City council members in Moose Lake, Minnesota face a tough decision when it comes to that city's police force.
On Wednesday night, they'll consider whether or not to dissolve the police department that right now includes the interim police chief, an administrative assistant and a roster of part-time officers from neighboring cities to cover shifts.
Moose Lake city administrator Ellissa Owens says the preliminary budget last fall showed a 28 percent increase year over year to the police budget. The Star Tribune is reporting that two officers resigned last year and two more last month.
"What occurred at that time was just an assessment of, essentially all options and council due diligence on how to provide law enforcement services to the community, in the most fiscally responsible and efficient way possible," explained Owens.
Currently, the interim chief in Moose Lake is the only officer on the force which is budgeted to have five officers. Owens says Moose Lake faces a unique property tax challenges with only 30 percent of the city's land taxable.
"We do house two state facilities that are non-taxable, so, in addition to the traditional non-taxable entities like churches and schools, we do have the two state facilities," Owens tells WCCO. "Which means that we do have a smaller checkbook to operate out of than a lot of communities this size. And, or, the taxing proportion is very off-center for this community."
The two major state facilities in Moose Lake are the state's correctional facility and Moose Lake State Park.
The city's considering contracting with Carlton County to provide four deputies to oversee the city of 2,600 people. The five person force would take up about 900,000 of the city's $2.8 million 2024 budget.
It's another in a troubling trend of smaller towns struggling to pay for police departments, and a shortage of officers. Moose Lake, 40 miles south of Duluth, Minnesota, is far from the first town to deal with a similar situation.
Last August, another small Minnesota town found itself without a police department, an exodus spurred by low pay for the chief and his officers in Goodhue. Their council said they will seek extra enforcement from the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Office while town officials work to rebuild the department.
In 2022, the police department in Morris, Minnesota was disbanded after a turbulent few months during which the department eroded to just the chief and one other officer. The town now contracts with the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office.
At least 521 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 2017, but in the past two years, at least 12 small towns have dissolved their departments.