Understaffed, Underpaid, Sheriff's Department Examines How to Attract
Officers
by Ben Hogwood

HYDE PARK - "You need to pay competitive wages to keep people," said
Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux, Jr. But with Morrisville and
Stowe police departments, as well as the Vermont State police, offering
a better starting wage and a better retirement plan, the Lamoille County
Sheriff's Department is having trouble not only holding on to their
employees, but also filling the spaces when they leave. "We're pretty
much at the bottom of the ladder," Marcoux said of the pay scale.
It's a problem that will likely be solved only by raising costs to the
three towns of Johnson, Hyde Park and Wolcott, who are covered by the LCSD.
The department has lost four dispatchers over the last two months and
has lost several parttime patrolmen recently. The main problems, the
employees told Sheriff Marcoux during exit interviews, is the low wages,
lack of a retirement plan and difficulty adjusting to overnight shifts.
Losing a dispatcher is a particularly difficult ordeal, as it takes a
year of training for the individual to work alone. Then, once training
is complete, the sheriff has to worry not only if they will stay, but
also whether they are capable of doing the job.
The effects of the retention problem are showing both within the
department, as employees at LCSD are getting burned out by making up the
extra work, and also around the county, as the Sheriff's Department used
to do all prisoner transports for Morristown, Stowe and the VSP. Now,
the $11 an hour which the state reimburses the officer doing the
transfer is no longer attractive. "I have been forced to ask Stowe, the
state and Morrisville to transport their own prisoners," said Marcoux.
There is a clear gap between the salary and benefits package LCSD offers
and what other police departments in the county offer. Right now, the
wage for someone with one year's experience at Morristown is
approximately $15.75 an hour. "We're under $12," said Marcoux. Four
years ago, the state was offering a starting pay of over $14 an hour.
"Those are just salaries," said Marcoux. "We're not even talking about
retirement."
"Any one of my people could go to the state right now and get more," he
added.
Marcoux has spoken with representatives from the three towns in LCSD's
coverage area about the situation. "With the current payroll, we can put
them (employees) through the police academy but we can't keep them for
the long term," said Scott Griswold, of the Hyde Park selectboard.
Eric Osgood, chair of the Johnson Selectboard, said they want to keep
the department from where it was four years ago, when it was basically a
training ground for other departments. The towns fixed this in 2000 by
bringing up wages to compete with those of the surrounding agencies, but
Lamoille has again fallen behind.
The towns and the sheriff are looking at options to fix the problem, but
the only feasible possibility would be to increase pay and benefits by
raising cost to taxpayers. The towns could start their own individual
police departments, but that would only cost more, said Griswold, as
they would have to pay for a building and a police chief. With the
Sheriff's Department, the sheriff's salary and the office is paid for by
the state, not the three towns, with the towns paying for the patrol
cars and the patrolmen.
Opting to get coverage from the state also seems an impossibility at
this time. "The state can't even support what they already have," said
Osgood, as they are also seriously understaffed. Griswold agreed,
recounting an incident where a cousin, who lived in the state police's
coverage area, had his house broken into with several guns being stolen.
The state police told him and his family to wait outside the house until
they arrived. It took the police six hours to get there, he said.
The three towns paid approximately $474,691 last year for LCSD coverage,
an increase of roughly 10 percent on the previous year. While the
percentage increase is expected to hike for the next fiscal year budget,
the sheriff, and the town officials, do not yet know the amount. "It's
way too early right now to say how much," said Griswold. Marcoux said he
is currently putting together a pay schedule and will see how much it
will affect the budget. There will be more meetings with the
selectboards and the public as he learns more, promised Marcoux.
While the sheriff's budget has passed on Town Meeting Day relatively
smoothly for the past two years, there has been difficulty in the past,
especially in Wolcott. However, Osgood is confident that if the town
officials explain the need to retain experienced officers at the
department, people will appreciate the problem.
"I think they'll understand," said Osgood.