The city and school district wrote down an agreement on sharing the costs to clean up a fuel spill 17 years after the mess was discovered, resulting in the addition of a school resource officer that authorities say will benefit both agencies.
The spill was detected in June 1995 and resulted from a leaking underground gas tank at the Edes Court corporation yard shared by the City of Morgan Hill and Morgan Hill Unified School District, according to city staff.
The two bodies have shared the costs for the state-mandated clean up of the spill since then, but without a formal, written agreement, staff said. The school district has paid about two-thirds of the annual cleanup costs, and the city has paid the rest.
The proportions is based on how much of the property each agency uses, but city staff noted that that share has changed over the years. The school district has always said the terms are subject to renegotiation, and in 2010 asked for the costs to be split evenly, with each side paying half the costs.
For a few months in 2010, the district stopped paying its share of the cleanup costs until a new agreement was reached, city staff said.
Then in late 2011, the two parties agreed to a 50-50 split of the costs starting retroactively in December 2011. In return for the school district continuing to pay under the former terms until the end of last year, the city agreed to fund a second school resource officer for about $116,524, but only for one year.
The officer, Mike Nelson, will be assigned to the SRO position starting with the 2012-2013 school year this fall, according to Capt. Jerry Neumayer. It’s the first time the city has employed two SROs since at least two years ago, when budget cuts forced a reassignment.
Having officers on campus provides benefits to the community that may not be as “tangible” as patrol officers responding to specific calls, but their presence among the students helps keep things calm, Neumayer said.
“It’s all about the positive interactions the officer has with the students,” Neumayer said. “And it allows patrol officers to handle other calls for service” while the SROs file reports.
The funding for the new SRO position will come from the city’s environmental remediation fund, which is funded by internal payments from the police department and public works department as a surcharge for fuel use, city manager Ed Tewes said.
That’s the fund that has been financing the fuel spill cleanup, Tewes added. This year, the city’s and school district’s combined share of the cleanup costs are about $125,000. Next year the cost is expected to decline to about $70,000.
In previous years, both parties received funding from the state Underground Tank Fund and a litigated insurance settlement to assist with the cleanup, according to city staff.
With Nelson reassigned from patrol to the schools, the city will use the funds freed up by the remediation agreement to “backfill” on overtime for police patrol services when necessary, Tewes said.
The City Council unanimously approved the agreement Wednesday.
Councilman Rich Constantine noted the city used to have three SROs, and the position is “greatly needed.”
“Hopefully we’ll be able to find a way to continue to keep that officer” after the one-year agreement expires, Constantine said.
