Yorkville, county officials talk facilities sharing for city police, sheriff's office

YORKVILLE – With the population for Yorkville and Kendall County continuing to grow comes evaluating additional needs for growing services like law enforcement.

City and county officials are considering one idea to address that: To somehow combine facility resources for Yorkville Police Department and the Kendall County Sheriff's Office.

Yorkville Mayor John Purcell said during the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 10 that he had talked with Kendall County Sheriff Dwight Baird, Kendall County Board Chairman Scott Gryder, Kendall County Administrator Scott Koeppel, Yorkville City Administrator Bart Olson and Yorkville Police Chief Jim Jensen about possibly building another wing for the county's public safety building and the city police department potentially sharing some of that space with the sheriff's office.

So far, Purcell said, the idea seems to be well received by county and city officials alike.

“If we’re excited about it and they’re not, then it doesn’t work," Purcell said. "But if we’re both excited about it or further intrigued by it, we’d have some further discussions and then we might bring forward in the spring a proposal to look at the space and needs of both sides and see if there’s something that could work.”

Purcell said the thought was to save the county and city some tax dollars instead of the city building their own police department for millions of dollars, potentially. He said the exact savings amount for the city is not known at this time.

Yorkville Ward 3 Alderman Joel Frieders said it always makes sense to look at different ways for the city to work smarter and not harder and taking a similar approach as the city working with Oswego and Montgomery for an area water supply plan, for example. However the conversation moves from concept to actual execution, he said, he's excited to explore it further.

"I’m sure it’s been done before, and that’s the type of stuff that we should be ... exploring to make sure we have the facilities that we need, but we’re not overpaying for them because it has to remain independent,” Frieders said.

Purcell said Baird mentioned he was aware of at least one Illinois county that has done something similar. However, Purcell said, he doesn't know which county that was.

Just to be clear, Purcell said, the idea isn't to have the sheriff's office replace the city's police department.

“We’d still have our own police department staff," Purcell said. "We’d still have our own chief."

Yorkville Ward 3 Alderman Chris Funkhouser said he thinks that kind of arrangement could work very well with the facility needs that the city has identified anyway. However, he said, those needs from a city standpoint aren't limited to the police department side of things and include public works, for example.

"I don’t want to just jump into this one and do a study here when we have other facilities we need to consider as well," Funkhouser said.

City officials said those anticipated higher dollar projects on the city's plan include deep water aquifers and other building needs.

Funkhouser also expressed concerns about other communities potentially asking why they didn't have the same opportunity. Purcell said the city happens to be the county seat, for one, and the project could inadvertently help save all county residents tax money anyway.

Purcell said other discussion points to be covered for a potential project like this would include where funding would come from on the city's side as well as the county's.

Last Purcell heard, he said, Kendall County officials may have similar discussions on the matter during their Committee of the Whole meeting scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 12 in the County Board room of the county office building, 111 W. Fox St.