By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
ssoldan@mihomepaper.com
Brandon Twp. — During the regular meeting on Monday night, the Brandon Township Board of Trustees approved the 2025-2027 Oakland County law enforcement services agreement, school resource officer addendum, and the SRO contract with Brandon Schools 5-2. Trustees Bob Marshall and Steve Unruh voted against the contract approval.
“These are essentially the same as they have been in past years, just added some stuff for the SRO, which is in here,” said Supervisor Jayson Rumball. “The schools now have to pay a dollar per student on top of the SRO fees that go into some fund managed by the board of commissioners, they call it the police fund.”
On top of the additional SRO fees that the school is responsible for, the police contract through Brandon Township will be increasing 37% over the contracted years.
In November, the Oakland County Board of Commissioners approved in a 10-9 vote the 2025-27 rates for contracted services from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office for their 12 municipalities.
“If we want to maintain services, we’ll have to do some things in 2026 and 2027,” said Rumball. “We are currently fine for 2025. After that, we may have to make some tough decisions.”
Rumball also said the contract allows them to reduce staff if needed. The contract raised some questions among the board members on what the cost would be to start a police force separate from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office substation the township currently has.
“Most of Oakland County has their own police department,” said Unruh. “Most of the county commissioners don’t know Brandon Township. We do. We can offer better.”
The 2025 police budget is just over $3 million for Brandon Township, and the current police millage is through 2028. The SRO position is also partially covered by Brandon Schools.
“For the price of one SRO, you can put in three retired police officers for the price of one SRO into the schools,” said Unruh.
Other board members agreed it was something they could look into, though the township would still need to contract Oakland County for certain things, such as dispatch services.
“We can look into anything, but I don’t think the community would support that, personally,” said Rumball. “I know we did have our own police department at one point and we went away from it to county.”
The board members agreed to look into the cost of starting and running a township police department before the 2025-2027 contract expires.
The hike in public safety costs from Oakland County is the second in the past year.
In April, both Groveland and Brandon townships board of trustees approved three year Fire Dispatch Service Agreements with Oakland County.
Similar to previous agreements, individual municipality costs will increase or decrease based on the average number of 911 calls over the last three years. And while the rate reflects increased personnel costs for salaries and associated fringe benefits, the agreement also includes a new 7.5% indirect cost as required by the Oakland County Board of Commissioners. Both boards grappled with the purpose of the additional costs now placed on local taxpayers of Oakland County.
On March 11, the Groveland Township Board of Trustees voted 5-0 to approve the Fire Dispatch Service Agreement. The costs will jump from $35,099 to $41,275 for 2024-25, then increase by 3% to $42,517 for 2025-26 and another 3% to $43,791 for 2026-27.
On April 1, the Brandon Township Board of Trustees voted 6-1 to also approve the Fire Dispatch Service Agreement. The yearly rate jumped from $46,953 to $60,526 for 2024-25, then increased by 3% to $62,348 for 2025-26 and another 3% to $64,215 for 2026-27.
Oakland County Commissioner Board Chairperson David Woodward (D) responded to The Citizen newspaper regarding the cost hikes.
“We are able to provide exemplary dispatch services to local communities at a cost less than if the service was provided by the local community themselves,” said Woodward. “We are glad to continue the partnership.”
“The cost for these services includes all direct and indirect costs associated with delivery of the service,” he said. “The indirect costs are calculated by a third party on an annual basis and includes non labor costs necessary to carry out dispatch operations such as facility, technology, and direct administrative services. The total fee only recovers the true cost of the service.”
Bob Hoffman (R), Oakland County commissioner District 7 which includes Groveland and Brandon townships said they were blind sided by the increase.
“The only way the commissioners learned about this hike was when the village managers and supervisors started calling us and asking questions,” said Hoffman. “Rather than telling us ahead of time they just sent the letter with the Fire Dispatch Service agreement out to the communities. Two or three of us commissioners voted to implement the increase however make that change over time, it’s a big hike all at once for the small municipalities.”