On August 9th Goodhue Police Chief Josh Smith unexpectedly resigned his position with the city of Goodhue. Two days later the remaining full time officer and five part-time officers also turned in their resignation. At a meeting the following week when the Goodhue city council had planned to meet to discuss pay raises for the police department they were approving the resignations of all city officers. The event caused a flurry of national news coverage in many media outlets.
The Goodhue council members were quite surprised at the turn of events as they had approved a $13,000 raise for the police chief along with a 5% raise for the rest of the officers. The police chief’s reason for the abrupt resignation was that of pay inequity and he subsequently took a position with the Lake City police department. The remaining officers stated that they resigned as well because they were working more out of loyalty to the chief. The chief claimed that the city was paying officers $22.00 per hour while the county and surrounding communities were paying at least $10.00 per hour above that amount.
As of August 24th the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Department took over patrol in the city as the city council approved a contract with the county through the end of the year for six hours daily of patrol for $335.00 per day. The city council stated their intention to rebuild the local police department at a future date.
