This is a call to action for citizens of Scott County to get involved in their County Government.
County Administration and the Board of Supervisors are proposing the elimination of assigned vehicles for the Scott County Sheriff's Office which will have a severe impact on services delivered by the Sheriff's Office.
The issue is the elimination of assigned vehicles for the Scott County Sheriff's Office. This decision is not based on sound judgement or recommendations other than the sole purpose of cutting the budget. The County Administrator sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors dated January 5th, 2016 for their January 12th, 2016 board meeting containing recommendations of fleet management. To view a copy of the letter, click here. These recommendations were drawn from a fleet study conducted back in 2012 done by Mercury Associates. Click here for a copy of the study and presentation to the Board from County Administration regarding fleet management. You will need to download the document to adjust the view. The study looked at the County's fleet, but the study did not evaluate the public safety fleet. Nowhere in the study does it recommend any changes or modifications to the existing assigned public safety fleet. Yet the County Administrator came to the decision to make the recommendation to the Board to eliminate all County Assigned Vehicles. She is drawing conclusions which are not supported by the study, so where did that decision come from? It appears it is based solely on the desire to cut the budget and not with the desire to deliver public safety services to the citizens of Scott County. The County is estimating that taking the patrol vehicle fleet from 21 vehicles down to 14 vehicles would save approximately $300,000 every five years, but doesn't seem concerned on how it will impact the delivery of public safety service to Scott County. The Sheriff's Office located other public safety fleet studies conducted by Mercury Associates which in every case found, they recommend having an assigned vehicle program for public safety agencies.
Currently deputies with the Scott County Sheriff's Office are assigned a vehicle for work use. They drive to and from work with their assigned vehicle, but while they are driving to and from work they are not on the “clock”, but are required to monitor their police radio and should they be close to an incident or come upon and incident they are to respond and provide law enforcement services. They are also available to be dispatched to a call for service prior to shift which helps reduce overtime costs for the off-going shift. We estimate that deputies are on their way in to work and on their way home from work for approximately 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after their shift. There are 44 deputies who are not being paid an hour a day for their commute and using an average salary of $30 per hour, the county is getting approximately more
than $300,000 in free availability every year. For Patrol personnel driving to and from work they are a force multiplier by having additional deputies still on duty and available to respond to an incident. This also provides a greater police presence on our streets. This happened recently when one of our deputies was not on shift yet and was coming from a work meeting in his assigned vehicle. During his commute the active shooter incident was going on in Davenport and moved to Bettendorf. He heard the call for service go out in Bettendorf and was the second unit on scene with a Bettendorf Police Department Officer. Our Deputy and BPD Officer encountered the suspect outside the business and were preparing to confront him when he saw the response from law enforcement and took his own life.
How will this impact the citizens of Scott County should the assigned vehicle program be taken away. The free time and availability the County receives is gone. Deputies would drive their personal vehicles to and from work and would not be available for service until the start of their shift. Deputies will now have to store all their equipment at the patrol headquarters. That means when they start their shift they will have to transfer needed equipment in and out of vehicles at the start and end of their shift which translates to lost productivity. With assigned vehicles deputies carry all their necessary equipment in the assigned vehicle and are available for immediate deployment. The only things not carried by every deputy are AED's and digital cameras used to document crime scenes. We estimate the citizens will lose approximately 13 days per year per patrol deputy in lost time of just moving equipment. Deputies won't be available for calls for service until the start of their shift which will delay the response to routine
and emergency calls for service.
This will also impact the deployment of Sheriff's Office resources during an emergency situation. Currently when there is a tactical call out for the Sheriff's Office Emergency Response Team, a page is sent out and deputies get dressed and respond directly to the scene of the incident in their assigned vehicle which has all of their equipment. This allows the Sheriff's Office to get resources directly to the scene of an incident in a short amount of time. Without assigned vehicles, deputies will respond in their personal vehicle driving the speed limit to get to the patrol headquarters. Once there, get dressed and get their gear necessary for their deployment and then determine if there is a pool vehicle available. And they may have to wait for multiple people to show up before they could leave, thus delaying the response to a critical incident. It is also worth mentioning that if the assigned vehicle cuts go through, Scott County Sheriff's Office would be the only Sheriff's Office that I am aware of in the State of Iowa without an assigned vehicle program.
During a budget planning session held February 16th, 2016, the chairmen of the Board of Supervisors after being presented information from the Deputy Sheriff's Association on how the elimination of the assigned vehicle program may not be a good idea, turned to the Sheriff and make a statement to the effect of “I challenge you to find these savings somewhere else in your budget”. For those who may not be aware, the operational budget of the entire county is at its 2008 levels and has been there since 2010 when budgets were rolled back to 2008 levels. With operational budgets set so far back, where would he expect the Sheriff to cut money from his budget without setting public safety back even further? Scott County is the third largest populous county in the state of Iowa, but yet has one of the lowest county property tax rates per capita. There are only nine other counties in the entire state of Iowa with lower tax levy rates according to Supervisor Sunderbruch. For a copy of the Deputy Sheriff's Association presentation, click here.
The counties budget has not yet been finalized and this cut I hope could be avoided if We the People hold our elected officials accountable. If you don't want to see public safety service cut in Scott County, please contact members of the Scott County Board of Supervisors and let them know your thoughts on this matter. They may be contacted at:
Chairman Jim Hancock
jim.hancock@scottcountyiowa.com
563-326-8749
Vice-Chair Carol Earnhardt
carol.earnhardt@scottcountyiowa.com
563-326-8749
Supervisor Tom Sunderbruch
thomas.sunderbruch@scottcountyiowa.com
563-326-8749
Supervisor Diane Holst
diane.holst@scottcountyiowa.com
563-326-8749
Supervisor Brinson Kinzer
brinson.kinzer@scottcountyiowa.com
563-326-8749
If you have any additional questions regarding this, please email them to
thomasgibbsforsheriff@gmail.com, or message me on Facebook at Thomas Gibbs for Sheriff.
Thank you for your help.
