Grand Coulee wants to renegotiate USBR police contract

The city of Grand Coulee wants to renegotiate a contract under which city police provide law enforcement services to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for nearly $600,000 a year.

The city is currently operating on a six-month extension on a contract that expired in November of 2019, a contract in which the city’s police provide additional security at the Grand Coulee Dam. 

That contract adds four additional officers to the Grand Coulee Police Department, which serves Grand Coulee and Electric City, for a total of eight officers, plus a reserve officer.

The arrangement with the USBR was discussed at the last city council meeting Jan. 21.

Councilmember Tom Poplawski argues that the city is losing money from the situation. 

“We’re giving them money with no value for what we’re doing,” Poplawski said. 

City Clerk Lorna Pearce later told The Star she estimates the city lost around $30,000 in 2019 while providing the service. 

The city budgeted for $583,319 in 2019 from the contract, which began in 2017.

The council was in agreement that new terms need to be reached, something they say should have been done in a timely fashion, before the contract expired, saying that they haven’t received much cooperation from the bureau in getting that renegotiation done. 

“Communication just isn’t very good and doesn’t seem to get any better,” Poplawski said about the relationship between the city and bureau. “Right now, the bureau doesn’t want to respond to anything we’re saying.”

Police Chief John Tufts said he hasn’t “heard a word” from the bureau on the topic, adding that the local area is “micromanaged” from Boise, Idaho. 

Poplawski was given the go-ahead from his fellow council members to draft a letter to representatives in Congress in an attempt to bring the subject to light and to get more effort from the bureau to address the topic and renegotiate a new contract. 

Pearce said she explained to Sandra Snediker, supervisory contract specialist at the bureau, that the city is losing money because of a 3.2-percent annual raise, plus benefits, to employees under a union contract, while the bureau is only providing a 2-percent increase to the city.

The council discussion last week turned to the idea of giving the bureau a deadline and the possibility of stopping services, something they don’t want to do. 

“I know this jeopardizes and puts in play employees,” Poplawski said. “But if we don’t have the money, and don’t have the contract, then those employees are in jeopardy anyways.”

“We certainly can’t hemorrhage money,” Councilmember Tamara Byers said. “We don’t have any money to hemorrhage.”

Council members expressed wanting to negotiate a new contract and to continue providing services under terms that benefit the city but emphasized that they can’t be giving the service to the bureau without a clear benefit to the city.

They reiterated that the bureau has had plenty of time to address the topic of a new contract, knowing that it was expiring in November of 2019.