Funding and staffing of proposed Law Enforcement Center considered

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Funding and staffing of proposed Law Enforcement Center considered

By Shiloh Appel

At 2 p.m. on Monday, January 29th, 2018, a special meeting was held in the commissioners room at the Spink County Courthouse to discuss the funding and staffing of the proposed Spink County Law Enforcement Center.

Although no final decision was made on how the building would be funded, the Spink County commissioners discussed staffing needs with Spink County law enforcement officers and others present. Budget needs and design and development options were also discussed.

According to Sheriff Kevin Schurch, the Spink County Sheriff's Department would like to hire two more employees, one half-time and one full-time employee. It would cost $20,000 to hire a half-time employee and $50,000 for a full-time employee, adding up to an approximate cost of $70,000 for staffing.

"I think an additional full-time employee is not an unreasonable request," said Schurch. "Building or no building, I would like to ask for one more employee."

HKG Architects representative, Dean Marske, talked about different design and development options after Schurch presented his staffing requests to the commissioners.

"There are three methods," said Marske. "You can put it out there and everybody will give you a different design, but then you pick an amount and then they'll give you what you want. Then, the old tradition was  design, bid, build. So we design it under contract, we put it out for bids and it's bid on. In the third method, they have to guarantee the number before you go out for bids…it does give you the opportunity to have local people instead of somebody else coming in and bringing all of their people."

Marske went on to describe design opportunities and answered questions from commissioners before the meeting came to a close. The commissioners will continue to discuss options during their open meetings until a decision is reached.