Four Ashwaubenon public safety lieutenants to become captains

By Kevin Boneske

Staff Writer

ASHWAUBENON – It took three motions Tuesday, June 23, before the village board voted 5-2 in favor of eliminating four lieutenants in the public safety department to convert those positions to captains, effective this year.

After a motion to table failed on a 5-2 vote, the board defeated a motion 4-3 that sought to wait until the 2021 budget process to make the change and then agreed to go ahead this year with the supervisory restructuring.

The change was requested by Director of Public Safety Brian Uhl to provide for a clearer chain of command from having three lieutenants per shift to one person in charge.

Uhl said a study of the village’s public safety department found “operational deficiencies” with the current command structure.

“One of the challenges, obviously, is the chain of command,” he said. “There’s no mentoring or development opportunities. There’s no clear or consistent operations on shift.”

Uhl said the change will result in three lieutenants on shifts being made captains.

“This will allow our shifts to run more functionally and more efficiently,” he said. “It provides that clear chain of command. It adds leadership opportunities for our staff.”

In addition, Uhl said an investigator would become a captain.

“It would help eliminate chain-of-command issues within the investigative bureau,” he said.

Uhl said currently having a lieutenant investigator taking over a scene while telling a captain what do to and how to do it “doesn’t necessarily always go over well.”

“I want to make sure that the operations are clear, we have a clear chain of command (and) we don’t have any operational issues, which we currently do with the functionality of it,” he said. “I can tell you in my one-on-one meetings with the folks at the department, this was one of the most raised subjects that was talked about in my meetings. They do not like the current system. They had challenges with the chain of command and how we operated.”

Uhl said the switch to captains will allow them to run their shifts and allow him to help them run their shifts in a clear, concise way.

“It also allows me to attract and retain good people, because there are promotional opportunities,” he said.

Uhl, who began in February as Ashwaubenon’s public safety chief, said money is available to pay for changing the four lieutenant positions to captains because the department is currently about $173,000 under budget in its overtime costs.

Uhl said he is making the department aware of how it spends overtime.

“Are there opportunities for us to save money in overtime in the future? Absolutely,” he said. “We can do that in a number of ways. We can work on training on our shift, how that works, how we can incorporate that to save money in overtime costs. We can look for ways to recoup money on special events for organizations that don’t necessarily fund us completely as they should right now.”

Uhl said the study, conducted by Fitch, recommended what he proposed for the chain of command.

“We spent somewhere upwards of $90,000 on that study,” he said.

The village’s Finance and Personnel Committee originally recommended the change be considered as part of the 2021 budget process.

“Our recommendation was to consider this at budget time, because additional staff or changing a staff is usually handled at that time,” said Trustee Mark Williams. “That was the only issue that we really had with it.”

Uhl said money is now available to switch four lieutenant positions to captains with the cost savings from overtime.

“If we want to look at future years, and how we’re going to fund that and budget overtime, we can certainly do that,” he said. “But that shouldn’t, in my opinion, prohibit us from doing it from now, because we have the funds now.”

According to figures Uhl provided the board, the additional annual cost to switch four lieutenants to captains will include $5,000 in salary per position, plus nearly another $1,000 each for Social Security and retirement.

When factoring in possible overtime expenses, he said the change will have an annual estimated additional cost of $29,828 for the four positions.

However, because 2020 is about halfway over, Uhl said he estimates the extra cost this year will be just under $15,000.

Because of the current uncertainty of what the 2021 village budget will look like, Village Manager Allison Swanson suggested waiting until September when next year’s budget is submitted to the board before deciding on whether to make a change with the four positions.

“Once we get through that and if we can see those other changes, (Uhl) could still implement it at some point… in the year, but at least be able to see what (2021) looks like when he has an opportunity to put the full budget together,” she said.

Swanson said she and Finance Director Greg Wenholz are concerned the village could receive less annual revenue, such as from room tax, because of the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re concerned that hotel room tax revenue – our portion is $400,000 – that number could be half of what it is, depends on what happens with football season,” she said. “That’s a significant decrease in revenue.”

Given the overall bleak financial outlook, Swanson said the village needs to be able to pay for a change to the public safety department’s command structure for the long term without additional cuts in the budget.

Village President Mary Kardoskee said there wouldn’t be a problem funding the captain positions this year, but that may not be the case in 2021.

Trustee Ken Bukowski said he favored waiting until the board receives the 2021 proposed budget and possibly consider implementing the change later this year.

“If as a board we decide we can fund it, great,” he said. “If we decide we can’t, so be it.”

However, Bukowski and Williams were on the losing end of both a motion to table and the final vote to implement the change this year, while Trustee Michael Malcheski joined them on the motion defeated to consider the switch as part of the 2021 budget process.

Trustee Chris Zirbel said he favored making the change now, because it is needed.

“I don’t think there’s any reason that we need to wait four, five, six months to put this into action, because I think at that point it’s going to go into action anyway,” he said.