A small city in Minnesota approved a contract just hours before it was to be left with no law enforcement following the resignation of its entire police department.
The Goodhue City Council unanimously agreed Wednesday to a temporary contract with the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Office to run from Thursday through the end of the year.
Goodhue’s entire police department put in their resignations earlier this month, and Wednesday was the department’s final day.
Narrowly avoiding having no policing, the city council’s contract with the sheriff’s office runs through Dec. 31, 2023.
Mayor Ellen Anderson Buck commended Sheriff Marty Kelly for his work to ease the transition between departments.
“I think the community is very excited for your presence here, and they’ve already noticed your presence so thank you,” Anderson Buck said during Wednesday’s council meeting.
The contract costs the city a total of $43,548 for more than four months of services. It includes at least six hours of patrolling per day, according to the Star Tribune.
Neither the mayor’s office nor the sheriff’s office immediately responded to requests for comment Thursday.
Former Goodhue Police Chief Josh Smith submitted his resignation on Aug. 9, with a full-time officer and five part-time employees resigning just two days later, the Associated Press reported.
Smith discussed difficulties in hiring officers at a council meeting last month, blaming low pay as a reason he saw no applicants for open positions. He noted that he was trying to hire officers at $22 an hour while other small departments were at least $8 more.
“There’s zero incentive to come out here to a small town — low pay, being on call, affecting your free time and everything else,” Smith said at the time.
Anderson Buck told NBC affiliate KARE last week that she was blindsided by the resignations after the council had been working on the city budget to increase officer salaries.
The council increased officer salaries by 5 percent and gave the chief a $13,000 raise at the beginning of the year, she said.
“We knew we were on the low side and so we were trying very, very hard to bring those numbers up,” said Anderson Buck.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
