BOLIVAR - The village is counting on voters to ensure the continued success of their safety forces by renewing their 1.5-mill police protection levy for five more years. 

Bolivar council members recently past the first of two resolutions to place the levy back on the ballot in November for renewal. The levy generates around $22,000 annually for the police department. Mayor Rebecca Hubble says that money helps offset the cost of keeping two part-time officers on the roster.

“It’s important for us to have the hours that we need to cover our village, and we try to make sure the weekends are covered, and we try to make sure that we have a lot of hours covered. We want people to feel safe, and I think that they do see the benefits of that,” she says. “Without that renewal, we would have to potentially get rid of one of our officers, and we’d just hate to do that, and it would make it very difficult.”

Hubble says they also use the levy money for equipment purchases and officer training. 

“We try and make sure that our police department is fully equipped, which it is. I mean, they have computers in their vehicles. We make sure of that. They go for all their training. They get taser training. They’re going to have a firearms training coming up in June, so there’s lots of things that go into that, that’s figured into that,” she says.

Hubble says thanks to the levy, the village is also on track to having a fully-accredited police department by the end of the year.    

“That’s our goal, to be fully accredited, and it hasn’t happened. We have not been in the past, and you don’t see that much in the smaller villages but we really want to be that and we really want to be premier,” she says.

The levy currently costs the owner of a $100,000 home $150 a year, or $12.50 per month. 

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