Sheriff to provide police service for Silver Lake

Village’s money-saving move eyed for mid June

 

By Gail Peckler-Dziki

Correspondent

The Silver Lake Village Board has turned to the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department to provide law enforcement services for the village.

The board voted unanimously to hire the sheriff at a special meeting May 14.

The contract is for 16.5 hours of patrol each day and $272,000 a year.

The sheriff’s service is expected to begin in mid June, pending county approval.

The Village Board met with Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth for an hour at the meeting and then voted unanimously to accept the proposal.

Trustee Carolyn Dodge was absent and Chris Willkomm recently resigned, stating work schedule conflicts.

That meant trustees Roger Johnson, Pat Dunn, Doug Randolph and Eric Erickson – along with recently elected village president Bruce Nopenz – all voted yes.

Nopenz said the contract would be a savings of at least $60,000 a year over the village running it’s own police department.

The village originally budgeted $430,000 for police but dropped that down to $339,000. And that figure, according to some, was not nearly enough.

Silver Lake has a new patrol car on order and Nopenz said the county will buy it from the village. That will be the village patrol car, which will stay in the village. The village currently owns three patrol cars. One will be sold, one will be junked and the fire chief will use the third car.

Current officers will remain on hand to orient the new officers and then move on to become county deputies.

The plan is for all the village’s current officers to be absorbed by the sheriff’s department, Nopenz said.

The contract calls for 16.5 hours of daily patrol, from 10:45 a.m. to 3 a.m.

“We will have patrol when the bars close,” Nopenz said. “Our attorney, Bob Mulcahey, did negotiate a few things that have tailored the service to Silver Lake.”

Riverview Grade School officials said that there would be no need for a patrol at the school in the morning, after the changes to the traffic flow when students are dropped off.

“But if that changes and we discover that a patrol is needed,” Nopenz explained, “we can change that with a phone call.”

The village plans to continue handling water patrol on its own, and then do a cost-benefit analysis at the end of the summer.


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One response to “Sheriff to provide police service for Silver Lake”

  1. Pete Avatar
    Pete

    Thank you for fixing something in Silver Lake. Keep up the good work Bruce.