GRAND CHUTE, WI (WTAQ) – The Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department could soon move in next to the Timber Rattlers’ stadium.
The possible home in Grand Chute was approved Wednesday by the county’s Space and Security Needs Project Oversight Committee.
Kara Homan, the planning director for Outagamie County, says it will be a much better location for sheriff’s deputies than the current downtown department.
“If they’re at that site and they can get there quicker than being downtown, that’s very important”
Committee members looked at maps of the new location that show the concentration of calls for service from the sheriff’s department. Those helped seal the committee’s unanimous approval.
“It’s intendend to serve the majority of where the calls are happening within a ten minute drive time”
Homan says the design phase for the new department should start in November. Moving quickly will help with the county’s downtown expansion too.
“The quicker we can proceed with the sheriff’s relocation, the quicker we can start remodeling the space that they’re leaving and they’ll also be freeing up some of the parking stalls”
But before any work can go forward, the full county board will need to approve the Casaloma location.
The price tag is estimated to be about $5.5 million. That’s about $2 million more than a previous plan to put the new department in an Appleton location. The county executive vetoed the use of eminent domain in that case.
Still, committee members told us it’s likely the new plan will go forward.
The county’s property and safety committees will both have to approve the new location.
Then the decision will be in the hands of the full county board. A vote is likely to come in September.
