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Well, they got some validation recently. The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance did one of its exhaustive studies on how much citizens pay for police protection services. Campbell, it turns out, had the lowest per-capita spending in Wisconsin, according to WTA. Campbell spends $68 per person for police services.
How did La Crosse fare?
La Crosse's police cost city residents $217 per person, which is certainly higher than Campbell, but not too far out of line with other places in the state. Statewide, the average per-capita cost was $197, and slightly over half the communities spent between $150 and $200 per capita for police protection.
However, comparing the police coverage in Campbell and La Crosse isn't apples to apples. Campbell has five full-time officers and one part-timer, which doesn't allow them to have 24/7 coverage.
Campbell also had the fewest officers per 1,000 residents, 1.1, in Wisconsin. La Crosse had 97 sworn officers, or 1.87 cops per 1,000. By comparison, tourist-heavy Wisconsin Dells has 4.5 officers per 1,000.
"We do the best we can with the people we have. We don't always have 24-hour, seven-day-a-week protection," said Campbell Police Chief Mark Hess. But when a Campbell officer can't be on duty, the La Crosse County Sheriff's Department takes calls. La Crosse police have also been known to venture onto the island when a case takes them there..
Speaking of Campbell and La Crosse, Republican state Rep. Mike Huebsch's bill to let Campbell residents vote on becoming a village passed the Assembly last week, but Democrats, led by state Rep. Jennifer Shilling of La Crosse, made sure it won't be considered by the Senate until the fall.
La Crosse County's delegation to Madison has worked well together for many years, despite party differences, for the area's greater good. It's sad to see them getting dragged into the ongoing, never-ending battle between La Crosse and Campbell.
I read recently that the infamous Hatfield and McCoy families signed a truce after more than a century of feuding in Appalachia. Let's hope it doesn't take that long for their Coulee Region counterparts to find a way to peacefully coexist.
Annex this
Brice Prairie landowner Richard Sarazin gets points for ingenuity with his recent gambit to annex to the city of La Crosse. Sarazin wants to sell a big chunk of land to Mathy Construction for development as a new asphalt plant, but getting all the permits and approvals from town of Onalaska and La Crosse County officials is not a sure thing. Maybe he thinks the city of La Crosse, now home to Mathy's old asphalt plant, will be more receptive.
But even if La Crosse could justify the millions it would cost to run water and sewer lines beneath Lake Onalaska to Brice Prairie, and even if La Crosse would approve the asphalt plant, there could still be a problem. Trucks still have to get to and from the plant using county Hwy. ZN, which runs through the middle of a federal wildlife preserve and wetlands.
Hwy. ZN isn't wide enough, and possibly not strong enough, to stand up to 400 more heavy trucks a day, and the county's going to expect Mathy to pay the cost of improvements. Mathy and its consultants have been studying the issue for months now, and they're still waiting for some cost estimates, a Mathy official told Highway Commissioner Dennis Osgood. It's uncertain whether they'll be ready for this month's cycle of county board committee meetings, which start next week.
Reid Magney covers politics and county government for the La Crosse Tribune. Reach him at (608) 791-8211.
