Reflecting on the past and preparing for the future

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The first time I heard that phrase was from a teacher when I was a teenager. It has always stuck with me and often when I wake up, that phrase still comes to mind.

Throughout your entire life, you make decisions that create your past. You live through circumstances that are beyond your control and you make the best that you can from those circumstances. Some things in life you cannot control but each day you are given on this earth to live is still a new day, a new canvas, and you are the painter.

I try not to get caught up too much in the idea of making New Year’s resolutions because a new resolution can be done at any time. Why wait? But there is still something about starting a new year that makes you want to think about new ideas and what this world will bring with the coming year.

Each year we try and identify areas that we can improve and work on plans to make those ideas a reality. At the Sheriff’s Office there are many different areas that we work on for making improvements. Training, equipment, programs in the jail, programs in the community, technology, etc. When we are about to start a new year with new ideas and goals, I also like to look at the past year to see what can be built from, and what has been learned.

Over the past year, we have worked to make improvements in the area of training by sending staff to instructor schools, so they can teach many of our classes in-house. We created and hosted our first Jail Academy that has already proven to be a great success (and which currently has a 100 percent retention rate), and we have extended our Field Training Officer program from the road to the jail.

Within the Sheriff’s Office we employ deputies, detention officers, dispatchers, investigators, a bailiff, a school resource officer, maintenance workers, kitchen staff and administrative staff; and we will be ending this year completely staffed!

Working with the county commissioners this year, we were able to increase the pay for the jail staff and will began working towards increasing the pay for the deputies in 2018. We said goodbye to our last Crown Victoria, we re-assigned staff to add another deputy patrol unit, and we were able to make the final payment on the new transport van that we were able to pay for from our commissary account and not from county tax dollars. Three employees that started with us this year made Vernon County their home by moving their families into our community, and we again exceeded the record income for the jail by bringing more than $1 million into Vernon County from outside communities.

As we consider this coming year, I am again excited to see what we can accomplish and how we can continue to improve the many areas within the Sheriff’s Office. There is always room to improve and there can never be enough training and preparation. We prepare for the worst and hope for the best, we learn from the past so we can improve in the future, and each day we will live like it is the first day of the rest of our lives.

The staff at the Sheriff’s Office would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and remind everyone to be safe and responsible during the New Year holiday season!