CACHE — Cache is starting the search for a new police chief to replace outgoing Police Chief Rickey Snider, who resigned earlier this month.
The Cache City Council voted unanimously April 10 to accept Snider’s resignation and appoint Zachariah Phelps as interim police chief. However, the council did not act on a proposal authorizing Mayor Scott Brown to sign an executive search agreement with Oklahoma Municipal Management Services for recruiting a new police chief.
The city could expect to pay a $12,000 professional service fee if OMMS were hired, said Mayor Scott Brown. He said the organization would also charge the following fees:
• Up to $2,000 to cover expenses.
• Approximately $375 in travel costs for each visit to Cache.
• An additional placement fee of $3,000.
“If I had half a million dollars to play with, then by all means I would be 100 percent for this,” Brown said. “But that’s a lot of money.”
Brown said city officials are looking at other recruitment tools, such as posting the opening on the Council on Law Enforcement Education’s website.
But the city faces some obstacles to hiring police officers, including the size of the police department and the salaries the city can afford to pay officers.
Brown said he was not sure how to proceed, so he put the OMMS item on the agenda so the rest of the council could weigh in. He added that he would go along with whatever the council decided.
“If council wants to go that route, I’m going to support them 100 percent,” he said. “If they don’t want to go that route, I’m going to support them 100 percent.”