Pingree Grove might cut police force

Pingree Grove has had its own police force for five years, but a committee tasked with cutting the budget has put the entire department on the chopping block.

The village’s finance task force has a proposal to eliminate the police department and outsource police services to Kane County — an arrangement the village had before it formed its own force.

The group will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday to review and vote on that proposal, as well as about three dozen other cut-cutting and revenue generating measures. The village board will consider the committee’s recommendations next Monday.

Yet, if the police department item reaches the board, Village President Greg Marston said he will vote against it.

“I don’t think that accurately represents the majority of the citizens in town, so I would not support that,” Marston said, adding that he is in talks with commercial developers and retailers who are interested in coming to Pingree Grove. “It’s highly unlikely they’d be willing to invest tens of millions of dollars into a neighborhood that did not have a police department.”

The police force employs 16 officers, 12 of whom are part time, Police Chief Carol Lussky said. Her chief contract expired this spring and the village has yet to renew it, Marston said, adding that he still plans to keep Lussky on as long as the village has a police force.

In the current budget, the police department accounted for $733,857 — 54 percent of the village’s total $1.35 million operating expenses. The 12-member task force was responsible for only coming up with $50,000 in budget cuts into the next fiscal year but decided to keep going, said Richard Eckert, the committee’s chairman.

He supports findings ways to cut expenses in the police department’s budget, but says the village needs its own force.

Julie Dillon, a resident on the committee who supports the idea of eliminating the force, could not be reached for comment to discuss the merits of the proposal.

But she posted a comment in the Pingree Grove Accountability Network group on Facebook that affirmed her support for the proposal, which is estimated to save between $300,000 and $400,000 a year.

“I don’t believe we’re trading a Cadillac for a Chevy,” Dillon wrote. “Consider the fact that with this recent accident at Reinking and 72, it was Kane County doing the accident investigation (according to the paper). In PG we don’t have specialists in accident reconstruction or even ET. In “bigger incidents” such as these (the big pot bust a few years back) we still had to defer to Kane County.”

Five years ago, Pingree Grove created its own police force because Kane County ended police services there, pointing to budget constraints.

It’s not known what would happen to Pingree Grove’s $3.5 million station if the village eliminated its police force.