Law Enforcement Committee - Regular Meeting

this meeting of the Price County Law Enforcement Committee to order. Clerk will call the roll, please.

Good morning. Jennifer Baratka, Robert Kopisch, Larry Palachuk, Patricia Stephen is excused, and Dennis Wartko. Thank you.

Thanks, Meredith. Items for discussion and possible action. Public comment. Anybody online for public comment? Unmute yourself, star six.

Nothing?

Nobody has signed up for public comment at the meeting? Are there any members have any communications? Hearing none, we'll move on to item two. What's your pleasure of the minutes from our August 13th, 2026 meeting?

Almost approved.

Motion by Kopisch, second by Warko. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for the question. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Do you know if the coroner's coming, Nick?

I've not heard from her. I know she has been around, so I'm not sure if she'll be here or not.

Well, if she does come, we'll go back to her district attorney.

I have no updates from the DA's office.

Clerk of Circuit Court.

The only update from upstairs for the clerk of courts, we did have one individual resign. One of the deputy clerk of courts will be working on recruiting for that position. Their last day, Alex's last day was last Friday. We have one vacancy up there. They have a couple larger cases coming up. I think there's, is it a three-day or four-day trial coming? Three-day trial. So that one will be a little bit more expensive than normal, but I mean, it's just part of the court system and what's happening. But other than that, it's been busy.

Okay. The sheriff is nervously paging through his notes. Yeah. Yep.

And now he needs help.

So we've been in discussion on the ordinance is anyone that you guys have received we do does anyone have any questions as to. What was created by corporation console or system corporation console.

So we talked about the last meeting. This meeting is to put the actual verbiage in front of you. If you as a committee see fit that this is what you want to move forward with, you would then motion to send it to a public hearing. Uh, and that would be at your next or, you know, in the next meeting, or we could do it at a board meeting. It's either one, uh, but it has to be a class two notice. And then if that's passed at that, it's a 30 day wait once you publish it, uh, and then it can be enforced.

So we're looking at our October meeting.

But yeah, if you guys approve the language for public hearing.

I'm fine with the language. What do you want? What do you want, Mr. Chair? Just a motion to proceed or what?

Yes.

Okay, I will make the motion to proceed with the amendment to the ordinance.

Sorry. Motion by Kopisch, second by Wartgold. Any further discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? Motion carried.

And everybody is satisfied with having the public hearing at law enforcement, not the full board? Yes. There's not a requirement of one or the other. It's just usually we do them whenever available. So at your October meeting, we'll have a public hearing.

Okay. Well, we're satisfied. Equipment update, talking about the radio and the project on that.

Yeah, I can start. So at the board meeting, we chose, or you guys passed a resolution to accept TUSA as the consultant for the radio project phase one. Chief Deputy Hahn and myself met with TUSA on Friday last week to do what we called the orientation kickoff meeting to get everybody set up and ready to go. I am currently reviewing the contract with Assistant Corporation Council. We had a couple little changes, nothing that would affect the project. They're still moving forward to get everything ready. We are, based on TUSA's conversation with TUSA, they've requested that we put together a community group. Stakeholder. Stakeholders group, which will include more than we expected in the sense of this could be a bigger project in a good way. Um, and, and that would be, we're going to include the schools in that, um, stakeholders because they have a radio system too, that if we build the right one, it could save them money rather than having their own system. Uh, EMS, fire, hospital, uh, There was a couple other stakeholders. But either way, we have a list of individuals we'll be reaching out to to have someone represent those groups. The TUSA will be on site the week of the 28th, 29th? 27th. 27th. So, I, part of that is, I did talk to the board chair about having a Monday meeting for law enforcement to discuss your expectations with TUSA. So, it's, it would just be an additional meeting. I don't, it would either be that Monday. I think Tuesday they wanted to do the on-site thing or go around. Wednesday they want to go around all this stuff. So, yeah. Monday seems to be the day that everybody is going to be doing the stakeholder meetings and then we could do a law enforcement committee meeting so you guys could meet the consultants and give your input on what the county's expectations are. the program are there they understand that one they got to evaluate the whole everything will be that we're requesting in what system we need to be looking at they'll be talking to surrounding counties they understand that there's a hundred different options out there and they'll do their best to say okay this is what We would recommend your Goldilocks plan, your, hey, this passes, nobody else is on it. You just need to fix these couple pieces of equipment and sure, we'll see you in five years. And then the Cadillac plan that does all the fancy bells and whistles. So they're going to come up with multiple plans, what works best. They'll give you the business practice on why it's the best option or a good option for you to consider. Other than that, do you have anything?

No, I think that pretty much covers it.

What were those dates again?

They'll be here the week of the 28th, September 28th. Yep, so they come in, they'll come in on Sunday the 27th. The 28th, 29th, 30th, 1st, they'll be in the community. So one of those days we have to escort them to our current locations. Another one, they run around the county and just kind of understand like, whoa, you have Tim's Hill, which is not easy to... transmit right um they talked about you know working meeting all the stakeholders whether it's one big meeting or separate meetings with some of them um there's a lot of people that they're here to discuss they oh they meet with like dispatch it um so our person who's in charge of dispatch will be in that em uh emergency management the all the ems groups so

The invitation will come out from your office, Nick?

It'll just be a regular committee meeting for you guys for the stakeholders meeting. They're putting together a letter on why you should be part of this stakeholder meeting. And then between Chief Deputy and myself, it'll probably come on letterhead from the Sheriff's Department. Feels a little bit more. Come join us for our radio project.

All the surrounding fire departments and police departments.

And then like five field, we'll leave it up to them if they send one to represent, because they have two stations, do they send multiple people?

And when is that meeting?

We don't, it'll be that week. It'll be that same week? Yep.

Okay. Probably towards the end.

I don't know. I didn't ask him exactly. We have a follow-up meeting on the 14th to nail down all the details.

Mr. Chair, may I?

Sure. What would you do if I said no? Keep my mouth shut.

Move on, yeah.

Next step. You said this might include schools. Is there going to be, okay, there's different options as far as equipment and what we need. Yeah, so. Is there going to be different options with slash without schools?

Well, so when we say, yeah, so when we say like the schools would be on it, what that, or like we have highways as a stakeholder, forestry and parks as a stakeholder. So what, how the system is built is they have a system and then just like your TV, right? You have a TV in it. You may be allowed because you pay for HBO or whatever. You may be allowed to watch it. But you over here, we're saying you don't have access to it. So you can only watch the local channels. So what we are doing is saying we know we have to have a system, right? The system is going to be the system as it is. What we would allow or we would be working with is Park Falls and Phillips Police Department. they get channel two. We're on channel one. But everybody can hear channel three. So if there's an emergency, we all switch to three and go, everybody that's a stakeholder on fires goes to three. So there would be, what it is, is you just build a system that has enough channels that, cool, the school buses can use channel 27. And they don't hear what the sheriff's saying because they're on a private channel. So that's what it, it doesn't necessarily mean we pay more for a bigger system. The system is the system. It's who do you let on it and where the savings come is like highway. They have their own equipment, own system. What they would be reducing is the server and the power system that just says that you wouldn't have to replace a $400,000 radio system. You would just say, buy a bunch of radios, you get channel 20 and you're on this system. You would help pay for maintenance. So there's a couple different models we talked to with TUSA that it could be we rent all the equipment to Park Falls and Phillips, or whoever the user is, right? We say we have these radios. You can rent them for this much per year. That helps keep maintenance, and you'll get renewed. We could say if you want to be on this, you go buy your own equipment, but you pay – Our yearly contract is $100,000. You have 12 radios. We have 200 radios. We divide that by 212, and you pay whatever percent that is, 6%.

In addition to that, it's also for the information gathering, right? Because most of these stakeholders are already on our system, I think, except for forestry. So we would be reaching out to Park Falls EMS and what are the issues that you're currently seeing with our current system?

Where are the dead spots?

Where are the dead spots? Where are we having trouble communicating with dispatch or from rig to rig?

Is it too confusing because you have... radio north, radio south, red, blue, and then all of a sudden you're on a fire and everybody's supposed to be on red and half the team's on blue. So how do we simplify the system? Or we've already had the comment of, I don't need to be woken up every time Ogema has a fire when I live in Park Falls because they're all on the same fire notification. Again, part of that might be mutual aid and other issues, but how does the system, how do we set up a system, if you're going to be on it, that works best for all users or stakeholders?

So we're already kind of integrated, but we're looking to make it cleaner or run smoother.

And more economical for all these groups.

More economical. More economical and more efficient, right? I mean, if we can limit the number of dead spots that we have, especially in the national forest lands and things like that...

Well, I guess that's part of the whole reason for this is eliminate dead spots and replace equipment that can't be maintained anymore.

Correct. But what I'm saying with that is the dead spots that law enforcement may be experiencing, fire and EMS may not experience it, or they may be experiencing additional- Radio type, radio size, repeaters and cars. Repeaters and cars and rigs and things like that. So they may have more, which I would assume they probably have more dead spots than we do. as law enforcement.

And they look at unique ideas. So I was talking to... The consultant saying, well, we never thought of the schools, right? What if there's an emergency? That's great. They can now be on immediate contact, but also their buses. Well, it's really expensive to put a radio in a bus, but what if you put a Starlink on every bus and made the radios work through Wi-Fi, and now you have internet for the kids and the buses, and you have connectivity for the radios that's moving around with them. So it doesn't necessarily help as a repeater, but it's a different – radio that connects to your system and so there's unique ways to look at it the other thing that they look at is not just the radios but the towers and the equipment do you need a generator at every site do you need a battery wall that can last you 24 hours so that you can get a generator there so now for your three different sites or four different whatever you end up with you have one generator that you're maintaining that goes to that location if there's a power outage because you still have 24 hours to get there or 36 or 72. They just built a system that had to have seven days with solar that could extend it to 24 because they're out in the middle of nowhere and they can't, they fly in all the supplies for that spot. So there's,

That's what we're bringing them in is because I'm not the expert.

Sheriff, chief deputy aren't the expert. And we don't want the salespeople to be the expert because that's where you get in trouble because then everybody gets the short end because we're sold one system. They go to the highway and have to sell them a whole different or to Park Falls or Phillips or whoever. And it doesn't mesh well and it just makes headaches for everybody. And maintenance costs go through the roof because you have 10 different systems.

Yeah.

Are there any other questions?

Their goal is to finish this by January 1st or that January timeline.

What would we be looking at then for construction?

late next year. And there may not be any construction. It might just be equipment. So it might just be reinstalling equipment. It might be constructing a new tower here and it gives you a little taller. It might be... That's what they're for. And they may say, hey, you have land out here and if you can... put a tower here and yeah, you're going to pay a lot upfront, but you're going to save on this end. Or we talked about the economics of if you can rent from like the hospital, right? They have a tower. Maybe they give you a spot for $2,000 a month. Well, all of a sudden that's expensive, but it's technically cheaper than maintaining and putting up your own tower for $800,000, right? There's a lot of... analysis that they'll put into it.

That's why we heard.

Yep.

Any other comments? You have any Brian or Bob? OK, we'll move on to staffing updates.

As the chief deputy said at the last meeting, Drew, or I'm sorry, Drew is back, but Dawson is now finishing up phase four. He should be going solo here shortly. And then Drew is back from military leave. And he's back for a while. Then he's got to go back on some other military issue for like a couple of days. But then he'll be back. He's right now in the abbreviated FTO training just because he's been gone for so long. I think he was gone before the time system or before the TCP, the payroll system. So Drew has to get trained on that because he hasn't been trained on any of that right now as far as payroll. So right now we are currently still one deputy short. We're waiting and we're looking through the interviews, going through another couple of interviews, a couple of other people, but we are still a deputy short. Moving forward with the pending retirements, at some point, sitting down with HR, Nicholas, and the chief deputy, we'll have to, at some point, post for a patrol lieutenant. And then we will, at some point in November, probably post for the chief deputy's position. So that'll take place through this year. Jail is doing fine as far as staffing right now. We haven't had any issues. We still have a number of part-timers. We had a jury trial yesterday, so we called in some part-timers for bailiff work on that. With the You already talked about. But the jail inspection, I don't know if, Brian, if you got it or if Larry got it, but they usually put the board chair on the jail inspection. You may get the report at some point. And we were told that. Yeah. I don't know if you guys have gotten it or not yet. Once you get it, you'll see it. But, again, the jail is being run. It's clean. They do talk to the inmates. They do inspect. They check policy. The kitchen and the jail are running good. Everything's running very well right now.

We usually do pretty good on our jail inspection, and I'm proud of that.

Yeah, and Danielle's, with the advent of the sergeants and Danielle being up there, I think it's tightened up a lot where the jail staff, you know, has some idea of the expectations better now with supervision, with the leadership that's up there. That's it about staffing. As far as the humane officer, Mindy is busy. She's been down in Ogleman a number of times. We still have the farm that we have to deal with. She has been going down and doing fence inspections. She has been walking the property line, checking fence, and then staying in contact with the township, talking with Lars, the town chair. Canine units, with patrol lieutenant Dixon will be retiring along with with Joe, so that when that happens, we'll talk about it. My goal was always that, and I think we've talked about this over the years, is that Dixon would then go to Joe as part of the agreement with the people that donated the money for Dixon. So at some point, I will reach out to people that have donated in the past and see how they feel about donating for the next dog after Dixon to keep it at the level of two units. Both are doing well. They just went out. They did recently obviously get some people with meth and a couple of OWIs this last weekend, these last couple of weekends. So we do know that meth is still a part of what's going on in our community and they're still, that's being addressed. Rec officer, we know that Joel has been, you guys have heard that he's been going back and forth a little bit, so he has been getting on the lakes at the end of the season. The chief deputy and myself will get the stats for the boating season for you and possibly the summer ATV, what transpired recently over the summer. And as far as the jail is concerned, the jail population, if you look at the budget, we have not housed at this point, I believe, at all this year outside of Price County. We've been utilizing what people have for EMP, and the numbers have been consistently around the 19 to 20 mark right now. So other than that, does anyone have any questions in regards to that?

Question on the REC officer. You gave a good report last month. Do you keep statistics by lakes? Like, would you have separate statistics for maybe what's happened on what or not that the Lake Association could get so they know what's going on?

It's based on citations. It will indicate the location. but that'll take just a little bit of time. We can ask Joel.

But even like hours spent on a particular lake or something, just so they have some idea.

Yeah, so I do believe, I'll have to double check, but I do believe with his reporting to the DNR, he indicates the location in which he patrolled as part of that reimbursement program. So I can double check that, but I believe.

Nice for them to know what's going on. Okay, thank you.

Do you feel you're getting stopped a little too often, Mr. Kobayashi? no i i get a heads up so i stay off the link no you don't get no free pass robert okay anybody have any questions for the sheriff or chief deputy on the report

I have just one. I'm curious if that farm in Ogima, is that the one that was blocking the public access road? He's kind of using it as his own driveway. Correct. And the people that have a cabin at the end can't get to it or whatever.

Yep. Mindy, even though she is a humane officer, she does address other issues besides, obviously, humane. She will respond to calls if they're emergency, like the UTV incident yesterday. She responded along with us, and then we had an alarm. She'll respond if there's a situation that's part of, obviously, the call with the nature of an animal call, whether it's like parking or things like that. She'll address those also. So...

We're getting all good for us, isn't it, having the humane officer on our staff?

I believe it does. It gives, I think, the public a sense they have someone to go to when we have the hoarding situations or there's a mistreatment of animal in that situation. And then I think the rec officer will develop similar with the humane officer because people will say, like the City of Park Falls will have an event and you know, the county as being part of the county, Joel will go up and take part and assist with that. And I think that'll start to develop more and more over time. It'll take a little while.

Something to think about too is inviting Katkins, maybe not to this meeting, but even to the board. We're partners with them at a pretty high level. If to get an update, we haven't heard from them in a long time. We all work with them quite a bit, but, and it's working out great, but it would be nice for the board to hear that. where they're at and what they're doing. Might we want to invite Tanya to this upcoming county board meeting? I don't know. I have a call with her this afternoon, so I'll see what kind of her schedule is. We could wait, too. It's not a hurry. It was just kind of like an annual report. Wouldn't be bad between her and Mindy to just kind of say, this has been working great, which it has been, and why they're numbers or what's going on and how often they see animals and how we're working together, whether it's a dog, cat, chicken, goat. I don't know what we've taken this year, but it's been a little bit of everything. Birds.

Anything else?

No.

All right. We thank you for your input.

Nick, did you want to talk about Title III?

Yeah, under equipment, just an update. So we did do the public notice for the Title III funding for projects that you guys had heard about. We heard a couple comments back, but Chief Deputy Hahn did talk to several of those commenters. They reached out, which is great. That's what it's for. And through that, it wasn't – We didn't hear any feedback that was concerning or there was more questions. Why do you need the live sonar radar, whatever it's called, for ice? Well, you want to talk about that?

Yeah. And I think where a lot of the questions came from is the title of the actual program. I believe it's called this Secure Rural Schools Program. Grant and so there's title one title two and title three We fall under title three for equipment for counties and things like that because of the national forest lands that that we have And so with that again We elected to purchase side scan for our patrol boat We also with that purchase the, or we're going to purchase the equipment that allows us to take that side scan and put it out on the ice. And again, the reason for this is, you know, yeah, search and rescue, but it's more that recovery, right? We have those drowning victims, which I believe we have, what, three or four already this year, where we utilize that equipment to find the individual, you know, We have the same issues in the wintertime when people fall through the ice. So that's why we bought the ice kit adapters. In addition to that, we did... We're looking at updating patrol rifles with... With that, you know, again, I contacted two individuals with the U.S. Forest Service to ensure that we're spending this money appropriately, right? And both individuals said, yes, you know, the side scan equipment and the patrol rifles do fall under the law enforcement category for patrol equipment and search and rescue equipment. So the Forest Service had no issues with that. We do have, there is additional money left over, and it's, I guess, mine and Nick's intention, probably here in the next week or two, I'll be reaching out to the fire chiefs that have national force within their jurisdictions, set up a meeting to talk with them. to find out what equipment of theirs that we can potentially update. I will say that in going through the requirements for that, it appears that fire has a lot more restrictions on what they can use the money for as far as equipment goes. So my intent is to sit down with those fire chiefs. I believe we have four jurisdictions that have national forest lands. And so my intent is to sit down with the for fire chiefs, talk about equipment needs and things like that and what we can purchase with this money. So again, this money, it's a use it or lose it. If we don't use it, we have to turn it back in. Is there any questions on that?

I'd just like to clarify. The firearms you're buying, you're buying them to replace existing ones that are end of life, so to speak? Correct. We're not building a battalion?

No, we're not building an armory or anything like that. We're looking at replacing our current rifles. We'll then take the current rifles and we'll sell them to FFL or whatever you call it. Okay. Yeah, so, but yeah, we'll turn around and sell the ones that we have. We don't intend on keeping a stockpile.

Well, my ears perked up when you said ice, but you mean frozen water. I said, oh boy, here we go. Okay.

When it gets below 32 degrees and we get a layer on top of the water. Explain it to him. It's that white stuff that you can walk on out in front of your house.

Yeah. Any questions on the Title III funding? Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, guys. We're down to committee vouchers. Have the vouchers all been around?

We're running a little bit in the red on health insurance.

Is that overall in the county or is it just in these departments?

It just depends on the department because we had some resignations or changes in health insurance in other areas. And then, you know, when you have an individual who goes on a family plan from a single last year. So we don't plan everybody family. We plan on what it is as of October. I think we always pick like October 3rd. Whatever we have in there, that's what we assume is the average for next year. So that would be where that is. Okay.

So it's not an overall thing. It's more particular.

Oh, we're actually, we're in the black for health insurance in general.

Okay. And then there was a item here. Hopefully I can find it. Explain the accounting here. You've got in the Sheriff's Department Corrections and Communications Department. There's a prior year grant not received, and it shows up as a debit and a credit account, a revenue account.

Isn't that that $100,000 from that PSAP grant?

$12,940.

I think that was part of that.

How do you... Carrie said she can answer that. That's all I got. Is she coming over? I'm assuming she'll come in.

It strikes me as being strange that you'd have that on... from an accounting standpoint, what you did.

Look at that, you like magically appear when you ask a question.

You're always listening.

I always listen for Bob.

You're always listening. That is quick response.

So yeah, so that is correct. It is the PSAP. So when I had gotten the numbers at the end of the year from Danny, there was a miscommunication on what the actual number was so it was a receivable that i had done so when the funds did come in this year it actually was lower than what i had anticipated that we were so it truly was more of an expense but because it happened in the new year and stuff like that i put it in the revenue so then it'll flag for the auditor so ask I know, that's why.

So really it should have been in a different place.

It's correct.

Or the receivable would have ended up being less than what we actually got.

Correct, the receivable should have been less. The revenue last year should have been less, so it's just showing that.

Make sense? Yeah, I understand.

Thanks, Carrie, for bailing Nick out again. That's it. No, and that's fine.

We can't control what the state does.

That's what I figured. It was some accounting thing, and it just didn't make sense to me to have that.

It was applied for granted. The money took, I forget how long the money took, and we were hoping for that period even last year, but we were hoping for even period 13, and it didn't happen. I was totally outside Danny, Nick's, or Kerry's control. So that hopefully answers it.

And then we had to update the PSAP. So that's dispatch stuff. So we got a good chunk of money from the state to do that while the project was other than what they quoted us on on some stuff. So it's just a lot of...

And they'll look at grants, Bob. I know that that's one of your things as far as the radio project. There is always going to be some idea of looking at whether it's WEM or maybe even talking with the fire departments. They got firefighter assistant grants. Those are things that need to be obviously looked into once they get some more numbers on this radio project and the ideas behind it.

And that's one thing we'll really hammer home with the stakeholders is if you're if once we start this project, you know, it's not get out and start looking for any grants that may assist you if you want to be part of the project. We're all are reaching out to the federal, our federal representatives to say, hey, can we get earmarked? We've seen it happen west of us. They got quite a bit of money for communications projects.

All set? You want a motion on the vouchers?

Yes.

I'll make the motion.

Motion by Kopisch. Second by Baratta. Any further questions? All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? Our next meeting date is October 1st. Are we going to do that?

Are you going to keep that date?

Well, two things to think about there. We want to do the week of the 28th. I would mark off your calendar for the 28th. We'll talk to TUSA to see when they would want to meet with you as a committee. The problem is I wouldn't do a regular committee meeting for that. But then we also have the public hearing for the ordinance. So we can either change the public hearing just to the board meeting, which doesn't hurt. And then you can skip your October 1st or it's up to you.

Okay. So you're talking of having the public hearing at our October County Board meeting? Instead of your October 1st meeting.

It doesn't, it's not a, we have to get this done yesterday kind of ordinance. It's the big part of camping season's over.

Does it make any difference to Sheriff and the Chief Deputy?

Put it on your calendar as October 1st. We'll let you know if it gets canceled, just like we normally do. Okay. Okay. But also put on that October 28th date to reserve, block it out for now. Okay.

Okay. Yep. We've exhausted our agenda. I'll adjourn the meeting. We thank you for your support.