Mission to add part-time police officer
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MISSION — The St. Ignatius Town Council voted to expand its police force at a Nov. 4 meeting, after several months of research into ways to provide more police protection with few available funds.
At previous meetings council members said the town couldn’t afford to hire another officer, but authorized Chief of Police Jeffrey Ferguson and Attorney James Lapotka to study the feasibility of using volunteer reserve police officers.
Applications for the reserve program were accepted, and a haunted house was held to raise funds for the it, but communication with the Montana Municipal Interlocal Authority indicated that starting the program could be more difficult than anticipated, Ferguson said.
“If we’re going to abandon the reserve thing, maybe we can look at (having) someone part-time,” Councilmember Mack McConnell said.
Ferguson said a highly-qualified Lake County Sheriff’s deputy that already works in the St. Ignatius community is interested in working part-time as an officer for the city. City Clerk LeeAnn Gottfried said the police department was under budget for the year, so it was financially feasible to pay another part-time officer.
Ferguson said the interested officer had one demand — that his pay be set at $16 per hour, almost as much as Ferguson’s pay.
A part-time employee’s pay would normally start much lower at $11.33 per hour, noted Councilmember Ray Frey.
“I don’t see a problem if he takes a shift a week, but at our salary,” Frey said. “That kind of slams everybody else who came to work for this town. If you start at the top, where do you go?”
The city voted to advertise for the position.
In other business:
• Lapotka said he intended to re-write some of the city’s ordinances for minor offenses that have a jail time as a possible penalty. Having jail time as a possible sentence for offenses means the town must pay for a jury trial and all the trimmings, including a public defender, even if the offense was something as minor as watering a lawn at the wrong time of day.
“I don’t think we really want to send someone to jail for watering their lawn,” Lapotka said. The re-write will not impact a jury trial for a minor offense that has been continued until December.
“That’s water under the lawn at this point,” he said.
• The council approved paying $900 to install five emergency lights in the fire hall and ambulance bay to provide power because of recent problems during outages. Ambulance workers were able to fix the electrically powered doors that wouldn’t open during an emergency call in a recent power outage, council member Annie Morigeau said, although they struggled to see in the dark fire hall.
• Director of Public Works Scott Morton said the final phase of the town’s water project was delayed again. The engineering firm for the project, Great West Engineering, moved the start date for the project to Oct. 28, but then requested two more extensions to March 24, 2014 and May 30, 2014.
“I said we wouldn’t consider it unless we had a letter from all three funding agencies OKing it and a letter from Great West saying their prices wouldn’t go up, and a letter from the contractor saying his prices wouldn’t go up,” Morton said. “I’ve gotten none of that. I said it had to be here by today. All I’ve gotten is a bill saying the price has gone up $37,500.”
Morton said he wants to consult with the attorney and city clerk to compile a long list of problems the town has had because of Great West during the project, and send it to the firm in a letter.
“There’s no reason for this,” Morton said. “Right now we’ve got a mess.”
• City Auditor Jennifer Cote gave a detailed summary of changes in accounting practices to the council when she presented the city’s audit. Cote said the city had come a long way in its financial practices since she first began auditing the books a decade ago.
• The city approved a policy that will allow full-time or half-time employees to apply their insurance allowance to policies that insure family members.
• Morton and Gottfried reported that the town hall finally had a working Internet connection.
