Booan Opens Conversation With Devlin

By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

If the Otsego County Sheriff’s Department assumed 27/4 patrols of Cooperstown, the village could save $250,000 a year, Mayor Joe Booan has concluded.
That caused him to open “informal” conversations about such a plan’s feasibility with County Sheriff Richard J. Devlin, and the two were scheduled to meet Wednesday, Jan. 19, with the Public Safety Committee of the county Board of Representatives to take the conversation to the next level.
“Preliminary work seems to indicate that Otsego County can provide this service, at the level we expect, and save significant cost to the village residents,” Booan said, adding at another point, “Compromising public safety at any cost will not be acceptable.”
Discussions will be part of this year’s budget process, which will begin shortly with the submission of department heads’ proposals. the mayor said.  If the idea receives a positive reception, the change could be included in the 2011-12 village budget due for approval by the end of May, he said.
For his part, Sheriff Devlin, who is active in the New York State Sheriffs Association, said several such consolidations have happened around the state.
“I certainly understand why the mayor’s looking at it: The economy’s not that great,” said Devlin, adding his conversations with Booan have suggested there may be benefits for both village and county.
County Rep. Greg Relic, R-Unadilla, who chairs the county’s Public Safety Committee, said that, in advance of meeting with Booan and Devlin, he was short on particulars and had not reached any opinion on the idea’s merit.
Booan said he began thinking about the shared-service possibility after the Good Friday shooting in Cooper Park, when village, county sheriff’s and state police cruisers lined Main and Fair streets around the scene.
A similar incident that dramatized overlapping coverage in the Town of Clay led to that community getting police coverage from the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department, he said.  The Village of Whitesboro, outside Utica, worked out an arrangement with Oneida County.
Discussion and public input might cause the trustees to maintain the status quo, or to contract with the sheriff’s department, or to do something in between, Booan said.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to ask these questions,” the mayor said.  “We shouldn’t be afraid to explore the options.”
Now, he said, the police department costs taxpayers $500,000 a year, about half the local tax levy and “one of the largest expenses in the general fund budget.”
“We must face the reality that government spending needs to be responsibly evaluated and planned for the future of this community.  We have to determine how to deliver services at the most cost effective options for our residents,” Booan said.