Roger Stonefeld, Minot

As a citizen of Minot I pay attention to the best of my ability on local government issues. Lately I have read in the paper that there are once again talks among our city council of attempting to substantially raise taxes, this time I believe to pay for “first responders.” I suppose being told “No” to higher taxes just a few short months ago by city voters didn’t faze them in trying again.

I have also been following federal politics and looking for opportunities for our community to benefit from the changes occurring there. I have written to our city council, without receiving a response, notifying them that the federal Department of Homeland Security is now offering to pay full salaries, plus overtime, plus benefits, of any police officer enrolled in the 287(g) federal immigration enforcement program.

Every officer that our city enrolls in the program becomes completely free to us as local taxpayers. How can you beat that for city budget savings? The city council complains meeting after meeting that we somehow never have any money and here is an unprecedented opportunity to make an entire city essential service close to free. I don’t think it gets any better from a taxpayer perspective.

DHS is publishing near-weekly lists of participating agencies nationwide and Minot currently is not participating, nor have we made any attempt to do so, according to their records. There is no reason not to do this, as I will remind all readers our state legislature and government passed a comprehensive law mandating all functions of state government fully comply with federal authorities that went into effect last month. So therefore, since we are already required to work with them, how about we have our city council sign us up for 287(g) and get a hefty piece of pie out of it?

I have asked the council to immediately bring this up for action and save us an entire police department’s worth of city budget. In addition to this I write to our local paper and urge fellow citizens to also write to our city council, show up at meetings, and strongly encourage them to engage with this possibility.