SUNBURY — Sunbury Police Chief Timothy Miller has gone from part-time to full-time. Monday night at the Sunbury City Council meeting, Mayor David Persing announced that January 9, the chief will no longer be administrative, “He is still an administrative officer but you are going to see more of him and he now could be out on the street making arrests as far as that goes, and like I said he will be more in the community as far as promoting the police department itself.”
The city council also passed their 2017 budget with no tax increase; this is the second year in a row the city has not had to raise taxes. The mayor said a full-time police officer position was cut from the budget and as well as the amount of money set aside for legal expenses, “We are proud to announce we have no tax increase whatsoever. I cut down a lot of legal expenses hoping that this thing would be done by the end of the year with arbitration, because the last two years have just been horrible with legal expenses. There was about $115,000 with mine alone, we cut that in half and that’s how we afford to pay the chief.”
There is still enough money in the budget to hire a full-time officer to replace one of the two officers the department lost this year. Mayor Persing has confirmed that the officer on suspension is in fact Corporal Jamie Quinn. Chief Miller said he expects the department will know more about the investigation after the holidays. (Sarah Benek)
