Safety commission discusses growing demands

Roundtable held to go over mental health services, officer retention

Fourteen public safety administrators and government officials, and one private citizen, gathered in a roundtable Thursday afternoon to discuss what they hope to get out of Porter County’s brand-new Public Safety Commission.

The tone was collaborative as they spoke of the interconnectedness of their challenges. Retention of staff was the first commonality to come up.

“We’re paying out $532,000 every year to rehire these same positions,” Porter County E-911 director Debby Gunn told the group.

She said the E-911 industry has a 19% turnover rate nationwide and it’s difficult to keep the county’s 28 dispatcher positions, not including supervisors, staffed.

Sitting next to her was Portage Fire Department Battalion Chief Chirs Crail, who is also academy commander at the Indiana District 1 Firefighter Training Academy,

located at The Multi Agency Academic Cooperative (MAAC) Foundation, which is also hosting the safety commission meetings.

He said both the county and city of Portage are short-staffed in emergency medical services (EMS).

“At the end of the day, people don’t want to go into public service anymore,” Crail said. “I don’t know if they decide public service is not for them or other departments are paying more.

“The new generation doesn’t care about a 1977 pension. It doesn’t matter to them. What they care about is quality of life.”

Crail’s colleague, Portage Fire

Chief Randy Wilkening, said with the cost of living being what it is, it’s understandable that the pay offered in public service gives people pause.

He also touched on another key theme of the meeting: mental health, both of the general public and of overwhelmed public servants, who often can’t get the time off they deserve due to the staffing shortages.

“The outside world doesn’t totally understand the things that we’ve gone through and the things that we’ve seen,” Wilkening said.

Porter County Sheriff Jeff Balon said it takes eight months to train a new officer, four months at the

Police Academy and four months of on-the-job training.

“I’ve never seen police officers jump from one department to another within the county that I do now,” he said.

Recent increases in police wages areawide have helped, but it doesn’t help that officers can cross the county line to make $10,000 more.

Portage Police Chief Mike Candiano said two officers retired from his department last year, five are retiring this year and six are retiring next year. He’s concerned there may not even be space for new hires at the

Police Academy.

He said the starting salary for a police officer was $38,000 when he became chief three years ago. It’s improved to $55,600 currently, but he said there’s no way his department can pay its senior officers the $115,000 soon to be paid to Master Policemen with the Indiana State Troopers.

Addressing the public mental health crisis is also on the top of Candiano’s and his peers’ minds. He said the Portage Police alone committed 462 people over the last three years.

“I can’t tell you how many times we drop them off at the hospital and two hours later we’re back at their house,” Candiano said.

Porter Township Trustee Ed Morales said while he has been part of similar groups focused on just one aspect of public safety, this is the first time he’s been part of a group bringing all the factions together.

“Between the police and the fire and the volunteers, you guys have done an outstanding job the last few years,” Morales said to the professionals gathered. “It has been a nightmare.”

Morales feels Porter County has always been a little behind in public safety because it grew so quickly.

“We grew overnight,” he said. “It happened in the blink of an eye, and why not? It’s a great place to live.”

Valparaiso Fire Department Chief Chad Dutz spoke at length about how Porter

County is the only county left of the state’s 92 that doesn’t have a public safety local income tax. He also pointed out that Indiana State Senator Ed Charbonneau, R-5, is working to pass ambulance funding with Senate Bill #4.

Center Township resident Ruth Vance, invited by county commissioners Jim Biggs, R-North, and Barb Regnitz, R-Center, after her involvement in one of the American Rescue Plan Act subcommittees, said higher taxes are a nonstarter for her and many others and she’d like to see an end to the explosive growth.

“So maybe my opinion’s not popular because everybody says, ‘You grow or you die,’ but I kind of think we need to put a lid on it,” Vance said.

The group intends to break into subgroups at its next meeting and begin getting into the details of what’s needed, and what it would cost. A comprehensive report to the public is eventually planned.

While it is early days and he’s very sensitive to astronomical car payments, rising NIPSCO rates and other ways residents are hurting financially, county Councilman Red Stone, R-1, says his 16 years conducting referendums as a Duneland School Corporation School Board member have taught him that “if you explain to people in a transparent way [what is needed], people will get behind it.”

The group’s next meeting is March 2 at 2:30 p.m. at The MAAC, 4203 Montdale Park Dr., Valparaiso 46383.