It’s been nearly two decades since the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department bought a new boat for patrolling county waters, search and rescue efforts, and recovery cases.
That may change soon.
Dana Ritchie, office manager, presented the case for a new boat to the public safety committee May 6. The committee agreed to forward the request to the capital improvement projects committee for consideration.
Ritchie said the current boat was purchased in 2010. It was bought with a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources grant that reimbursed the county for the cost of the boat over the next five years.
The money now rests in a designated boat replacement fund, but nothing has been added to the fund since then. The balance of about $18,000 is far short of the projected cost of $71,500 for a new boat.
“Prices have gone up quite a bit,” she said. “There’s no extra funds that go into (the) replacement fund.”
Sheriff George Lenzner said money should probably have been set aside each year for replacing the boat, but replacing squad cars was a higher priority. Even then, those costs were often cut from the county budget instead of cutting staff.
Being forced to replace several old squads at once led the county to create a vehicle replacement fund that resulted in new squads every four years and new administrative vehicles every six years. Lenzner and Ritchie said something similar should be considered for the boat.
Ritchie said quotes are in from dealers in Shawano and Appleton. The boat and its trailer have a trade-in value of $8,500, she said.
“If we don’t do this, we have a 2010 (boat) that’s going to depreciate out and have no trade-in value,” she said.
Lenzner said the boat will be used much more in the future that it has been in the past several years.
“They’ll be used a lot more in the future, too, because the DNR did purchase us Sea-Doos, also, but the program is going away, so we won’t have those in another year or two,” he said.
The DNR reimburses the county for up 80 hours of wages when deputies patrol the waters, but Lenzner said a couple of lake associations want more patrol time.
“We’re also going to be working with the Shawano Lake association and Cloverleaf, because they’re always requesting more than the hours that we have available,” Lenzner said. “They’re going to be paying wages, also, to have officers out there are critical times for them.”
The Cloverleaf Lakes group has done this a few years, and Shawano Lake will add it in 2026.
“As you know, in the summer with the tourists, we have a lot of boat traffic and a lot of complaints to follow up on,” the sheriff said. “And the DNR just doesn’t have the manpower to do that, so we concentrate on the people out waterskiing and stuff. That gives the DNR more time to focus on just the fishing-related incidents out there.”
The lake associations will pay the county $90 per hour for additional patrol.
Lenzner said the department is required to have the boat for search and rescue and recovery efforts. Ironically, it is not required to patrol and enforce boating laws.
“It’s not a requirement that we go out there and enforce the laws, but we do, do that; otherwise, it’s just going to be total chaos out there,” he said.
