District, facing budget

cuts, puts cap on

contributions for

liaison officers

By Lori Carlson

Editor

To keep a police officer in Prior Lake’s middle and high schools, someone will need to pony up.

The Prior Lake-Savage Area School District’s finance director sent a letter to City Manager Frank Boyles Jan. 17 stating the district could only afford to contribute up to $25,000 toward a liaison officer position at Twin Oaks and Hidden Oaks middle schools for the 2007-08 school year.

The district plans to cut $1.5 million from its budget next year to contain future costs.

Boyles estimates funding the middle-school position will cost $103,000 next year, assuming a 3-percent increase over the previous year. The estimate includes salary, benefits and vehicles. The city and school district typically split the cost of the position, he said, so next year, the district’s share would be about $51,000.

Margo Nash, the district’s director of business affairs, said the district receives some state crime-levy money to fund the liaison positions, but that money also has to go toward campus supervisors and the district’s emergency-response program.

When the district faced the same problem last year, the Prior Lake Rotary and Optimist clubs donated money to keep a liaison officer at the middle schools. Nash and Boyles said those groups likely will be tapped again.

“We’re still meeting on the whole crime-levy budget,” Nash said. “But there probably will be a need to do some fund-raising in that department.”

The district’s crime levy budget for 2007-08 is $213,000 – about $3,000 more than the amount for the current school year.

The district also has said it can’t pay as much for an officer at Prior Lake High School, located in Savage. The city of Savage used a grant to pay for salaries of officers assigned to the high school and Eagle Ridge Junior High. But the grant ran out last year, and the city’s required financial commitment will conclude at the end of this school year. The Savage City Council will ask the school district to pay $29,000, with the city paying $58,000. The council also will seek a five-year agreement so each governing agency can budget for the position in future years.

Boyles and Nash said they likely will tap the Rotary and Optimist clubs again for assistance next year.

 Lori Carlson can be reached at (952) 345-6378 or editor@plamerican.com.

Nancy Huddleston of the Savage Pacer contributed to this report.

Do you think having a school resource officer in the high school and middle schools is a good idea? Visit www.plamerican.com/node/1107.