By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
Okarche’s town board moved forward with a full agenda Monday night, including pay scale raises for officers, siren repairs, and a presentation on the nitrate removal system by Garver Engineering LLC.
The board voted to approve the pay scale raises for the police department which had not been updated since May 2013.
Uncertified officers who have not completed their training were paid $1,600 a month. Under the new plan these officers will be paid $2,560.
An officer who is on the one-year probationary period would receive $1 more an hour than an uncertified officer for $2,720 a month.
Officers after one year were paid $2,500 a month but under the new plan will receive $2,801.60.
The pay rate for a lieutenant is now $23 an hour for a probationary term and $23.69 after one year, topping out at $26.65 an hour for year five in the department. Likewise, sergeants are paid $19.71, after one year $20.30 and five years $22.86. Pay scales for upper ranking law enforcement had been previously set by the town board.
Additional incentives include payment for Council on Law Enforcement Education Training between $25 a month to $100 for course work in various disciplines of law enforcement training. Officers who have completed degree work will receive a monthly stipend of $25 for an associates’ degree to $100 a month for doctorate degree.
Matt Blackwood told the Okarche Warrior Wednesday that as a former officer he could see that the town was not paying a competitive wage.
“When you find out that we had cops full time, certified and they were making less than dispatchers,” Blackwood said, “it needed to be looked at.”
Police Chief Forrest Smith earns $55,000 a year and was not given a pay raise. He will receive a part time assistant for data entry.
“From my perspective, having been in law enforcement, you can spend half your shift doing paperwork,” Blackwood said. “There are certain parameters that you have to meet for police departments to qualify for grants and it looks like Chief Smith is going to go after those hard and heavy. He wants someone to come in and it might be only for two hours a day, four at the most. Someone to enter in tickets, warnings and interviews to be entered into the system.”
Grants for projects could include data base systems to communicate with state and federal agencies which could qualify the department for more grants.
Police officers were not the only ones to receive a little cushion from the town for their work. Firefighters will receive a $100 to $150 clothing allowance per quarter not to exceed $600 a year.
The town board also voted to approve a part time code inspection officer who has worked for Okarche in the past.
OKARCHE WATER, GRANTS, SIRENS
The town board turned its attention to police and fire radio communication systems and emergency sirens. The board voted to approve an annual contract maintenance contract with American Signal Company to test and repair the town’s sirens.
Both the police and fire radio tower and the sirens have put the public safety at risk.
“If you’ve got an officer hollering for help on one side of the town and the officer on the other side of town wouldn’t be able to hear it,” Blackwood said. “We’re going to have some people whose expertise is these kinds of communications and more up to date on the types of radios when it comes analogue versus digital, bridging the two because not everyone has switched to digital.”
All sirens will be repaired and tested for functionality.
Garver Engineering provided a presentation on the functionality of its nitrate removal systems which was touted as a success. The town is waiting for approval from the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.
The police department will not be the only section of town government to apply for grants. The board voted to approve an income study to be completed ahead of qualifying for various grants for the town.
“To qualify for a lot of grants you have to have a survey that is done every four or five years,” Blackwood said. “Ours had been expired so we weren’t qualified for these so this will get us qualified. It’s for grants we utilized before in the past. It will just be less roadblocks to get grants in the future. We have people that come to town hall to offer us grants. There’s no need for someone to search for all these grants because they come to us. It’s just a matter of us deciding and as simple as applying.”
