WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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The Monroe County Sheriff’s department is planning to open a substation on the south side of town. The substation would be located on Dillman road, on a piece of property currently owned by The Monroe County Parks Foundation. The foundation came into ownership of the Dillman Road property as the result of an agreement to resolve a property dispute, as Sheriff Brad Swain explains, “There was a property owner who had a residence along the rail line. There had been some discussion and even legal action going back and forth about encroachment. It was finally decided that they came to an agreement that he would sell his property, which was a modular 3 bedroom home. The Parks Foundation purchased that property just to resolve that issue.”
The house currently on the property will be modified slightly for county use, with one room being repurposed as an office for sheriff’s deputies to do paperwork and hold meetings. Sheriff Swain says the building would also be used as a base camp of sorts to patrol the southern parts of the B-Line and Clear Creek trails, which have been plagued by robberies and assaults in recent months. The substation would be located immediately adjacent to a section of the former Illinois Central Railroad that is currently slated to be developed as part of the county’s trail network.
Swain elaborated on how the additional location would expand the presence of the department: “The intention of this one is to provide an area for deputies to have a presence, a location, where they can take care of paperwork and submitting documents online and to our server; and also have a presence on the trail for people that are using it. We are looking at having one of our UTVs placed in a secure building, which has a backboard, and make that available for our deputies and EMS should there be an emergency in that part of the county, not just on the trail. This would give them a good starting point to patrol the trail system in that part of the county.”
Given that the county also has permission to use the land and the structure only requires minimal modification, Sheriff Swain expects the new office could be up and running by the end of November. The land is owned by the Monroe County Parks Foundation, which is not a government entity, but the foundation is granting the county permission to use the property until the county commissioners can negotiate a deal to purchase it. The foundation initially purchased the land for $175,000 earlier this year, with the county pitching in $45,000.
The sheriff’s department is adding ten new deputies in the near future thanks to funding from the new public safety tax. The Sheriff Swain says the main downtown office has plenty of room for new staff, but having a satellite location will come in handy for deputies in the southern part of the county who won’t have to commute all the way into Bloomington to file paperwork. A second auxiliary building for the department is currently under construction on the north side of town, adjacent to the county highway garage.
