07/29/2025 Commissioners Meeting [20:53-25:54]

That was an arrangement between the city of Betford and NLCS, even though the school was in the county, and the county is the sheriff's primary jurisdiction. Everything about the SRO program is working really well. In 2023, not too long after I became sheriff, the Mitchell SRO, he stepped down from that position, went into the private sector, and there was no Mitchell SRO anymore. And at that time, the Mitchell Police Department was extremely short-handed. We were actually covering most of the calls in Mitchell at the time, because they just did not have the officers, they did not have the ability to provide an SRO to Mitchell schools. The superintendent and one of the board members reached out to me back then, and we talked about the different ways that a school can have a school resource officer. One of those being a school's start-through and police force. Number two, police agency assigns someone there as an SRO. Number three, a school can hire their own employee that then becomes a special deputy and a school resource officer by the sheriff. As we discussed earlier, the superintendent at the time was not the idea of that SRO being the school's employee, not being the employee of NLC, so that they would have control of that. So that's what we agreed to do. I was taking to the Mitchell School Board. They approved that. We got our former police officer of several years. He was interested in the job. Mitchell School was hiring. I swear in a minute, a special deputy acts as a file of his equipment, training, things like that for free. And the Mitchell Police, they're in the way to be down there. Again, that has worked great for three years. I'm not sure why I was saying any of this is an issue. There's been broken plates, and I feel like Mitchell's been happy with things, and they'll see us some happy things. Canning has been happy with things. But with the retirement of the better police officer who was out of Vienna last year, and bettered stepping away from that role, NLCS is left without a school resource officer at Vienna. We all know Vienna is the biggest school in Lawrence County. It's the biggest gathering of people at any one time, any given day, anywhere in the county. And it's in Lawrence County. It's in the county. It's outside of the city. It's my responsibility to share it and make sure those people are safe out there. And that's what I intend to do. So I worked with NLCS. And at the same time, the county has some budget problems and cuts are happening. And so I took this opportunity to also save the county money, and so you know what, instead of totally losing an officer, and that's not having the main part of protecting everything we need to end the schools, we can assign an officer out there to be a school resource officer. And NLCS agreed to pay $75,000 of that officer salary and benefits. So that's really the only about $12,000 or $13,000 of the salary and benefits. That officer, that basically that amount of money pays for the time that he is a school resource officer. The county pays a little bit, but we get that officer for two and a half months out of the year, where he takes calls and he works the regular road and does the things as in the other officer. So it makes sense that the county would cover that aspect of things. But NLCS is paying the entirety of the salary and benefits over time. All that person is a school resource officer. $75,000 a year. It seems like a new learner, supplying safety and security to me and all, our kids matter, folks that work out there matter, our families in West County matter. It saves the county a large chunk of money, and there's been no other changes, no other changes to how things have been working. As far as payment for NLCS, how much the county is paying and contributing to it anything. I don't understand how this is how it's spiraled into the point that it did to these calls I was getting. So I'm just trying to clarify that. Does the NSR also include the bail zone in paying 50% of it? It's been there years. I thought you just said that there have been no payment from the county that don't have it for three years prior to being an OSR. There have been no money expanded period for that period by the county, correct? For the B&L OSR's position, correct. No money had been expanded by the county.