Floyd County supervisors look at city fees for county law protection

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Floyd County Supervisors discussed increasing the fees the county currently collects to provide law enforcement coverage in area towns, at the board’s meeting this week.

Colwell, Floyd, Marble Rock, Rockford and Rudd currently pay an annual fee of $7 per capita of the cities’ populations for law enforcement protection from the Sheriff’s Office.

Nora Springs, which has a Police Department with one officer, Chief Jessie Dugan, pays $50 per hour to the county when deputies are called to incidents in that city.

Iowa law requires incorporated cities to provide law enforcement protection to their residents, either through a local police department such as Charles City has, or by contracting with some other law enforcement organization to provide services.

Although that amount paid was increased last year from a previous $4 per capita and $25 per hour to the current $7 per capita and $50 per hour, Sheriff Jeff Crooks and Lt. Travis Bartz both said those fees are still too low.

The group had discussed increasing fees last year and everyone recognized they needed to increase, but they didn’t want to make the jump too steep in one year, Crooks said. Now they need to continue increasing, he said.

He said one of the things that disappointed him with last year’s negotiations is that Nora Springs’ fee of $50 per hour for calls was based on that city hiring another officer so that there would be two officers on duty.

Nora Springs Mayor Randy Hassman said the city tried to find another officer, but was unable to.

He took exception to a statement Crooks made that Hassman had intentionally misled Crooks last year when they were determining a fee, by telling them they would have two officers.

“We’ve tried,” Hassman said. “We’ve tried to get officers. It is not possible to get a qualified officer” in a town their size.

The group talked about another $2 per capita increase, from $7 to $9, and Supervisor Gloria Carr said if they apply that same percentage increase to the $50 an hour rate or Nora Springs it would be about $65 per hour.

Supervisor Boyd Campbell said the group needs to come up with a five-year plan to get to where the fees need to be.

Carr suggested agreeing on the $9 per capita and $65 per hour rates now for budgeting purposes, but coming up with a plan before new 28E intergovernmental agreements need to be signed in June for the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, and the group unofficially agreed to that.

Many communities in Iowa are paying several times the Floyd County per capita amounts.

For example, a quick sampling of 28E agreements on the Iowa Secretary of State website shows Dows, with a population of 509, paying $26,350 in the current year to Wright County, which works out to $51.77 per capita.

Crystal Lake, a city of 253, is paying $60 per capita, or $15,180, to Hancock County.

In comparison, for example, Rockford, with a population of 758, would pay $6,822 to Floyd County under the proposed $9 per capita fee.