New police chief seeks two additional officers, cites call-volume growth and equipment needs
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Summary
Chief Young presented the Versailles/Woodford police operating and capital budgets, requesting two additional officers (raising staffing from 41 to 43), noting insurance and benefit-driven cost increases and outlining capital priorities including vehicles, an upgraded radio system and lockers.
Chief Young presented the Woodford County/Versailles Police Department budget at a committee meeting, outlining staffing concerns, insurance-driven cost increases and capital priorities.
Chief Young told the court the department has remained at 41 full-time officers since a 2004 merger and requested funding to add two officers so staffing would rise to 43. He said the department faces near-term retirement risk: four officers eligible to retire now and three more within five years. An internal analysis cited by Young estimated that some positions take roughly a year to train a new recruit to solo patrol; untrained recruits are required to sign five-year service agreements.
On expenses, Young said the operating budget increase largely reflects two items: an estimated 10% increase in health insurance costs and the additional two officers’ salary/benefit costs. Salary spending for the department was described as roughly $3.8 million and hazardous-duty retirement costs at about $1.37 million, the latter partly tied to increased headcount. Young also said the city of Versailles had authorized a 3% across-the-board pay increase aligned with the annual CPI.
In capital, Young said the department reduced its requested capital spending by about $161,000 from the prior year by buying less-expensive vehicle models (replacing Tahoes with Traverses and Silverados) and relying on grants where feasible. He highlighted priorities: vehicle procurement, continued body-camera system subscriptions (companies bundle hardware and cloud storage as subscription services), a planned firewall upgrade to protect electronic access to NCIC and CAD systems, lockers for the new police building (estimated at $50,000) and continued investment in digital forensics training and equipment.
Young provided operational context: the department handled 11,190 more calls for service from 2023 to 2024 while maintaining the same headcount, and he said county population grew about 11% since 2005 according to census data he referenced. He described active hiring success — six officers hired since January — and said a cold-case detective (a retired federal agent) would start the next day.
Court members asked about training costs (Young said state training for new untrained officers is provided without a training fee, though salary and benefits continue during training) and the status of a county radio system upgrade (equipment installation underway; anticipated to go live within the month). No formal vote on the police budget occurred at the committee meeting; Young’s presentation will feed into the fiscal-year budget adoption process.
Ending Chief Young’s presentation emphasized preparing for near-term retirements, sustaining investigative capacity and maintaining technology and fleet readiness. The court will consider the police budget as part of the broader fiscal-year 2025–26 budget process.
