SAGINAW -- “No, there’s no change at all,” says Saginaw County Sheriff Bill Federspiel after his Tuesday night victory where voters supported a millage proposal to maintain current public safety levels.
The sheriff will get several million dollars more over the next five years to keep deputies on patrol, crime investigators on serious cases, and to keep the county jail open. He said it’s needed. “Crime is afoot in Saginaw County in different locations. We’ve reduced crime but it’s still here,” he said.
The millage passed with 56 percent of the vote Tuesday night, but had trouble in many rural areas where convincing farmers with high-dollar properties to pay higher taxes was a hard sell. “For those who voted no for whatever reason, I want the citizens to know I still serve them and they’re money will be well spent,” he said.
Federspiel said he would have lost 35 deputies and detectives as of August 1st if the proposal failed. But that won’t be the case now that a majority of residents agreed to pay a little more than $40 extra a year on their property tax bill (that figure based on an average home valued at $85,000).
Thomas R. Call of the group Stop Taxing Our People said he organized an oppositional effort because he wanted to see a modernized sheriff’s department before the public was asked to pay more in taxes.
”They keep doing the same old thing,” he said in a previous interview on Sunday. Call wanted to see a metropolitan policing approach, where deputies would patrol a large metro area in place of several other local policing agencies.
Nevertheless, Call said his group will be back the next time around county residents are asked to pay higher taxes.
