Quincy Police Department to host town hall panel

QUINCY — The Quincy Police Department will host its first town hall meeting for the year on Jan. 29 at 6 p.m. at Faith Community Church, 1005 10th Ave. SW. For this town hall meeting, the department has invited three community agencies to join them for a panel style meeting.

Quincy School District superintendent John Boyd, Quincy Valley Medical Center administrator Glenda Bishop and Pat Haley, city administrator for the City of Quincy, will join Quincy Police Chief Kieth Siebert. The theme for the evening will be the health and wellness of the Quincy community.

“We all have the same goal,” Siebert said. “I thought it would be a good idea to have all of us together.”

Siebert said that while he has a means of communicating with the community, the others on the panel don’t. In the past, the police department has typically held six town hall-style meetings a year. In 2019, Siebert did Coffee with a Cop, a kind of impromptu coffee gathering where he and other police officers would meet with community members and answer questions.

“It was a good time to talk and learn more about each other,” Siebert said. “We may get two people; we may get 15. It is just a conversation.”

Going forward, Siebert would like to continue to do a mix of town hall meeting and Coffee with a Cop, as well as other community events. He would also like to continue including other community agencies in the town hall meetings.

“We are just trying to be a good partner in the community,” Siebert said.

Boyd will be talking about the completion of the bond to renovate the schools in the district and the building of the new high school. He will also be sharing how the district has improved the safety and security of its buildings through renovations and the education that both staff and students have received on how to deal with a major crisis, if one should happen in their school.

For the hospital, Bishop will be sharing about how the hospital works with the fire department and EMS services. She will also be talking about the support the hospital has received from community leaders.

Haley will give attendees a “state of the city” address. He will talk about the 2020 budget and where money is being spent. He will also give a look back at what the city has accomplished during the last 10 years.

Each panelist will be given approximately 15 minutes to speak. Questions will be taken at the end of the meeting.

For those not able to attend, the event will be livestreamed on the Quincy Police Department’s Facebook book page.