Future of resource officer position to be decided by Baileyville voters

BAILEYVILLE – The superintendent has outlined the advantages of having a police resource officer in Woodland High School, but officials Monday wanted to know who would pick up the tab once the grant money runs out.

Officer Shawn Newell was hired for the job after Police Chief Philip Harriman learned in April 1999 about a three-year, $125,000 grant to fund the position.

The grant funds the position until January, then the job will be placed on next year’s town warrant. It will be up to the voters to decide if they want to pay for the job beyond the three-year period of the grant.

A warrant article was included in last year’s town meeting to cover the cost from January to June 2004.

“We have it built into the budget through the end of the school year, and then we have to seek funds for one more budget cycle,” Town Manager Jack Clukey said.

At a meeting of the Town Council and Baileyville school committee Monday afternoon, Councilor John Morrison questioned the costs beyond the grant.

“It wasn’t supposed to cost us anything, that’s what we were told,” Morrison said.

“You’re very, very wrong,” Harriman said. “The grant was for $125,000 for three years. If our cost in that three years was under $125,000, it would be 100 percent, fully funded. If our costs go over that $125,000 in that three-year [period], then, no, it wouldn’t be fully funded, and I made that very clear when I made that proposal back three or four years ago.”

Chairman Doug Jones said he knew immediately that the officer would cost the town money “because $125,000 was based on the wages at that particular time and [as] each year goes by, the wages go up – and it never could have sustained itself at $125,000.”

Another concern raised by the Town Council was whether the town would be liable to repay the funds if the voters turned down funding the program next year.

“If we seek the funding for that position for the one year, we are not liable if voters don’t go through with that,” Clukey said.

Morrison said that next time someone mentioned a grant to him, he would “duck under the table.”

Councilor Derek Howard said he was concerned because the cost of the job was included in the council budget.

“The easiest thing for you to do is to have somebody working for you that you are not paying for,” he told the officials. “And the toughest for us is having somebody that we are paying for and isn’t working for us.”

He asked the school committee if it would be willing to pick up the tab.

“They are all our students,” Superintendent Barry McLaughlin said. “These students don’t belong to the Town Council or to the school board.”

McLaughlin said he believes the school committee would be willing to pick up some of the costs.

Howard said he also was interested in what the resource officer does during the course of his day.

“All we get is hearsay,” he said.

McLaughlin said he would provide the council with a summary report of the officer’s activities, “as long as the information is in a manner and format that we are not getting into confidentiality issues,” he said. “But in the aggregate, I think you would be surprised to know the number and variety of issues.”

The superintendent said he also believed the resource officer’s presence in the school helped prevent problems.

“What I can only speculate are the numbers of things we don’t deal with because of [the officer’s] presence there,” he said. “I am not trying to get dramatic, but the issues in schools across the country are not getting any better.”