Lean by design: Prior Lake City Council juggles police needs with rest of city

Prior Lake American

While the Prior Lake Police Department has said it could use more cops to address a growing community and rising crime rate, city leaders say they’ve made strides within the last few months to address the need with the resources available.

Public safety is important, but the city has to juggle requests across the board — beyond just the police department, said City Manager Frank Boyles.

“We all know we’re working with limited resources to try and fulfill the work we have to do,” he said.

For the first time in recent years, Prior Lake reported the highest crime rate in Scott County in 2016, topping nearby cities like Savage and Shakopee. In September 2017, the department said it needed eight more officers to reach the average rate of police officers per thousand residents of similarly-sized cities, which is 2.4 officers per 1,000 people according to the FBI. The department currently has 26 officers and five support staff.

It’s not just the police department that runs on a low average rate of employees, it’s a trend across all departments in Prior Lake, City Councilmember Mike McGuire said.

“Across the city, if you look at number of employees per capita, we’re pretty lean and that’s been by design for the last few years,” McGuire said. “We’re pretty much where we should be.”

Community partnerships

The Prior Lake City Council and city staff say they’ve worked to increase the number of police officers with the resources available — a drug task force officer was added to the department beginning in October 2017, with half of the position’s funding, about $70,000, coming from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community each year of the agreement.

Positions for a full-time police officer and a part-time community service officer were approved by the council as part of the 2018 budget. The police department is working to fill those positions.

“That’s three officers added in the last year,” Prior Lake City Councilmember Kevin Burkart said. “I think that’s good as our community increases in size and as we have more activity, you would expect more calls. I’m comfortable with the additions that we’ve made.”

In 2017, an estimated 16 percent of the Prior Lake Police Department’s calls were to the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and to Mystic Lake Casino Hotel, which is owned by the tribe. However, that percentage doesn’t include calls Prior Lake cops respond to regarding people who come to the city for the casino, but interact with people off tribal land, Sgt. Brad Cragoe said.

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community will provide $500,000 to Prior Lake in 2018 and $530,000 in 2019, primarily for police services, under a new agreement approved by the city council in December — about $100,000 more than previous agreements.

“The council is very attentive to the needs of our police department and feel we, in 2017, demonstrated that,” Prior Lake Mayor Kirt Briggs said. “We work very, very closely with the (Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community) and Mystic Lake. They have been a phenomenal partner and when crimes do take place, the collaboration between the Prior Lake Police Department and other municipalities ... is essential in addressing crimes and calls more broadly in Scott County.”

More to the job

Cragoe said the issue is more complicated than one police officer for one call. Sometimes, a call requires two patrol officers to effectively deal with the situation, but occasionally there are only two patrol officers on duty — meaning some calls have to wait. And necessary police work such as taking people to jail and filling out reports takes up valuable time.

“There’s quite a list of things we have to do in addition to being on the road,” Cragoe said.

With each new police officer comes a number of other expenses — each officer needs a patrol car and body camera. The department recently received voice-to-type software to make filing reports easier and quicker, which is another expense.

“Each officer is essentially about a one percent increase in property taxes,” Burkart said of all the associated expenses of adding a new cop position. “So, we need to be diligent or prudent about how many we add. I think the council that we have now is highly functional. We had a very good discussion about it and I think that the amounts that we’ve reached for property taxes and number of police officers is fair.”

The city plans to equip the department with more technology in the future, like encrypted radios, which also takes money from an already tight budget, Boyles said.

“There’s an awful lot of things we are doing and it’s a continuing effort,” Boyles said. “We’re trying to become more efficient. Is it enough? I think the bottom line is, this is an ongoing effort. Sometimes you can do more and sometimes you do less because various things are in competition with each other.”

Balancing act

McGuire, who was previously a city manager in Prior Lake for 30 years, said balancing between departments is and has always been a struggle.

“It’s always challenging — what’s the proper number for all departments, including police?” McGuire said. “The council the last few years has actually been generous to the police department.”

The city is also working to keep pay equitable among departments, which often means raising income and benefits, taking yet another chunk out of the money pile, Boyles said.

“In 2018 and 2019 we also established increases in our health insurance contributions,” Boyles said. “That shows we are trying to keep our rates and pay and benefits comparable to other, like communities. In fact, we’ve gone so far to do a compensation study ... for all of our people because we’re concerned about being able to get the best people out there and retain them.”

With population growth, other departments are affected as much as police, McGuire said. As the city grows and more tax base moves in, the needs of each department can be evaluated periodically, he said.

“Public works is affected just as much by growth as police,” McGuire said. “I think we need to look at some of the other needs within the city, and not so much the police. I’m comfortable with where we’re at.”

Even within public safety, the Prior Lake Fire Department needs to be outfitted and maintained as well. The city is working to hire five additional paid on-call firefighters as well as replacing a fire engine, which is around $640,000.

“As managers — every darn one of us, I don’t care what department you’re talking about — (we’re) trying to address what can be growing issues, and it’s growing across all departments with limited resources,” Boyles said.

It all comes down to the budget.

“We wish we had unlimited resources but that, of course, is not reality,” Burkart said. “I think we’ve reached a healthy balance with where we’re at right now for our force.”