The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee met 10/23/2024. One of the items they took up was a request to approve the hiring of the Matrix Consulting Group to complete an organizational and workload study for the Appleton Police Department. The cost of the contract was $69,000 which would be paid with American Recovery Plan Act funds. The project was expected to take between three to five months.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend the item for approval.
This item was also discussed as an information item at the Safety and Licensing Committee meeting.
I’ve prepared transcripts of both the Safety and Licensing Committee discussion and the Human Resources and Information Technology Committee discussion for download:
The purpose of the consultant’s work would be to look at the Appleton Police Department and, per Police Chief Polly Olson, “address the question objectively as to whether or not our staffing is adequate and how we’re using our resources.”
This type of study had not been conducted in the last 20-25 years, and Chief Olson said, “I do think it’s long overdue.”
She also said the study was not just about staffing levels but also about equipment and technology. She noted that there was a lot of emerging technology out there and she thought Matrix might have some eye opening suggestions regarding that.
Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman told the committee that some of the consultants they had looked at essentially just looked at the size of the population, the number of police officers, and then used a formula to determine how large the police department should be. The City of Appleton did not want a consultant who used that sort of approach.
Matrix, on the other hand, looked at a number of different factors including the philosophy and vision of the police department, the overall crime statistics in the area and where those crimes are happening in the city, the number of civilian employees, the number of employees on patrol, the number of employees who are supervisors, and things like the schedules and table of organization.
Director Ratchman said it was important for everyone to go into the project with an open mind and noted, “I did speak with one police chief who said ‘I wasn’t told what I wanted to be told.’ In other words, that the staffing study came back very objective and shared information that was different than what maybe they thought.”
The expected time-frame of the project was three to five months, with five months being the worst case scenario.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) was impressed with the law enforcement experience at Matrix and also that they were looking at so many different areas.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) said, “My concern in all of this going in was that there’s this myth (perhaps myth. We don’t know yet, because the study may tell us) that the APD is understaffed, that per capita, we don’t have enough folks to patrol this city and keep the city safe. And it’s my understanding, from knowing what I know about the APD, that we aren’t understaffed because we do a great job.” She was hopeful that they were going to go into the study with an open mind and not have any predetermined expectations of what the study would tell them.
Alderperson Patrick Hayden (District 7) asked how far into the future the proposals that came from this study would be relevant and would the city be conducting a similar study again in 10 or 15 years.
Chief Olson said that depended on the sort of information they could share with Matrix, particularly in regards to the kind of growth and development the city was experiencing on the north side of the city and in the downtown area.
The study was going to be paid for with ARPA dollars. Alderperson Hartzheim asked which bucket of allocations was the money going to come from. Mayor Woodford said that there was a general allocation of ARPA funds directed toward the city’s ongoing response to Covid-19. Their recommendation was to use a portion of those remaining funds for this purpose. He noted that while the ARPA dollars had, on paper, been designated toward different purposes, they had not been put into separate special funds, and he didn’t think even an amendment would be required to redesignate money from one bucket into another.
The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee voted unanimously to recommend the item be approved.
View full Safety and Licensing Committee meeting here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1217786&GUID=4D35301B-9795-4409-B33D-0E39E59BC348
View full Human Resources and Information Technology Committee meeting here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1235840&GUID=3FEBF834-7186-4B2A-AFDA-6BEFC9BC9618
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