olson, and Mayor Hoehn) met to do Chief Schulz’s evaluation since no evaluation had been done since March 2018. They also met with Police Commission member Dave Eisenreich to go over the scores, which Eisenreich agreed with. They scored Chief Schulz at an 85% out of 100%, giving him at least an 8 our 10 in every category, which would correspond to between the marks of Above Average and Superior. President Sparks stated that Chief Schulz has accomplished many things in the short time he has been chief such as adding a School Resource Officer position, implementing an automated phone message, replacing the clerical glass window with a more secure one, retrofitted the shotguns in the squads to become less than lethal shotguns, and assigned EMPD personnel to the newly created Marathon County Joint Crowd Control and Threat Assessment teams. The committee decided to use this evaluation for the current years merit increase as well as next years and the goal going forward to do the evaluation in the fall in time for the following year’s budget approval. A motion was made to give Chief Schulz a 2% merit increase over the 2% increase he had already received, with back pay going back to January 1, 2019, as well as a 4% increase starting January 1st, 2020 instead of the 2%/1% increase the others are getting. *M/S/P Maloney/Richmond D. Non-represented employee wages/salaries for 2020 – Chief Schulz stated that this would include three clerical positions and the two captain positions. He stated at this time he is requesting a 2% increase in January and a 1% increase in July to match what the officers are receiving for the three clericals and Captain Nick Aldrich since Nick is new to his position. He stated that Captain Heilmann was the sole captain for many months, taking on the responsibilities of both positions, and for that reason he is recommending a 3% increase in January and a 1% increase in July for Captain Heilmann. A motion was made to approve the chief’s recommendations. *M/S/P Fiene/Hoehn E. Discussion and possible approval to leave clerical position vacant, but funded until Dragon dictation software demo is completed – Chief Schulz stated it has been a struggle to fill and keep filled the fourth clerical position. He stated the department has started to look into Dragon dictation software, both to alleviate the typing burden on clerical staff and eliminate the problem of “Draft” reports. The cost for this software would be approximately $20K upfront and approximately $2K-$3K yearly after that for maintenance and upgrades. The company will let the department demo for approximately a month for free. By that time the budget already would need to be approved, so Chief Schulz requested the fourth clerical position remain in the budget for now in case the Dragon Software is not a good fit for our department, but stated it will remain vacant until after the demo and if the Dragon software is beneficial, he would then purchase the software and not fill that vacancy. A motion was made to leave the clerical position vacant but funded at this time. *M/S/P Maloney/Richmond F. Discussion and possible approval to have a qualified new hire moved to 90% of pay rate per contract language under last paragraph of Appendix A – Chief Schulz stated it is getting harder and harder to attract qualified and experienced officers to our department. He stated under the Union Contract it allowed an experienced officer to be hired at 90% of the pay rate instead of the normal 80%, however this has never actually been done before. He stated they do have one candidate in the hiring process right now, who would qualify for this. Should the Police Commission approve the hiring of this candidate, Chief Schulz requested to be able to start him at the 90% pay rate. A motion was made to approve starting that officer at 90% if the Police Commission decided to give a conditional offer of employment to that particular qualified candidate. *M/S/P Richmond/Olson  G. Current EMPD funding formula discussion and possible adjustments or changes – Chief Schulz passed out a few different sample contribution sheets based on removing accidents from the funding formula as well as replacing UCR Summary Based Part 1 Crimes (listed as Case Investigations) with Group A IBR offenses. Making those adjustments, does alter the contributions of the municipalities, but Chief Schulz stated ultimately, the funding formula is based on activity which really does fluctuate year to year and while the adjustments may help a particular municipality this year, it may hurt them next year. There was discussion about possibly smoothing out those changes to make them more palatable by doing a 3 year or five year average on those numbers. He also handed out possible budgets for next year, one with current staffing levels and one with an additional officer. Both budgets applied $150K of the undesignated fund balance to the budget. No decisions were made regarding the funding formula. III. CHIEF’S REPORT – A. Department Updates- Chief Schulz stated this year’s budget is tracking okay. IV. REPORTS: VI. DATE FOR NEXT MEETING: TBD VII. ADJOURN: Meeting was adjourned 1713 hrs. *M/S/P Olson/Richmond