During this past week’s budget meetings in Pella, the council tentatively approved the Police Departments request for a new officer. Chief Robert Bokinsky says there are two issues that will hopefully be resolved with the new hire. First, they only have ten dedicated patrol officers which means if anyone is out for any reason, they are down ten percent of their workforce. Bokinsky adds that the second issue that will be addressed is their lack of a full time investigator. He says that position is very time consuming and without someone doing the job full time, it’s hard to keep continuity on a case. Bokinsky finished by saying that the investigator will be promoted from their staff within, while a new hire will take over their spot on patrol.