ShareThisGlenn Beck Day in Mount Vernon, Wash. was an expensive lesson for this small town, as it found out the cost of hosting a controversial celebrity.
It's on the hook for $17,748.85, mostly for 239 hours of police overtime.
Isn't that a little steep for a one-day event?
"Honestly, I'm a bit surprised at how big the cost was," says Alicia Huschka, the town's finance director.
Well, says Ken Bergsma, the town's police chief, better to be prepared than not.
The chief says the crowd of 800 to 1,000 demonstrators that greeted Beck for his early-evening appearance on Sept. 26 was the biggest protest he's seen in his 32 years as a Mount Vernon police officer.
Bergsma says he told the city council, "I'd rather be before you justifying the cost of the staffing involved, as opposed to being before you to explain why it was underplanned and understaffed."
From the chief's perspective, there was reason for concern.
The town got the full Internet and media treatment after Mayor Bud Norris decided to present its famous son with the ceremonial key to the city.
Beck grew up in Mount Vernon, and he landed an on-air job as a teenager at Seattle's KUBE-FM doing graveyard shifts after sending in an audition tape. After later stints as a Top-40 "Morning Zoo" disc jockey at other stations, Beck evolved into his current anti-government, populist, outraged persona who called President Barack Obama a racist.
The reaction to the mayor honoring Beck, says Bergsma, is that the town got 3,000 e-mails, plus some phone calls. The police chief says his department assigned one officer to review all those responses.
Bergsma says one anonymous phone call, which couldn't be traced; and one e-mail, which was traced, "were alarming, with indications of threats." He doesn't want to give more specifics.
From all those comments, says the chief, "We determined we'd have a minimum of 500 people at this event."
Then he calculated that overtime would run about $4,400. Eventually, 38 law-enforcement people were involved, including officers from neighboring towns, as well as the State Patrol and Skagit County Sheriff's Office. As part of an agreement in which jurisdictions in the area share police help, officers from other jurisdictions were not paid by Mount Vernon, but from their own agencies' budgets. Those sums have not been added up.
All that law-enforcement presence accounted for some of the other expenditures.
In case of arrests, there was $100.25 for flex cuffs, those plastic, disposable restraints. There was $243.46 for radio batteries, and $438.21 for that orange-net safety fencing. And there was $324.57 for easel pads and Post-it notes for use in a command post.
In the end, the crowds were loud but well behaved. There was plenty of shouting and waving of signs, but that was about it. Only one person was arrested, for disorderly conduct.
So the two Mount Vernon firefighters who each worked three hours overtime didn't have much to do. But the Fire Department bill of $848.67 for that day also included 13 hours overtime from its public-information officer, whom the city used for the event.
In any case, the police now have a good supply of flex cuffs.
E-mail reporter Erik Lacitis at elacitis(at)seattletimes.com
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com)
Must credit The Seattle Times
