Commissioners standing firm on keeping jail/dispatch in one contract

    The Chase County Commissioners were clear during discussions with City of Imperial representative Chad Yaw and Police Chief Ryan Wisnieski at the Dec. 23 commissioners’ meeting: county jail and dispatch services will remain as one contract.
    The Imperial City Council agreed in theory to a dispatch contract early in December, but not to a contract for jail services. The city wrote its own dispatch contract for the county, which the commissioners turned down.
    Yaw believes the contract offer expired in July and negotiations would start over.
    Yaw and Commissioner Jacci Brown spent several months working on a dispatch and jail contract early last year. Brown believed the city accepted the contract except for the amount the city was to pay the county.
    She asked what had changed.
    Yaw and Wisnieski said the “landscape has changed.”
    Yaw said the city believes Jon Cannon of the Nebraska Association of County Officials, at a June 24 meeting between the county and city, said the county had to take the city’s prisoners.
    In further discussions with Cannon, Brown said Cannon told her that wasn’t what he meant. Her belief is that Imperial Mayor Dwight Coleman didn’t like the 50/50 split on medical costs.
    Without a combined contract Sheriff Kevin Mueller believes the city and county will be headed back to court the first time the county rejects a city prisoner. He was adamant that the jail and dispatch stay as one contract.

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