Now is the time to come to the aid of your neighbor, or in this case, your city; more specifically your police and fire safety forces. As your chief of police, I witness the challenges that face the men and women who make up your Urbana Police Division as we try to balance the safety needs of our citizens and officers while also attempting to provide Urbana with the highest quality of service, to help keep Urbana a pleasant place to live, work and raise a family.

In 1991 voters passed an additional 0.4 percent police/fire services levy, helping improve our operations with new facilities and an increase in manpower. In 2010, due to the economic crisis, the police division laid-off personnel that to this day have never been replaced. We remain 4 officers and a full-time civilian staff employee short of what’s needed to provide the service our community deserves. We no longer have manpower for a Criminal Investigative Unit nor to assign solely to handle crimes and issues affecting our senior citizen or youth population.

We’d like once again to assign specialized officers to handle death scenes, drug trafficking cases, and sex crimes. We’d also like to get back to having the ability to maintain programs that positively impact our older citizens and youths.

On November 6, 2018, voters can come to the aid of this community and your safety forces. Your “yes” vote on the Fire/Police/EMS levy will be you helping us to make certain that our community has officers needed to handle our daily police calls for service, crashes, investigations, and outreach programs. We’ll once again be able to provide a specialized focus on the more dangerous and difficult cases, as well as re-establishing programs that serve the needs of our community, from senior citizen to youth.

It truly is an honor to serve the citizens of Urbana.