Chapter 4: Consulting

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

We slept late Tuesday morning and then unpacked and sorted our laundry. Then Kelly left, to take the dry cleaning out and pick up some groceries. She got home just a few minutes before my parents returned with our offspring. Kelly’s folks had taken the kids for most of the previous week, but at the end of the week mine had taken them down to Pensacola. Grandpa and Grandma owned a vacation home down there and allowed family to use it. It was a small two-bedroom bungalow a few miles from the beach, so it hadn’t cost them an arm and a leg back when they bought it. Now it was worth quite a bit more.

It was a five-hour drive from Pensacola back to Matucket, six if you counted potty breaks, lunch, and walking Boxie. You could hear them arriving long before the thundering herd barged through the door. “Mommy! Mommy! You’re back! You’re back!” cried both Riley and Seamus.

I looked at my wife. “What am I, chopped liver?” I grabbed my daughter and picked her up and turned her upside down.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Riley squealed until I turned her right-side up and put her down. Seamus saw me coming for him and scampered down the hall. I played with Boxie next, but once he settled down, he jumped onto the couch and went to sleep.

“How was the cruise?” asked Dad.

“It was good. Fun. You ought to take one someday. You and Mom can work on that second heart attack.”

“Grim!” protested Mom, as Dad laughed.

Kelly laughed, too. “Grim, I don’t think they’re up for the evening show.”

“Ye Gods, no! They’d never survive!” I agreed.

“What evening show?” asked my mother.

I grinned and looked around. The kids were off in their bedrooms, so I turned back to my parents. “I don’t want to get too graphic, since I know about your sensibilities.” Dad snorted and rolled his eyes. “One night we were sitting out on the balcony and the next-door neighbors decided to get frisky, and they got very frisky. Very!”

Mom and Dad looked over at Kelly, who was nodding and blushing. “Really?” asked Mom.

Kelly answered, “Really! And they were loud about it, too, very descriptive. When they were finished, everybody in the cabins around them began applauding.”

“Good Lord!” She looked at Dad, who was grinning. “Forget it!” He just tried to look innocent, though he didn’t quite pull it off.

I called Terry Hollister the end of the week to set up an appointment for the following Tuesday. I had spent quite a bit of time writing down ideas and questions during the cruise, at least when Kelly wasn’t using me for carnal release. (Okay, so I wasn’t exactly complaining about that. I figured I could rest when we got home, and we had the kids around to distract her.) We talked a bit more and then I typed up my questions.

Tuesday my appointment was for early afternoon, so I left the house early in the morning. It was a bit over a three-hour drive from Matucket to Bethel Hollow, so I’d have a chance to grab some lunch when I got there. I packed a bag with some clothing since I was probably going to need to stay the night. I also brought with me a contract. I called Mike Crowley after we got home and quizzed him about consulting and how the contracts worked. He told me not to be hesitant about charging a high price, and that the people I was working for needed to pay expenses. He gave me a few ideas about that, and I jotted them down. My basic fee was going to be ten grand, ten kay, $10,000. For that I would give them a formal report with my suggestions and recommendations specified in detail.

The plan was that I would visit for a day or two and then go home, to start working on my initial draft. I would probably need to return once or twice, and then I would submit a final proposal. With something involving what was essentially a new department, I would probably be required to report to the local politicians. After that, we’d have to see. It was entirely possible that I would be asked back to help implement the changes required. If so, that would necessitate a new contract. It was also possible they might not even read the report. It might just be a legal requirement that they get a second opinion when they had already decided something else. In that case just smile, cash the check, and move on.

Terry Hollister turned out to be a nice guy. He was in his late forties, a little soft around the center, and with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. We spent some time getting to know each other and then got down to brass tacks. For one thing, this was to be a real report. While the municipal consultants had their own police consultants on tap, the county commission wasn’t buying their schtick, not completely anyway. They had started getting some independent costs on the school consolidation and construction costs, and they had learned that the consultants were low-balling everything by a wide margin. He didn’t bat an eye at my contract, which made me think I hadn’t charged enough. Then again, maybe it was a good idea not to overcharge on my first contract; that might interfere with obtaining a second contract.

Afterwards we got in a cruiser and drove over to East Bethel to meet his counterpart. Chief of Police Andrew Stickle was not as accommodating as Hollister, probably because no matter what happened, he was not going to be the guy in charge. That got into the politics of the situation. Bethel Hollow was half again larger than East Bethel, and the police forces were in a similar situation. Fortunately for Terry Hollister, Bethel Hollow was the county seat, and he was well known to the commission. It had already been decided that he was going to be the chief of the new Bethel County Police Department. Stickle was going to be kept around as the new deputy chief, the number two in the new department. How that was going to work wasn’t clear; Stickle obviously wanted the top spot.

That took us most of the afternoon, after which we drove to Jonestown and looked over what passed for a police station, a converted one-bedroom house trailer out back of the Jonestown Central School. The bedroom had been converted to a holding cell of sorts, though in most cases if they had a prisoner, they simply called the state troopers to take him or her away. According to Hollister, the Tennessee staties were looking for a better Bethel County PD to take over the load they had been carrying in the eastern part of the county.

At the hotel that night, I called Kelly and the kids, then cranked up my laptop and started working on some of the questions I had. I was already starting to figure out a vision for how to sort out Bethel County. I just needed some more details in the morning. Depending on the answers I got, I could see myself checking out and heading home in the late afternoon Wednesday. I needed a lot more information, though.

The biggest items I needed were detailed budgets for the two main departments and detailed TOEs for the departments, Tables of Organization and Equipment. While I wasn’t any sort of budget guru, I wasn’t an idiot either. I had been involved in the budgeting of the MPD Tactical Response Team and knew how a TOE could affect the budget. I started cranking up the Excel spreadsheets.

How fast I would be able to generate my recommendations would depend on how fast I could get the budgets and organization/equipment lists. One thing I was sure of was that nobody was going to be saving any money. Even without the hard numbers I couldn’t see any way that they would be able to keep everybody currently employed on a combined force at the same pay rates and still cut enough other costs to be able to save money.

Wednesday morning, I returned to the BHPD. Hollister was able to provide me their budget, which I both copied and scanned into a pdf file. A TOE proved more difficult, simply because it was in bits and pieces. They were able to open their accounting package and we printed out their capital acquisition accounts and depreciation schedules. That would at least give me a start on capital budgeting. Payroll accounting was even more helpful since individual paycheck and benefits costs were listed. Suddenly I wished I had an accountant handy. Oh, well.

After that, we drove over to East Bethel. Chief Stickle wasn’t as accommodating, stating he didn’t really have the time to do these things, and the numbers involved were confidential and couldn’t be divulged to outsiders. Like me. I had already signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement with the BHPD, but that didn’t count for the EBPD. I kept my mouth shut and stepped out of the room while Hollister started calling the county commission. About an hour later I began to get some of the information needed. I didn’t get it all, but he promised to email it to me as soon as he got it. That would have to do. I drove back to Matucket, arriving home about half an hour after the kids went to bed.

Kelly was waiting up for me. She was wearing a long bathrobe and came up to me, wrapping herself around me and giving me a kiss. “It’s good to have you home,” she told me.

“I’d be home earlier if I knew the kind of welcome I’d be getting,” I replied.

Kelly laughed. “You’re home early all the time! You’re unemployed, remember?”

“I’m not unemployed. I’m self-employed. There’s a difference.”

“Po-tay-to, po-taht-o,” she laughed. I smacked her on the butt. “Have you eaten yet?” she asked.