“You’re putting the lives of the people of this county in jeopardy,” said Anoka County Sheriff Gus Dicesari as his request to increase the sheriff’s department’s budget was denied Tuesday by county commissioners. Dicesari accused the commissioners of “shortchanging” the sheriff’s department to save money. Dicesari requested a budget increase that would allow him to provide his department with eight new police cruisers and five additional deputies costing approximately $580,000. Sheriff Dicesari went on to say, “It is getting too costly to maintain the older vehicles and they spend too much time in the repair shop. You commissioners eliminated the equipment budgets for my department this year and now I can’t buy anything. This is the first time in my 27 years as sheriff that the county hasn’t’ allocated money to the sheriff’s department to buy equipment.”
Commission President Anne Chen however disagreed saying that “the county does not have the money to buy new police cruisers and five new sheriff’s deputies.” Chen went on to say that the county already spent $30 million of the $127 million budget to build a new prison to help with the overcrowding and the increased cost of fuel and healthcare had already tapped in to the budget.
The debate heated up intensely when Dicesari supporters Anita Shenuski and Raymond Laybourne began to blame the budget issues on immigration and stated Anoka County should spend more money on the sheriff’s department and law enforcement than programs for migrant workers who come to Anoka County to work. “We never had these problems until we started letting migrants come to this county to work,” Shenuski said. “They take away jobs from decent people and work for next to nothing, we need to protect our people from them.”
Chen quickly denied that immigration was the real issue. “Those people who come here to work are decent, hardworking people being employed at jobs that local residents don’t want to do. They add a great deal to the local economy and they pay taxes. You are being a hypocrite when you try to blame those people for everything.”
As the arguing and intense debating quieted Chen told Sheriff Dicesari that he would have to make do this year with what they had. County commissioners voted 5-2 against the sheriff’s much demanded request.
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Did you find anywhere in the back of the book that said that Chenn was the president of the County Commissioners? I know it said it in the text but I think these book writers can be pretty tricky!
ReplyDeletegreat job! I like to read your stories every week! you really have a good for writing!
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