Pierce County Journal: Van Orden visits River Falls Police Department to discuss federal funding for emergency communication upgrades

RIVER FALLS — U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R – Prairie du Chien) visited the River Falls Police Department on May 5 to join Police Chief Gordon Young and Fire Chief Justin Wilson in discussing $431,183 in federal Community Project Funding (CPF) for the modernization of emergency communication systems.

“I think these CPFs, these Community Project Fundings, is the most efficient constitutional way for us to expend funds,” Van Orden said. “As opposed to a bunch of people in Washington D.C. telling the mayor and chiefs what they need, they come to us and then we do the paperwork back in Congress to get the funding.”

The funding will go toward replacing the radio system, including the fixed radios at the emergency service hubs as well as 65 portable radios, providing new antennas and software that will have better connections.

“Just because we live in small communities doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have world class public safety agencies,” Van Orden said. “I’m very proud to be able to help out River Falls.”

Young said the previous system struggled inside of buildings, and improvements will especially benefit the schools including the River Falls School District, UW-River Falls and Chippewa Valley Technical College.

“It’s really a change of communication, able to communicate in areas of our city where we couldn’t before. It’s officer safety, fireman safety and EMS safety networks that we’re going to be able to build that we couldn’t in the past,” Young said. “We have difficulty with radio traffic inside of buildings, and now that we have this new funding, it’s going to support and pay for it all so that the radio frequency will get into the buildings.”

Van Orden spoke about the importance of public safety, saying it ranks only behind nationwide clean water in terms of his local funding priorities.

“It’s about the only thing that I like about this job. Everybody hates career politicians until you find someone in politics that hates politics. I despise politics, I love helping my constituents. It is actually very, very rewarding,” Van Orden said. “What I like about these projects is that they’re apolitical. If your house is on fire, you don’t call the station and say send me a Democrat or a Republican fireman or woman, you don’t do that. And they show up regardless of what your political affiliation is. We’ve got to get back to that. We’re so polarized right now; it’s just got to stop. We’ve got to remember that we are Americans first.

“These are the things that the government should be doing. We should be doing infrastructure. We should be securing our borders. We should be making sure that the military is protecting us. This falls directly into that core,” Van Orden said.

Young said the support from the city staff, community and now the federal government have made an immense impact on the department.

“It’s a wonderful place to work. I’ve said this to the mayor recently, this is the utopia of municipalities,” Young said. “There’s no other community like this. The support that we have here with our community, our City Council, our mayor and especially our city administrator, it means the world to us. It’s nice to be able to come into work and know you’re appreciated and have most of the tools that you need. If not, there’s plans for it to come.”

Young said RFPD is on the lookout to add one more officer, and the continued improvement of their tools is a beneficial draw to new staff.