Imagine this: the Mower County Department of Public Safety.

No more Grand Meadow, Adams, Brownsdale, Lyle, Mapleview and Austin police departments.

No more Mower County Sheriff's Office.

No brown Ford Crown Victorias rolling across the prairie. No more white and blue ones on city streets.

Perhaps, a new public safety headquarters located right smack-dab in the middle of Mower County.

From that single location, officers would protect and serve all of Mower County.

Does this sound far-fetched?

Not according to Garry E. Ellingson and Wayne P. Goodnature. They say it is time to rethink public safety. The reason: The state's budget shortfall and how cutbacks in state spending will impact on local government entities. Ellingson is the 5th District Mower County Commissioner. Goodnature is the Austin City Council Member At Large.

Ellingson worked for more than three decades as a Mower County Sheriff's deputy and Goodnature is a former Mower County Sheriff's deputy, who also served as county sheriff for 16 years.

The idea of merging all public safety agencies, police departments at Grand Meadow, Adams, Brownsdale, Lyle, Mapleview and Austin, plus the Mower County Sheriff's Office, into a single agency came up Feb. 12, when the monthly meeting of city of Austin and Mower County representatives was held.

County jail's current needs

The far-ranging discussion began with an examination of the jail study. Mower County is attempting to relieve over-crowding in its jail by transporting prisoners to the Mitchell County Jail at Osage, Iowa, where it has leased beds.

But the situation could get worse before it gets better.

While Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Minnesota Legislature grapple with the enormity of the huge state budget deficit, one proposal would have prisoners currently in state prisons transferred back to their county of residence to serve the remainder of their sentences.

That could mean as many as 15 felons serving time in prison would be returned immediately to Mower County, where the 45-bed maximum is tested daily.

Judges can sentence prisoners to serve up to three years in the Mower County Jail. However, it has become a kind of "space available" basis due to over-crowding, according to Ellingson and County Coordinator Craig Oscarson, who also said the make-up of

the prisoner population has changed.

"We've got some pretty hard-core prisoners up there now," Oscarson said. "We've had as many as five people accused of murder up there at one time in recent years."

"Home monitoring takes care of many of the rest of the prisoners. We can't put drunks in the jail anymore," Ellingson said.

The discussion quickly ratcheted up a notch, when expenses were discussed.

Presently, the city of Austin does not reimburse Mower County for the criminals it houses on behalf of the city. That could change if a new jail were built.

Also, there are as many as 1,000 active warrants for the arrests of suspects.

"However, they can't serve them because there's no place to put the prisoners," Ellingson said.

If the county does build a new jail for the anticipated 120 prisoner level, it could cost as much as $18 million, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for its operation.

"The economics of a new jail are just horrible," observed Goodnature, who started his law enforcement career as a jailer.

The five-member Mower County Board of Commissioners does have the authority by law to approve a new jail construction project and levy the bond money to pay for it without requiring voters' approval at a referendum.

Creative-thinking or impossible dream?

At about this time in last Wednesday's discussion, the other shoe in the law enforcement discussion dropped.

That occurred when Goodnature suggested examining a merger of law enforcement agencies.

"Don't have blue. Don't have brown. Just have one uniform color, one agency, serving everybody," he said.

All of a sudden, the jail issue was forgotten for the time being Feb. 12 and another serious discussion emerged over a merged public safety agency serving all of Mower County.

"We

can't continue to support all these little government entities the way things are going," Goodnature said of the seriousness of the state's budget shortfall and the anticipated decline in state funds to counties and cities. "Before this year is out, we'll be sitting down and talking about issues we never dreamed we'd be talking about.

"Politics gets in the way" of making a good decision on the issue of merging law enforcement agencies. "Not just here, but all over. Everywhere. I don't think we're bleeding enough yet."

"We will be soon," Oscarson said. "We need to challenge our own law enforcement community on this issue and elected officials as well. Law enforcement has to be the leader."

Patrick M. McGarvey, Austin's city administrator, said before a merger idea would succeed, "you must show the efficiencies gained. If we get rid of all those individual departments and combine them into one and still spend the same amount of money as before, then it's no good."

The last contract negotiated by Mower County Sheriff's Office deputies pushed their salaries ahead of those received by Austin city patrolmen.

According to Oscarson, that factor suggests "money" should not stand in the way of any debate of a merger by the deputies and officers themselves.

At first glance, discussion of a merger has some obvious obstacles.

For instance, a county sheriff is elected by the people, a city police chief and other officers are appointed by a mayor and city council.

Also, city officers live in the communities and, therefore, known more about those communities and the residents.

The county serves warrants, subpoenas and other civil process papers. City officers do not.

Different criminal strokes for different folks

Arguably, there is a higher concentration of crime in a larger population center. That means Austin city officers must deal with more criminal activities of a specific type: methamphetamine manufacture and meth, cocaine and other drugs distribution, illegal aliens, false identification, prostitution, etc., more on a scale than a county deputy

Conversely, a county deputy faces a separate set of criminal activities -- example, rural burglaries, livestock thefts and reckless driving on isolated country roads as well as some of the so-called "city" crimes.

And, there is this fact: law enforcement agencies already pride themselves on assisting each other. Recent major crimes have been solved and arrests and evidence seizures made with officers from many jurisdictions working together.

Blue, brown or what?

The topic of a merger of public safety agencies caught the two top law enforcement leaders off-guard, but not without their personal opinions.

Austin Police Chief Paul M. Philipp has heard the merger talk before.

"Certainly, it doesn't surprise me," Philipp said. "Mr. Goodnature brought the idea up when he was the Mower County Sheriff. We considered it and looked at it seriously. I don't think anyone in Minnesota, at least, and possibly the entire United States has found it to be a viable option."

The most in-depth study of merging law enforcement agencies occurred in the 1980s, when the city of Mankato conducted an analysis and then left public safety "as is" without a merger.

Some small town police departments have had to dissolve, leaving the communities without any police protection or to contract with the county for public safety services.

Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi also doubted the idea could work, but for a different reason than what Philipp mentioned.

"I don't know how something like this would work or be governed by two different government entities," Amazi said. "The Austin City Council and the (Mower) County commissioners have a history of not being able to agree on everything and how the two agencies would function, because of that history, is anybody's guess."

Amazi said she "wishes" such ideas would first be discussed internally by all the heads of the public safety agencies before "putting it out there like the idea of turning the old Silver Bullet bar into a jail."

That was a proposal first mentioned by Goodnature and Ellingson as a means of relieving the over-crowding of prisoners in the Mower County Jail.

Under the idea, Huber or so-called "work-release" prisoners would serve their time as well as other low-escape risk prisoners in a bar converted to a minimum security detention center.

The city owns the former Silver Bullet bar along Fourth Avenue NE. However, even city officials admit the original building would have to be turn down and a new one built, because of building standards for a jail/detention center.

The Ellingson-Goodnature proposal self-destructed, leaving county officials to rely on the highly-anticipated jail study to make a decision.

County officials expect to hear from their consultant on the jail study in early March.

Lee Bonorden can be contacted at 434-2232 or by e-mail at :mailto:lee.bonorden@austindailyherald.com