Summary of McGinness, Nottoli meeting on the Wilton Service Center

This meeting summary was sent to EGN from Bill Kutzer of the Wilton Action Group


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Greetings All:
FYI—From my perspective I will try to offer a short breakdown of the meeting Wednesday night regarding the closing of the Service Center. Bottom line, as reported by Sheriff McGinness, the service center will be kept open with Reserve Officer’s filling in for staff personnel. In order to be able to maintain the same degree of patrol officers (boots on the ground so to speak) in the South area the current staff in the Service Center will be pulled back to facilities or duties closer to central command. Since a Service Center must have a person with the background and pre-requisite training required of sheriff staff, a reserve officer must take over the role of previous staff to run the Center. The result is that the Service Center situation, while not ideal nor as good as it was, will still be functional and the VIPS will be able to serve the community with the same terrific dedication that they have provided to our community in the past. The exact schedule of when the Service Center will be open is not really known at this time. The days and hours will not be the same as before which is one of the downsides of the Reserve Officer staffing. We will all have to stay tuned on what the Service Center schedule is going to be.

I thought that Sheriff McGinness did an excellent job of providing background information and in explaining the budget or lack thereof faced by the Sheriff’s department. In addition to questions regarding the Service Center he also fielded many questions in general dealing with law enforcement, criminal activity and situations involving our rights as lawful citizens reacting to criminal activity on our property.

Supervisor Don Nottoli was also present and gave a general over-all view of the County budget situation and enunciated the key, competing budget elements that have priority. One thing that he pointed out was that the State budget, as we well know, was not yet settled by the State Legislature. To that end there is always the possibility that the State will push back to the local governing-bodies expenses that normally are absorbed or funded by the State. The point being made is that the Service Center could yet be affected by a push back.

I am not totally certain that I have the above points exactly right but this is my interpretation of what I heard Wednesday evening at the meeting in the firehouse. Many thanks to our VIPS folks who helped to bring about the meeting with Sheriff McGinness and Supervisor Nottoli.