Lewiston city manager announces his retirement

Lewiston City Manager Jim Bennett capped off Monday’s marathon three-hour city council work session by announcing that he will retire at the end of the year.

Bennett, 65, came to Lewiston in 2011 after he rose to the top of a pool of five finalists for the job. He previously served as city manager for the cities of Damascus and Newberg in Oregon, and at other posts at municipalities in Oregon, California and Idaho.

He told the council Monday that Lewiston was his favorite place to work.

“This has been the best job I’ve ever had,” Bennett said.

He gave the council so much advance notice of his retirement so it would have ample time to go through the recruitment process for a replacement. Finding someone who can perform the varied duties of a city manager can be challenging, he added, and he offered to assist the council however he could.

Bennett replaced John C. “Jay” Krauss, who was fired by the city council in 2010. After he steps down, Bennett said he and his wife Shannon will continue to live in Lewiston, and will stay involved with the city and take advantage of opportunities to serve the community.

In other business:

Lewiston Police Department systems coordinator Rick Thanstrom gave a detailed proposal to supply the department with body cameras, vehicle cameras, interview room cameras, Tasers and unlimited cloud data storage and management for the next five years.

The cost of the program over the life of the contract would be almost $300,000, but Thanstrom said that cost would be more than offset by avoiding the costs of the department buying and maintaining its own data storage, Tasers and other infrastructure necessary to make a comprehensive system work.

Police Chief Chris Ankeny said he recently had to pull 14 of the department’s 29 Tasers from service because they no longer are supported by the manufacturer. Officers are now sharing the remaining Tasers by checking them out when they come on duty. Having new Tasers included in the contract will solve that problem, he said.

Equipment will be replaced by the Taser company after two and a half years and five years, Thanstrom said. The department’s 13 car-mounted cameras and two body cameras from Watchguard are nearing the end of their life and starting to fail, he added. The system’s software also is problematic because videos are hard to manage and locate, putting active prosecutions and civil litigations at risk.

Ankeny said he can apply a $35,000 U.S. Department of Justice Grant to the comprehensive Taser system this year, leaving $27,000 left to pay on initial implementation. Ankeny said he has that money in his current budget, and could apply a similar amount in subsequent years.

Additional funds would have to be appropriated by the council in future budgets to cover the entire cost of the system, however. City Administrative Services Supervisor Dan Marsh said he will explore whether the city could use sole-source procurement regulations for the contract, or whether it should be put out for bids.