Politics & Government

'Ask Your Freeholder:' A New Feature on Patch

The inaugural question asked of the freeholders involved the discontinuation of overnight prisoner transportation to the county jail by the Sheriff's Department.

Got a problem and need an answer from Camden County government? We’ve got your solution. 

"Ask Your Freeholder" is a new weekly feature in which you get to ask questions and get them answered here every Friday by the Board of Chosen Freeholders of Camden County—the county's highest body of elected officials.

Just send your questions to bill.duhart@patch.com or ask it in our comment box below the story and we’ll take the first three every week and get one of the seven freeholders to personally answer your question for this column.

Find out what's happening in Gloucester Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Here's this week's question:

Patch: Some municipalities in Camden County, especially Gloucester Township, have been disproportionately affected by the Sheriff Department’s decision to discontinue prisoner transports from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Gloucester Township alone has performed 93 prisoner transports and racked up 111 overtime hours to do it. 

Find out what's happening in Gloucester Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The county has saved money by the schedule change but has that come at a cost for towns such as Gloucester Township, Collingswood and Winslow, which have had rising overtime hours and officers off of needed patrols to transport prisoners at night?

Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli: The county made the decision to eliminate the overnight transport shift to save $1 million in taxpayer dollars. This was done in consultation with all the mayors in advance of implementation and was based on research on number of transports per shift per town. Some of the larger municipalities have more transports than smaller ones, and they would have had to absorb more transports from the overnight shift. It was up to each of them to come up with a plan and to adjust staffing or policy, if necessary, to absorb the overnight transport task. They could also approach this as a shared service among several communities, as they do with other things.

It is important to note that it was never a mandated responsibility that the county had to provide prisoner transports to the municipalities. It did so as a convenience to all of them, and continues the other shifts throughout the day, eliminating only the overnight shift. In these tough economic times, we all need to review everything we do to cut costs because we all need to live within our budgetary constraints.

As we do that at the county level, it requires rethinking staffing and shift work. This change may require municipalities to do the same.

This is a forum to get answers. Join the dialogue! Please don’t wait. Send your questions today to ensure an answer by next Friday. We want to hear from you; the freeholders want to hear from you.

What do you think? Please let us know! Got a question for a freeholder? Ask it here or send it to me directly at bill.duhart@patch.com. Or tell us in the comments below.


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