Marysville Police Chief Tony Brooks is taking steps to “help the police department more align with my vision of what Marysville Police Department is going to be moving forward.”
At Monday night’s meeting, city council heard details of a plan to create two captain positions — one to oversee the special services and one to oversee support services — as part of the police department.
“This alignment will allow us to be in a position to handle the growth that is coming to the community and to the police department,” Brooks said.
In the past, Marysville has had two deputy chiefs — one to oversee operations and one to oversee administration. Council is moving forward with a plan to create two captain positions.
The captain over special services will oversee the investigations bureau and the school resource officers as well as duties that “go hand in hand” with those jobs.
The captain over support services will oversee the communications center, the records room, facilities, fleet management, technical services, recruiting, training and other support duties.
Both captains will make $99,100.
Brooks said the four department sergeants, Community Services Bureau Sergeant Donald McGlenn and Patrol Sergeants Douglas Ropp, Nathan Sachs and Chad Seeberg, will be considered for the two captain positions.
“I anticipate two of these four will likely fill these positions,” Brooks said. “I don’t intend to seek outside candidates at this point.”
Until recently, the department had six sergeants, the four being considered for the captain positions as well as Brooks, who was named chief, and Terry Basinger, who has announced his retirement.
Deputy Police Chief Bo Spain will remain over operations. Brooks said Spain will oversee “pretty much anything that you would think of as the boots on the ground policing.”
Brooks said the only real change to his position is that the investigations bureau will now move under the special services captain.
The new chief said he believes this new configuration more evenly disperses responsibilities and lowers the number of employees each leader supervises.
“We are spreading this out and hopefully will make it easier to communicate with each other and get messages down through the ranks,” Brooks said.
Human Resources Director Brian Dostanko said because of the retirement and moving Brooks to chief, the city will actually be spending about $5,000 less on command staff with the realignment.
Brooks said recruitment and training will be “one of the biggest challenges” for the support services captain. Brooks said in the past there has not been a focused, unified emphasis put on the two tasks.
“I think at the end of the day, this is going to result in better service to the community,” Brooks said.
The chief stressed that he is disappointed to see Basinger retire. Basinger has been with the police department for 31 years and served as Brooks’ training officer.
“He had actually planned on retiring earlier this year and then when the chief announced his retirement, he stayed on and saw us through the process,” Brooks said. “I wholeheartedly support his decision, but he would have been a great asset.”
Brooks said Basinger’s sergeant position will eventually be filled, but he wants to have the captains in position to help make decisions about how that will happen.