Wildwood Authorizes $2.9M Police Contract with St. Louis County

Wildwood city council members on Monday approved a $2,946,544.08 contract with St. Louis County Police Department for 2013 services.

This amount represents only a $4,288 increase over the 2012 agreement.

The contract encompasses 33 officers and one civilian, who serves as the office administrator.

The city's Board of Public Safety members, who are Wildwood residents, reviewed the terms prior to council members, and unanimously recommended its approval. Those board members are:  Bill Garrett, Charlie Spohn and Bud Mantle. Wildwood marshal Bob Warren chairs the group.

Wildwood city administrator Dan Dubruiel reported about negotiations regarding this police services agreement at several of the last few city council meetings. He specifically focused on a formula used to calculate the Investigations/Administration category cost for 2013.

"During last year's contract consideration, the formula used for years by the Police Department appeared to have no relationship to the amount of services used by Wildwood during the course of the year," said Dubruiel.

He said everyone involved was able to arrive at an agreed-to method upon which to base the Investigations/Administration costs:  a method that resulted in a reduction of $40,150 to Wildwood.

Other notations about the contract:

• There was no salary increase factored into any of the salaries of the personnel directly working at the Wildwood Precinct.
• An across-the-board increase in fringe benefits to the personnel was largely a result of increased health care coverage costs.
• Vehicle transportation costs remained flat for the year.
• Wildwood is part of the West County Communications Console, along with the cities of Chesterfield, Eureka, Ellisville and Clarkson Valley. The total cost to operate the console per year is $467,534.10. During the previous 12-month period, Wildwood's usage of the console resulted in 22,805 radio calls, or 24 percent of the total call volume. The 24 percent of the overall costs results in a Wildwood line item cost of $112,208.18.