News

County may scrap SRO cost-sharing with city, escalating feud

By Bill Moss, Published: May 18, 2024

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners has scrapped an agreement that supported the cost of Hendersonville police as school resource officers at the four county schools in the city.

Amid growing tension over water-sewer extensions and higher density growth along the city’s border, commissioners pulled the $250,000 payment they had been making for several years to offset the cost of fulltime SROs at Bruce Drysdale and Hendersonville elementary schools, Hendersonville Middle School and Hendersonville High School.

The surprise move is likely to cost the county more than $700,000.

“From the city's perspective, all students that go to schools in Hendersonville are county residents and should get the same level of protection as everybody else in the county,” City Manager John Connet said. “If the commissioners choose not to fund our SROs we’ll turn that responsibility over to the county.”

After county commissioners and administrators began getting calls Monday about the county board's budget discussion, county communications director Mike Morgan reached out to the Lightning to insist that the matter is far from settled.

“Nothing's been decided," he said. "This is just part of our budget workshop. It is something there’s been a lot of back and forth on between the city and county. There’s no final word. … Commissioners are committed to make sure there are resource officers in the schools.”

When Commissioner Bill Lapsley brought up the deletion of the county's $250,000 cost-sharing payment to the city, no commissioner suggested that the money ought to be restored. During the board's budget workshop on Wednesday, Lapsley asked Sheriff Lowell Griffin whether his office could provide SROs in the four schools.

 “I've had concerns about the county officers taking over the city schools just because I want to make sure that the children have an opportunity to interact with folks that may be serving their community,” Griffin said. “So I just want it known I'm not up here lobbying to take that over. However, I do think that, if this is something that we were going to do, now is the time to do it.”

He urged the board to “make that decision sooner rather than later because it would allow me some time for hiring and what we call field training (required) before they were actually deployable in a school.”

The cost of four deputies to serve as SROs would be $726,504 a year, Assistant County Manager Amy Brantley told commissioners.

Staff deleted the $250,000 from the 2024-25 draft budget at “the will of the board,” County Manager John Mitchell said during the meeting. “The next step is for me to communicate that to the city manager, for this reason — they may wish to continue to provide those services.”

That’s unlikely to happen. The City Council will discuss the budget matter at its monthly workshop meeting on Wednesday.

The decision to scrap the agreement “caught us off guard,” Connet said. “It popped up at the 11^th hour for our budget. It puts an over $300,000 hole in our budget. But I think ultimately what will happen is if the county chooses not to treat city schools in the same way they treat the rest of the county that the city, from a staff perspective, will recommend getting out of the school resource officer business and letting the sheriff provide that service.”