By Jim Newell
Managing Editor
OXFORD TWP. — Voters in Oxford Township will have one millage proposal to consider on the Aug. 6 primary election ballot: a new millage to support the operations of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Oxford substation.
“We’ve been extremely happy with the job they’ve been doing,” township Supervisor Jack Curtis said. “A township policing area is 36 square miles, versus some of the village areas that are just over one mile. And our economies have been very good to us. The growth (in the township) is increasing the demand on our sheriff’s office.”
The Oxford Township Board of Trustees voted 6-0 on April 10 to approve the ballot language for the proposed Police Operating Millage, which is 4.25 mills for four years, 2025 through 2029, and would be levied on all taxable property in the township. A property with a taxable value of $100,000 would be annually taxed up to $425 for the millage, according to the ballot language.
The proposed millage replaces the current 3.9152 mills that voters approved in 2020, which has been reduced to 3.8091 mills by Headlee rollbacks. The current millage expires in December.
If approved, the millage would allow the township to fund police services, including all operations, wages, benefits, housing and capital expenditures, according to the ballot language. The township estimates that it would collect $4.468 million in the first year.
The millage will not be levied on property in the Village of Oxford, which has its own police department.
“The community has always supported us extremely well. I hope over the years we’ve done a good job of communicating that.,” said Oakland County Sheriff’s Lt. Scott Patterson, commander of the Oxford Township substation. “They see what we do, and it’s very transparent. These things aren’t wants; they’re needs. I think they see that we apply those needs appropriately.”
The Oxford substation currently has 24 law enforcement officers. In December, the township added two patrol officers and a second sergeant so that a command officer can be available for each shift. There are two dedicated school resource officers, one at Oxford High School and one at Oxford Middle School. When school is out, those resource officers patrol the community.
In addition to the public safety services provided directly by the Oxford deputies and officers, the Oxford substation has access to other resources from the sheriff’s office, including K9 units, a search and rescue team, helicopters, computer crimes experts, a marine unit, a forensic science lab, the crash reconstruction unit, the fugitive apprehension unit and reserve officers.
“Contracting with the sheriff’s office we have 24 deputies here in Oxford, but we have the resources of over 1,200 deputies and reserve officers in Oakland County, and all the other resources of the sheriff’s office,” Curtis said.
Curtis added that the increase in the proposed millage rate is necessary for the increases in the township’s population and the increases that are coming with all the residential and commercial development. Oxford Township’s population is about 23,000 residents, according to July 2023 data estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
And while there are no immediate plans to add more deputies if the millage passes, adding deputies in December and planning for the future are necessary to maintain the level of service the community has come to expect, Curtis and Patterson said.
“Oxford’s such a growing community, you want to meet the needs of the community,” Patterson said, adding that keeping the crime rate down and addressing the needs of a growing population are priorities for the Oxford deputies. “Anybody can look around and see how the community is growing, subdivisions popping up everywhere and businesses everywhere. It’s really a simple mathematical equation that you can’t keep servicing the community and keep that crime level down and keep things safe and attack proactively if you keep doing that with the same amount of officers and never address adding people in a reasonable way. And we’ve always tried to do that.”
The Oxford Township substation handled more than 20,000 calls for service in 2023, and had the highest clearance rate of the 12 sheriff’s office substations in Oakland County. The substation closed 193 of 248 criminal cases, 77.82%, and made 133 arrests, according to statistics from the township.
Patterson said the Oxford deputies and officers also take a proactive approach to community policing that includes patrolling streets, neighborhoods, commercial and industrial areas and being a visible presence in the parks and at community events, which acts as a visible deterrent to would-be criminals.
“We want to get ahead of the game and stop crime before it’s happening and not just track down someone after the fact,” he said.