02/04/2008 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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• • • WORK SESSION STAFF REPORT Work Session Item #4 Date: Council Work Session, February 4, 2008 To: City Council From: Dave Pecchia Re: Police Department Administrative Staffing INTRODUCTION: We have an opportunity in the police department to make what we feel are some very positive changes utilizing the office manager vacancy. It gives us the opportunity to be creative with how we deliver our services and more specifically, how we utilize volunteers from the community to enhance our service delivery. HISTORY: Our history of enhancing our use of volunteers began in 2004 when we received a grant from the state to hire a three- quarter time Volunteer Coordinator. In 2005, we logged approximately 2,678 volunteer hours. These volunteers include many individuals from the community. Some are younger community members that are involved in the Explorer Program. They are youth from 14 to 20 years old. The Reserve Program includes uniformed positions for adults in the community that would like to volunteer their time to their community in the field of Public Safety. We also have our Public Safety Citizens Commission that we utilize as an advisory board for our new ideas. These are ideas that we want to explore involving our service delivery to the community so we can keep a pulse on the community and what the business owners and residents actually want us to do. In 2006, our volunteer hours increased to approximately 4,631. In 2007, we continued to enhance and expand our volunteer programs, specifically utilizing college internships and more office help. We do not have final numbers but we estimate that over 5,500 hours were donated to the city by volunteers in the police department. This all translates into dollars and if we were to use the state's system of placing a dollar value on a volunteer's time the services the volunteers provided to the city in 2007 have a value in excess of $103,000. (Attachment 1)