NEW ULM - Brown County commissioners will consider a request today to temporarily increase Crime Victims Specialist (CVS) hours from 29 to 35 per week based on added funding from the former Crime Victims Inc. agency.
According to the Request for Board Action (RBA) from Probation Director Les Schultz, there is about $14,000 left in the account. Anticipated expenditures include buying a computer, monitor and possibly more office items, leaving a balance of about $12,500.
If the CVS employee works six extra hours a week, the fund would expire at the end of 2013 and the job would return to 29 hours a week. The CVS now has 61 open cases, considered a "huge amount" of open cases for the job.
With added hours, the specialist will be able to resolve cases, maintain more victim contact and attend more court hearings. The job includes helping with female drug testing, Teen Court and Restorative Justice Specialist cross-training.
In other action, the board will consider purchasing a $26,530.93 local logging system from Northland Business Systems plus $1,057.89 for E-911 to do 911 telephone to logger interface installation for the sheriff's office to log all radio traffic on the regional ARMER system.
The system would log 911 phone calls, business calls and the ambulance/fire paging channel. It would be able to integrate the calls and pages with radio traffic logged on the regional logging system.
This system will allow the sheriff's office to make one complete timeline recording of phone calls and radio traffic involved in a case. The system would log 16-17 channels/lines.
Costs can be taken from the 911 fund, which had a $493,177.96 balance as of June 30.
The meeting starts at 9 a.m. today in the commissioners room of the Brown County courthouse.
(Fritz Busch can be e-mailed at fbusch@nujournal.com).