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Regular Council Meeting Minutes <br />3-IS-10 <br />Page 10 <br />Mayor Rinker explained that the SPAN operation has been in existence for many years, well <br />before Mayor Rinker became Council representative. In many regards, SPAN has been a <br />longstanding regional operation. There are a lot of sharing of facilities of specialized training <br />equipment. Rather than doing this on a per capita basis, we have always looked at it per <br />community because the resources are pooled in such a way that it would be very difficult to <br />divide it out by number. That does not mean you can't do a math, but to be fair to the <br />communities, the level of contribution from the different departments in personnel and expertise, <br />training, equipment, at some point, probably the best perception is if it ain't broke, we don't need <br />to fix that kind of sharing, What is generally the focus is, are we keeping current with the kinds <br />of demands that present-day law enforcement and circumstances require? The best example of <br />that, probably one of the hardest decisions in terms of expenditures was getting that SWAT <br />vehicle which is a tank and then housing that. In order to maintain safety standards and meet a <br />lot of the demands, it's something that God forbid you would ever have to use it, but in recent <br />history, that's the one that was probably the largest single expenditure. Beyond that, it really is <br />just kind of keeping current and sharing the burden equally among the various communities. That way everyone gets the same vote, there's the same sense of parroting. <br />Mayor Rinker would not know if that explains it well. He would be happy to have the Chiefs <br />come in. They could probably give a little bit more anecdotal account because the Mayors <br />candidly are looking at this and presuming that the different departments have functioned well. <br />When they say that this works for us, that we really endorse that. It doesn't say that Mayors <br />don't ask these questions, because every time the budget comes around, they are always sensitive <br />to what the dollars are. <br />Mr. Marquardt stated, it does not seem like an equitable allocation of cost. Council President <br />Buckholtz stated, it's certainly a valid question to be bantered. Mayor Rinker agreed. He would <br />be happy to follow up more. <br />Council President Buckholtz suggested we follow up with the Council organization. His <br />understanding of SPAN is it is more like a venue-oriented than person-oriented. It's not like <br />providing a service so we only have 3,400 people and someone else has 34,000. Isn't this more <br />of an operation that could happen anywhere in any one of the communities? You would <br />certainly want equal response. Council President Buckholtz understands the per capita. <br />Mr. Marquardt questioned the probability that it would be per capita. Mayor Rinker stated, you <br />start measuring your workforce population, your daytime, your nighttime population. Mayor <br />Rinker does not think these are questions that need to go unanswered. Mr. Marquardt just does <br />not think that dividing it six ways is the way to do it. <br />Council President Buckholtz stated, the Mayors should look at it and the Council organization. <br />Mayor Rinker will get some more insights to this. Generally speaking, there's been a comfort <br />level over the years and a level of cooperation that has been whole greater than the sum of the <br />parts.