City to lose another police officer, OKs deal with county for administrative help

Another city police officer is leaving the Libby department.

After approving the minutes and hearing city and administrative reports at the Feb. 21 meeting, Mayor Peggy Williams announced the city would be losing another police officer. This comes after three officers resigned in November 2022.

City officials did not provide the name of the officer who is leaving the department, but said his last day will be March 31.

Libby City Administrator Sam Sikes did not have any new information on the status of Police Chief Scott Kessel, who has been on sick leave since Jan. 16.

Sikes said there is no available information on when this status will change "because these questions deal with privacy issues." He also said the city will never anticipate if someone will be fired or resign, Sikes said.

“Libby seeks information, not an outcome,” Sikes said.

The city is still working on forming a police commission. City officials said there were four applications submitted for it. Williams has conducted interviews and nominated three people, John BeBee, Karen Dinkins and Steven Boyer. They were listed on the agenda for possible appointment at Monday's meeting.

If the city council approves the nomination, the mayor will appoint these individuals for one-, two- and three-year appointments, Sikes said.

As for the third party investigation and report, it is not available. It is not anticipated to be available for a couple of weeks, Williams said.

Also, the city passed a Memorandum of Agreement between it and the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office for help in getting administrative work done.

“The purpose of this MOA is to provide the terms and conditions of the agreement between the parties for the sheriff to provide administrative support to the city police on a temporary basis, and for payment for such services,” the document states.

This is primarily to get the incident reporting caught up, Williams said. Although she noted it is not limited to just that.

“Due to the volume of City Police Incident Based Reporting (IBR) backlog, the Sheriff will provide enough administrative personnel working on overtime to complete all mandatory calendar year 2022 reporting to federal authorities in compliance with the existing March 15, 2023, deadline for submission of calendar year 2022 IBR,” the document states.

"There is no estimate as to the hours it will take to transfer all the information from our system into the IBR," Sikes said. The wages and contributions needed to finish this administrative work will be taken from the general fund, as there is funding available for seasonal workers and this situation will fall into that category, Sikes said. The seasonal funds are for temporary employees.

The police department’s budget also comes out of the general fund and the city is currently 66% of the way through the fiscal year, and the police department has spent 64% for the year, Sikes said.

Williams said the agreement allows the department to address another problem it has had, a lack of administrative help.

“This is basically in order to get that incident report caught up and we have the deadline of March 15,” Williams said. “The anticipated workload was unknown. It is a least a year-and-a-half worth of information to catch up on due to the system being down until recently.”

After the installation of a new technological system there were county-wide difficulties for about a year, Williams said. The city expects to meet the deadline and the memorandum was unanimously approved.

Later in the meeting Councilor Hugh Taylor took time to address the police issue.

“It’s my opinion that we have failed the community,” Taylor said. “We have no answers: what's going on with the chief? The employees? We have failed these officers, we have made these guys do more work than they are capable of even doing."

Other council members either remained quiet or tried to calm Taylor.

“I would remind you that all of this is covered under employee privacy,” Williams said.

“I believe that we have addressed public safety by engaging with the county,” Councilor Kristin Smith said. “That is our solution at this time until it continues to resolve itself.”

“I believe the administration has been doing what they can, and we just have to keep moving forward,” Councilor Brian Zimmerman said. “Officers, thank you again for everything you’re doing."