Considering the town board recently held a special Executive Meeting to discuss the hiring and considering there is a resolution Monday evening to appoint hire Karn on Monday, congratulations Captain Karn on the promotion. I hope you bring more openness and transparency to the department.
Speaking of transparency, there is also a resolution (#18) to appoint police officer Angela Greco to fill a vacancy in the position of School Resource Officer (SRO) in the Lancaster School District. The vacancy is the result of the town and school district agreeing to share costs in the hiring of a third SRO; the agreement was approved at the February 19th town board meeting.
I find it disturbing that the language of the proposed resolution is so vague in detail that it rivals past SRO hiring’s regarding:
• What rank does Officer Greco hold? Patrol, Detective, Lieutenant?
• What will be the total cost of this shared contract agreement – salary, benefits, perks?
• Where and how will this officer serve the school district? At the February 19th town board meeting it was declared that the service was yet to be defined. And we still don’t know the particulars, but this hiring is necessitated?
• What necessitated this hiring? I was an advocate for the hiring of the second SRO and requested such hiring come with the condition that annual incident benchmark reports were made to illustrate program effectiveness – no names and no particulars. It never happened. What data / information can be shared to validate this hiring?
• Why in his correspondence to the board did departing Chief Gil request the appointment have an effective (retro) hiring date of February 25th?
Hopefully, some of these questions will be asked of the board Monday night. The taxpayers have a right to know why and how their money is being spent. Transparency, I think not!