The Woodstock Town Board authorized a contract with Law Enforcement Consulting of New York State to help the Police Department become an accredited agency, a longtime goal and a major recommendation of the state-required Police Reform and Reinvention Committee.
“I think there are 133 points where we need different policy written up, and a lot of it has already been done. But some of it needs to be reworded, redone, touched up. So they would go through this, look at what other departments are accredited have done, what the accreditation calls for and start to rewrite policy,” town supervisor Bill McKenna said.
The contract is for $65 per hour and the consulting firm would only be used when questions arise. The billing will be on a month-to-month basis.
Responding to concerns about costs spiraling out of control, McKenna said it can be monitored like other vouchers the Town Board approves.
“If the bill starts to get anywhere south of 700 bucks, 1000 bucks, whatever number you’re comfortable with, I’ll slow it down for that month, and then we can all, during vouchers, take a look at it and have and have another conversation,” McKenna said. “I’ll tell you that the chief’s (Clayton Keefe) number one reluctance to even have the meeting was he didn’t want to get saddled with some 10 or $20,000 contract to produce this. He’s very happy and content with this and is eager to move forward with it. We also feel that there may be other areas where he could actually assist us.”
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