GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – On Wednesday, state officials announced a nearly $2 million grant that will reimburse several municipalities for security and public safety expenses incurred during the NFL draft.
The city of Green Bay, Brown County, and the village of Ashwaubenon will split the funding, which comes out to $1.8 million in total.
Green Bay police chief Chris Davis said that his department will receive about $538,000 as part of this grant. He said this will help them cover nearly all of the $550,000 in overtime pay they shelled out during the NFL draft.
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“Our overtime budget every year by the end of the year is very tight, and spending almost half of that on one event would have forced us to make some really difficult decisions,” Davis said.
Davis told Local 5 News that there’s about $40,000 worth of NFL draft expenses that the grant didn’t cover. However, he said the department’s operating budget covers these extra expenses.
“This is a huge help for us, obviously, we are very grateful for the state and the governor’s office for securing these funds,” Davis said.
The Green Bay Metro Fire Department received about $423,000 through the grant, which fire chief Matthew Knott said covers most of their costs from the NFL draft.
“(Without this grant) we would have to come up with some solutions to try to figure that out, but we were probably at a point where it wasn’t manageable for us with our budget,” Knott said.
Village of Ashwaubenon officials tell Local 5 News that the cost for the public safety related to the NFL draft was $169,000. They expect this will be reimbursed through the grant.
“We’re extremely grateful for this grant award and for our continued partnership with the State of Wisconsin, the City of Green Bay, and Brown County,” a village official told Local 5 News in an email. “The success of the NFL Draft was due in large part to the strength of our intergovernmental collaboration.”
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A Brown County official said they received about $681,000 from the grant, which covers about 81 percent of their public safety costs during the NFL draft.
Approximately 600,000 people attended the NFL draft across its three days, and there was only one arrest and eight ejections. Public safety officials said these numbers highlight the success of their safety plan during the draft.
“We’re a smaller city, but we can come together and do great things,” Chief Davis told Local 5 News. “This is an example of that. I couldn’t be prouder of our men and women.”
“We’re going to be working with those same partners, we have that planning down, we know who to contact for different things,” Chief Knott said. ”This helps us each and every day with our jobs.”
