The Forest Lake City Council voted June 27 to continue an agreement that puts police officers in some Forest Lake Area Schools, but remarks from some council members indicated that renegotiations may be on the horizon.
The renewal of the city’s annual school resource officer agreement with the school district originally came up on the council’s June 13 agenda, but council members tabled it to their June 20 work session for more discussion (the School Board approved the same agreement at their June 23 meeting).
Councilman Michael Freer was dissatisfied with the lack of administrative cost contributions in the contract, in which the district pays the city $285,480 in the coming school year and $292,126 the following year for the placement of one police officer each in Forest Lake Area High School, Century Junior High School and Southwest Junior High School – the officers also respond to Forest Lake elementary schools if incidents arise and the school where they are regularly posted is uneventful. The high school officer is posted to the school year-round, while the other officers are posted during the nine-month school year.
On June 20, Freer expounded on his comments, stating that his concerns about the cost structure are not a commentary on the quality or usefulness of the SRO program.
“This has nothing to do with the officers – literally zero – and getting rid of the SRO program is not even on my radar,” he said. “It has everything to do with the city of Forest Lake constantly being asked to fund extra costs that other communities around here that are part of the Forest Lake School District do not have to fund.”
Since the school district pays for the SRO program, taxpayers from all around the district – including residents from Forest Lake, Columbus, Lino Lakes, Linwood, Scandia and Wyoming – shoulder some of the costs for the services included in the contract costs. However, Freer’s point was that the costs for administering the program – time spent by city staff like SRO supervising Sgt. Mark Richert, Chief of Public Safety Rick Peterson and City Administrator Aaron Parrish – are paid for by the city alone. When cases that are handled by a resource officer are prosecuted, Forest Lake bears those costs as well, because the crimes occurred within the city.
Richert, Peterson and Capt. Greg Weiss all spoke about the benefits of the program, including building trust between police and students, preventing crime and disruptions before they can happen and training for potentially dangerous scenarios that could occur on school property. Richert said the element of trust between FLAS kids and the officers is phenomenal and has led to students letting police know about potentially violent or illegal actions that another student may take, allowing police to diffuse the situation before it escalates. Richert said that when comparing other police departments’ relationship to their local schools with Forest Lakes, many other departments simply can’t reach the same level of student-officer rapport.
“Our officers are really used as that gold standard,” he said.
Peterson researched comparisons between Forest Lake’s SRO contract and those of other Minnesota cities with similar agreements. For the time officers spend at the Forest Lake Area Schools, the district reimburses their wages 100 percent. The district also pays $9,000 in reimbursements for three police vehicles for the officers. In comparing Forest Lake against 15 other districts with similar agreements, Peterson found only two (Rochester and St. Cloud) that contributed to administration costs and none that contributed to vehicle reimbursement. When it came to breaking down how much the districts were reimbursing for officer wages and benefits, it became a little less clear, as some districts provided a monetary value while others provided a percentage of wages and benefits. Further complicating matters was the fact that some of the districts’ school resource officers only spend part of their time at the schools, along with the consideration that Forest Lake is the only district of those compared that keeps at least one officer in the SRO program year-round.
For example, the Rochester School District has four officers in its SRO program and also reimburses its local police department for some administrative costs. However, the program is only active during the school year, and despite the program’s higher number of officers, the district only reimburses the department $260,000 – less than FLAS reimburses Forest Lake for fewer officers and no administrative costs. Despite the difficulties in direct comparison, Peterson and the other officers said the local contract with FLAS is a favorable one when stacked against other communities.
“We are by far really more funded than our comparables,” Richert said. He added that addressing issues at the schools would fall under his regular duties as a patrol sergeant with or without the SRO program.
Freer acknowledged the program’s effectiveness but said that because residents of other communities, as well as the district itself, benefit from the program and the time spent on it, Forest Lake shouldn’t be the only entity paying for the time spent managing it.
On June 27, the council approved the contract on a 4-1 vote, with Freer casting the vote against. He reiterated that he was in favor of the program, but not the current terms of the contract.
Councilman Ben Winnick said that Freer raised some good points that would be worth considering in future contracts, and he asked city staff to give the council more lead time on similar contracts so members could review the terms (to continue the program uninterrupted, the council needed to approve the contract in June). However, Winnick said it wouldn’t be right to stop the program so late in the approval process.
“I really don’t think we should penalize the school,” he said. “I don’t think we should stop something right now. It’s too far down the road in negotiations.”
When the Forest Lake Area School Board approved the contract on June 23, members did not discuss the administrative costs. Instead, they and Superintendent Linda Madsen praised the effectiveness of the program, which has been in place at the district for 22 years. Madsen said the relationship between the district and the department was on display May 23 when the two entities cooperated quickly and easily when Forest Lake Elementary School received a bomb threat.
“We appreciate the partnership we have with the Police Department and those resource officers,” she said.
Board Member Karen Morehead attended the City Council’s meeting on June 13. She said she believed the contract is fine the way it is because both the city and the district are receiving a benefit, though she added that re-examining the agreement in the future isn’t unreasonable.
“I think (the current agreement) is fine, but I think every time a contract comes up, you want to make sure that it’s benefiting all parties,” she said.
Though the council and board have had some disagreements over the last couple of years, Morehead said she was pleased that the two entities have continued to work together on the SRO program, adding that she was “very, very happy” that the agreement passed.