Hi guys, I'm part of the Sheriff Citizen's Advisory Board and just wanted to relay important highlights from this past Tuesday's (Jan. 11) meeting.
Citizen's Academy
This is an old program they want to breath new life into. It's a completely free class for the community that will allow you to see every aspect of what the Sheriff's office does from running background checks, watching how the 911 dispatch works, inspecting the jails, etc.... pretty much everything they do. The idea is that the program will be a 3hr/week class for 8 sessions (24hrs total). It's a program that will be good for engaged citizens to come to a greater understanding of the Sheriff's office, and even people who are thinking about a career at the Sheriff's office. Minimum 18 years old to participate.
Budget Season
It's budget season right now, and the Kootenai Board of Commissioners are doing a wage study for all of the government elected, and employed personnel. This will hopefully result in KSCO getting a significant bump in their payscale because currently a job at Roger's Burgers or Panda Express pays a few dollars more per hour than a newly-sworn deputy. They're also losing high-quality, high-caliber deputies to local agencies like Coeur d’Alene PD and Post Falls PD. The situation is dire because KSCO cultivates really great Law Enforcement skills in their deputies, and they're essentially losing all of that investment completely when these people quit for these local competing agencies.
Hayden City Council, January 25th @5:00pm
KSCO will also be making a presentation to the Hayden City Council. Currently, their value of services they're providing is costing around $1.2M annually but their contract is only paying $500K. Most of their deputies are constantly handling incidents around Walmart, Triple Play, and Rusty's... and don't even get a chance to serve the wider community in Kootenai. Their contract is completely out-of-step with the services they're actually providing, yet KSCO is bound under Idaho Law to respond to all incidents regardless of pay, or compensation. This presentation will simply be a request to ask the city councilors of Hayden to square up and get their contract to around $1.2M annually. Not action item, but will be impactful if the community attends this city council meeting on January 25th @5:00pm.