QUINCY - Quincy officials want a sales tax increase aimed at funding law enforcement on the ballot in November's election.

Mayor Jim Hemberry brought up the possible 0.3 percent sales tax increase during a recent city council meeting. He plans to attend the commissioner's public comment period at 10:30 a.m. on Monday. The weekly comment periods are held in the commissioners' hearing room on the second floor of the Grant County Courthouse.

"That money would be used, specifically, to deal with issues having to do with crime. Whether that means hiring additional prosecutors or additional deputies or putting together a more permanent and staffed gang task force, I think those are some of the things that would have to be worked out," Hemberry said.

The mayor asked Prosecutor Angus Lee how the county could use the money. Lee attended the council meeting.

"I've always told the county commissioners and any citizen who has ever asked me, when I was in the Marines, we did whatever we could with the resources we had, but we knew if we had more, we could probably do more," Lee said. "That's been my approach to prosecution."

The prosecutor's office conducted 15 trials since January, with convictions in about 12 of them, he said.

"Starting in 2009, there was an explosion in our trial rate. We used to be below the state average, now we're above," he said. "So we are actually doing a lot, more than the state average, with the resources we have."

The county has serious problems it still needs to deal with. Lee pointed to gang issues and high crime and drug rates.

"I can't give you anything concrete, but what I can tell you is there are certainly more effective prosecution that can occur," he said. "There is certainly more warehousing of bad, bad people, and make no mistake that there are bad people in Grant County that the only way to get them to stop from committing crimes is to separate them from the rest of the citizenry."

If the Grant County Jail is constantly overcrowded, then law enforcement has a hard time imprisoning the worst offenders, Lee said. Incarcerating repeat offenders impacts the amount of crime.

Another suggestion Lee made was expanding the gang prosecutor position into a gang prosecution team. The prosecutor's office received a state grant last year, and hired a person for the position.

"Our budget hasn't really gone up, but we've been able to make sacrifices in other places, but even with that, we only have one gang prosecutor," he said.

Gang crime involves juveniles and adults, and includes people committing felonies and misdemeanors, Lee said.

"When you have most gang crimes you're going to have a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 19-year-old and a 20-year-old, and they're going to commit a variety of crimes," he said. "One thing that we were talking about that would be great is have a gang unit inside our office that reached across all levels and worked together, not just one person, who focused on that, but it wasn't really all that they did."

He pointed out the gang members are also committing misdemeanor crimes, and are usually on probation.

"All those gang members are on probation in our district court, but the district court doesn't impose probation violations on a regular basis," Lee said. "They don't even monitor the probation ... So if you're a 19-year-old gang member and you get caught for graffiti and they say, 'Two days in jail, $150 fine and for two years you better stay out of trouble.' That doesn't mean anything, if nobody is making sure if they do something in two years, they go back and put their butts in jail."

The court isn't monitoring the probation violations because they don't have the personnel, he said. The prosecutor's office staff are trying to monitor the violations, but no one is committed to it.

"We just don't have those resources," he said.   

Councilmember Scott Lybbert supported the proposed tax, and agreed to have the mayor go to the council, he said.

"I hope to go and support the mayor in this effort," he said.

Councilmember Jose Saldana suggested the councilmembers make people aware of the possible sales tax increase and the reason for it.