ERATH, La. (KLFY) -- Erath citizens will have a chance tomorrow to for a half-cent sales tax to support the police department -- the first one in at least two decades that will go directly to the police force.

Erath Police Chief Anna LaPointe said she has been at the police department for about 20 years. In that time, the police department has never asked for a sales tax, until now.

LaPointe said the sales tax will help the department pay its employees and employee benefits.

She said she went with a half cent sales tax instead of a full cent because she was trying to get the least amount possible -- enough to help fund the department without becoming a financial burden on the town's people.

LaPointe said whether the police department continues as a 24-hour department hinges on their ability to have the police officers and dispatch employees to staff it around the clock. If the police department is not open 24 hours, and closes after certain hours, people in need of police services would have to call a different department before local officers are dispatched.

“...Which would again hinder the service time that it takes for our officers to get to those people. If you think about it, if you call a different department and need police services, that department would then have to call us for us to dispatch our police. With them, calling us directly, our police officers get dispatched immediately to get to their residence. So it cuts down on the wait time for our citizens waiting for the police.” 

The department's response time right now is about two to three minutes per call. Without the funds, the call time could increase by more than 50% because people would have to contact a different department who would then have to contact Erath officers to respond.

“It's taking more time to do that than just contacting us directly and we dispatch our officer to get to you. So that would be one of the major drawbacks to not getting this passed. Not to say that the town couldn’t sustain the funding now, but eventually it's going to get to where the town is going to have to look at some type of cut,” the chief said.

“We just appreciate all our citizens. Erath is a town where our citizens of Erath actually support each other. So it's a great little community. We're not very big, but we do support each other. So we appreciate our citizens here and they actually appreciate us.

So I'm hoping that, you know, they all go ahead and pass the tax to where we can continue serving them in all the ways we serve them now and we don't have to start cutting back on some of those services because we are a small community, you know, but I guess we'll see on Saturday what their decision is," the chief continued.

Voting takes place from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 7.

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