Fond du Lac City Council approves April public safety referendum, voters to decide
FOND DU LAC - Taxpayers will decide next spring whether to fund more firefighters, paramedics and police officers in the city.
The Fond du Lac City Council approved a resolution on Wednesday that would place a referendum question on the April 6 ballot to exceed the levy limit to employ and equip six additional full-time firefighter/paramedics and six additional full-time police officers.
If city residents pass the referendum, the tax levy in 2022 — and every year going forward — would carry a $1,303,287 increase to cover the cost. This adds about 43 cents to the mill rate per thousand dollars of property value, or about $64.50 annually on a home valued at $150,000, City Manager Joe Moore said.
The current mill rate in the city's 2021 budget is $9.20 per thousand dollars of property value — about $1,380 on that same home.
The referendum was approved in a 5-2 vote, with Council President Brian Kolstad and members Arletta Allen, Kay Miller, Ben Giles and Alicia Hans voting in favor.
"This is the most important thing in our city right now — this is something we all need to get behind so we show confidence in the city," Miller told the council.
Dan Degner and Donna Richards cast the dissenting votes. Degner said he was voting against the referendum because it wasn't the right time to raise taxes by 4.69% and there are currently seven unfilled positions in the police department due to a lack of enough qualified applicants.
"The data is incomplete due to these unfilled positions we can't fill," Degner said.
Richards said she wanted to see other types of personnel, besides police officers, who could work with people's mental health needs in the city.
Police Chief Bill Lamb and Fire Chief Pete O'Leary first brought up staffing shortages in fall 2019, painting a grim picture of the dire need for additional officers and firefighters/paramedics to cover the city's growing problems, namely: gun violence, substance abuse, untreated mental illness and family dysfunction.
Calls to their departments for emergency responses continue to increase each year and both Lamb and O'Leary say the personnel shortage puts a strain on their employees.
Fond du Lac Fire & Rescue currently employs 65 firefighter/paramedics, split between three shifts.
"Each time we have to call another transport agency in to transport patients which we cannot because of our own call volume, we don't receive the revenue from that response," O'Leary said. "Moreover is the increased number of times which we have to take a fire engine out of service to staff one of our backup ambulances."
Violent crimes in the city are up 45% and domestic and aggravated assaults rose as much as 70% in recent years, Lamb said in an August report to the council.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the city in March, the number of police responses to drug overdoses, suicides and suicide attempts have increased. Lamb said dealing with mental illness calls in the community remains one of the department's greatest challenges.
"We get calls when people hit crisis levels," Lamb said. "And until society adds additional medical resources to help these people, the problem will get increasingly worse."
The police department has 73 sworn law enforcement officers, and an additional six officers would give those already on the force adequate time to rest and recover between shifts, the chief said.
In August alone, 77 full shifts of overtime were needed to keep the department at minimum staffing levels.
The cost of filling that gap is an additional $620,000 in overtime costs, above the department's $11.6 million budget.
"It's hard on the people. It's hard on their families and bottom line, it's not healthy," Lamb said.
Salaries for a police officer range from $53,400 (starting) to $74,252 (15 years). Firefighter/paramedics run from $53,585 to $77,126.
The council previously discussed holding the referendum during the Nov. 3 presidential election, but those plans were put on hold. In a memorandum to the council, Moore suggested "pausing this conversation with the intent to resume it in 2021."
Although the council at that time came to a general consensus on the need for increased police and fire/rescue staffing, they could not agree on how to fund it, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its unknown impact on the city's budget.
Moore said city officials did look at funding additional police and fire positions from internal sources, but it would have permanently reduced departmental budgets by between $500,000 and $600,000 and significantly impacted other services provided by the city.
The city plans to hire a marketing consultant to assist with referendum plans. The cost of $32,000 would cover services that include public forums, surveys, web content creation and targeted mailings, Moore said.
Fond du Lac voters last weighed in on a city referendum in November 2014 on a resolution that called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution restricting political contributions by organizations and companies.
Move to Amend Fond du Lac submitted about 3,000 petition signatures to the City Clerk's Office, asking the Council the refer the resolution to referendum, which it did. The referendum was approved by 73% of the voters.
Contact Sharon Roznik at 920-907-7936 or sroznik@gannett.com. Follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/reporterroz/
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