DOBSON—Efforts to hire more cops through a federal grant program failed for the town of Dobson, but officials there said last week it was because of difficulties with the application process online, not anything they had not done.

Through the federal stimulus bill that was recently signed into law nearly $1 billion was dedicated to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Recovery Program to help agencies prevent police layoffs and put new officers on the streets.

The Dobson board of commissioners agreed to apply for the grant in order to add two full-time officers in the police department.

The COPS program, which is operated through the U.S. Department of Justice, requires that all agencies wishing to apply for the grants register, and in turn the agency will receive a password via e-mail. With that password officials can access the online application for the grant from March 16 to April 14.

Marilyn, a representative with the COPS program who declined to give her full name, said that agencies can’t go through with any of the application process without registration and a password. If an agency had previously registered, a new password would be generated and e-mailed to the agency.

She said that Dobson did not appear in the system as having registered.

That is the problem, according to Town Manager Lynn Burcham. After checking with Dobson Police Chief Shawn Meyers, she said the police department did register in March, but never received a password.

Burcham said that Dobson didn’t face any problems when registering, but just never received confirmation or a password, despite repeated attempts to contact the federal agency.

“The general application for the password was very basic with general information about the agency and jurisdiction covered,” she said. “We never received any e-mails or return calls for confirmation of a password before the grant deadline even after e-mailing and calling almost daily.”

The representative with the COPS grant said if the organization is contacted about problems with passwords the correspondence is handled through e-mail. A response including an auto-generated password would be sent to the chief e-mail address provided by the agency, the representative said.

“It’s not necessarily a phone call back, there’s never going to be a call back,” she said.

She said there are two scenarios that could have complicated the application process: Registering late and not having a password.

She said during the application period of March 16-April 14, the organization accepted more than 7,000 applications and handled more than 200 calls a day.

“You had to be alert enough to know what to do when the grant came out,” she said. “You had to register. The last week of registration, hundreds of people were calling, people waited to the last minute.” The representative said if an agency waited to the last minute to register, it could complicate the timeliness of receiving a password.

But Dobson officials said the town was well within guidelines when applying at the end of last month.

Following the April 14 deadline agencies who were unable to apply or register were given the option to write a letter explaining “how they felt like the system failed (them) or any other extenuating circumstances,” but the deadline to write such a letter was April 17.

Burcham said Dobson took advantage of the option, although even then federal officials did not inform the town of this last-chance option until nearly too late.

“We were not aware of this until Kathryn McQuay form the COPS office contacted us on Friday, April 17 and asked us to write a letter detailing the problems we had and that it had to be there by 5 p.m. on the April 17,” she said Tuesday. “The police chief did write a letter and we sent it in on Friday April 17 and have not heard back from it, but it has only been two days.”

Hiring additional full-time officers on its own budget is not an realistic option for Dobson at this time, Burcham said.

“The police chief has requested two additional officers in next fiscal year’s budget, but at this time we do not have the funds available to fill the request,” she said.

If awarded the grant would have provided 100-percent funding for approved entry-level salaries and benefits for three years for newly hired, full-time sworn officer positions or for rehired officers who have been laid off, or are scheduled to be laid off on a future date, as a result of local budget cuts.

Part-time officers are eligible, and the grant would have allowed those employed at the Dobson Police Department to take on full-time positions for at least 36 months.

Contact Erin C. Perkins at eperkins@mtairynews.com or 719-1952.