JANESVILLE — The Rock River is slowly receding into its banks.
But overtime for public officials continues to add up.
As of Wednesday, Rock County had spent $260,500 on equipment and overtime to deal with flooding. That number will keep getting bigger, county department heads said.
The city of Janesville still was working on collecting overtime numbers, administrative analyst Peter Riggs said. But it was safe to say parks and public works department employees worked lots of overtime battling the Rock River.
The Janesville police department logged 400 hours of overtime at a cost of $22,000 between June 14 and 19, Deputy Chief Steve Kopp said.
The biggest expenses for county government were buying sandbags and paying overtime to sheriff’s deputies and public works employees, according to a June 25 report from Assistant Administrator Phil Boutwell.
The county department of public works spent $77,799 on overtime and equipment, according to the report. The department spent an additional $43,800 on repairs and water control on County KK and the Indianford Dam.
Sandbags cost the county $52,650, and that was “just the beginning,” Emergency Management Coordinator Shirley Connors said.
When Connors talked to The Janesville Gazette on Thursday morning, she still hadn’t seen all the invoices for sand and bags.
Emergency management spent $3,700 on equipment, including coolers and sun canopies for Wisconsin National Guardsmen deployed in the county from June 19 to June 23.
The point of bringing in the Guard was to reduce sheriff’s office overtime, Sheriff Bob Spoden said. And it did free up deputies to leave safety checkpoints and get back to regular patrols, he said.
But the overtime still piled up.
Spoden said Thursday the department spent $71,285 on overtime for deputies as of June 26. That was already $20,000 more than the number Boutwell reported the day before while he prepared to give the Federal Emergency Management Agency a tour of the county.
FEMA workers were in Rock County on Thursday to assess damage to public property such as bridges and roads.
The sheriff’s office’s goal was to maintain a strong presence in flooded areas, Spoden said.
“That served two purposes,” Spoden said. “It offered a little bit of comfort and security to those affected and acted as a deterrent for those who see this as an opportunity to loot or scam people.”
The county provided some workers at no cost. Jail inmates in Community RECAP filled sandbags and built retaining walls for nine days straight, Spoden said.
What he’ll remember from his tours of the flood is the uplifting sight of neighbors, volunteers and inmates working alongside each other.
“You had an event that probably will never occur again in our lifetime,” Spoden said. “The commitment of neighbors to help each other—that’s the thing we can take from this dark cloud, from the sadness and the property destruction. That’s something you can’t put a price on.”
FLOOD OF EXPENSES
Overtime and other expenses incurred by Rock County for flooding response through Wednesday (numbers rounded to the nearest hundred):
-- Department of public works: $121,500
-- Emergency management: $57,000
-- Rock County Communications Center: $6,300
-- Sheriff’s office: $64,400
-- Planning department: $4,600
-- Public health: $6,700
Source: Rock County Administrator’s Office