Half full, half empty

Just got the latest report from the Sheriff's Department. It also includes the cost for our contract rate with the Sheriff's department for our police coverage. This fiscal year, we pay the Sheriff's department $43.75 per capita. Starting July 1, it will go to $47.00, and the next two years after that will go to $49.50. As an aside, July 1, 2012 we will start using our 2010 census figures. Currently we use the 2000 census figure of 1324 residents. So doing the math, we pay Story County Sheriff's Department $57,925 for our police protection.

Now here is where I start to waver on whether to go glass half full, or glass half empty, when comparing to the other 8 towns in Story County that get their police protection via the Sheriff's Dept. (Ames, Nevada, Huxley, and Story City have their own, and Cambridge contracts with Huxley PD).

We are the largest of the 9 cities that contract with the Sheriff's Dept. Here they are with population: Roland 1324, Slater 1306, Gilbert 987, Colo 868, Maxwell 807, Zearing 617, Collins 499, McCallsburg 318, Kelley 300.

Here's the glass half full part. Despite being the largest of the 9, on calls for service time so far this year, we are in 5th place. For clarification, this is time spent responding to calls by citizens, not counting routine patrol time. So to me, this means Roland is a safe, low crime, low problem town. And that is something to be proud about.

Service time hours through August were 145 hours. Here is how they go top to bottom. Colo 256, Maxwell 227, Slater 227, Gilbert 180, Roland 145, Collins 129, Zearing 118, Kelley 68, McCallsburg 47.

So Slater is the city closest to us in size, and they have 50% more time spent on calls. Or you can say we are twice as big as Collins, and we are in the neighborhood of the same amount of time spent on calls. Again, kudos to the citizens of Roland for having a troublefree town when it comes to law enforcement calls.

However, on my glass half empty side, I can look at the patrol hours. This is time spent by the Sheriff's Dept. just cruising around town, running radar, doing door checks, and the like. Again, we are the largest town, but we are in 5th place in total hours. In that sense, we are not getting our comparative buck, when looking at other towns in the county. We are paying 18% of the bill, but getting 11% of the coverage hours. Again, that can go back to the relative safety and low crime of our city, but it is something to consider.

Here are the patrol hours spent in each town through August. Maxwell 480, Colo 435, Gilbert 425, Slater 416, Roland 357, Kelley 338 (Kelley has 300 people, we have 1324, grrrr.....), Collins 310, Zearing 242, McCallsburg 204.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with our police protection via the Sheriff's Department. I know Ellsworth, Jewell, and Stanhope have a combined police force. I sometimes wonder if we could have improved coverage with a Roland, McCallsburg, Zearing police force. Not saying I want to do that, but that is something I have pondered.

So anyway, just wanted to pass this along. Keep up your good citizen ways Roland!