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County folds on threat to drop city SRO funding

By Lightning Reports, Published: May 22, 2024

Walking back a commissioner's proposal to withdraw a $250,000 cost-sharing payment to support the cost of SROs in the four county schools in Hendersonville, Henderson County commissioners on Wednesday announced their commitment to continuing the reimbursement to the city for the 2024-2025 school year.

“After polling the other four commissioners, discussing this matter with our partners and in acknowledgment of the strain this would put on the City of Hendersonville’s budget at this point in time if they decided to continue to provide the SROs for these four schools,” Board Chair Rebecca McCall said in a news release, “the decision was made by the Board of Commissioners to continue partial funding of city police officer SROs for this (upcoming) fiscal year.” The decision, McCall added, "underscores the county’s dedication to maintaining a safe educational environment by ensuring a consistent presence of law enforcement in the County schools."

In 2018, in the immediate wake of the school shooting that killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners began its commitment to provide School Resource Officers in all Henderson County public schools. In 2021, the Board of Commissioners approved the appropriation to offset the cost of fulltime city police SROs at Hendersonville High School, Hendersonville Middle School, Hendersonville Elementary School and Bruce Drysdale Elementary School).  This past school year, that amount was $250,000.

During the county comission's budget retreat last week commissioners discussed scrapping the cost-sharing payment and having the sheriff's office provide SROs. The cost would have been $727,000, the county's top budget manager told commissioners. After the Lightning reported the potential cutoff over the weekend the county's communications director on Monday contacted the newspaper to emphasize that no final decision had been made on the subject.

Commissioner Daniel Andreotta echoed that in a Facebook post on Tuesday, calling the Lightning's coverage "a lie."

"In our work constructing the FY25 budget, which has NOT been voted on yet, one Commissioner (not me), had requested it be reviewed at this time," he said. "It is still a topic of discussion as we continue constructing the final budget, which will be adopted sometime in June. As is our practice, every line item in the budget is on the table for discussion every year, as we seek to deliver the best value possible to the citizens who pay for everything."

"Some discussion was held about the SROs that work in the four schools within the city limits of Hendersonville, however, no decisions were made at that time on whether to continue with this funding or move the responsibility of those 4 schools to the Henderson County Sheriff who provides SRO service for the other 19 schools in Henderson County."

City Council members and the social media universe mocked commissioners for considering a change that would have cost county taxpayers an additional $476,000 a year to cover the four schools.

"Let me know if I'm correct here," commenter Tim Culberson wrote to Andreotta. "If you do this, won't it cost the County an additional $500,000+??? How is that managing our money intelligently? Seems to go right back to y'all just being ridiculous, honestly."
 
Two council members also challenged Andreotta's account of the meeting.
 
"When I watched the meeting and saw that Bill Lapsley removed it from the budget, and heard the Sherriff's concerns about pulling the City officers out of the schools, I echo those concerns as they have established deep trust, relationships, and security with these schools, families, and children," council Jennifer Hensley wrote in a post. "I have personally sent multiple messages to Bill with no response. I am shocked this came at the 11th hour of the budget process."
 
Jeff Miller added: "I also watched the video of the meeting and will admit that I did not hear a vote. There is something else that I did not hear Daniel Andreotta…was you questioning why Lapsley pulled the SRO funding from the budget. Were there complaints…no…did the Sheriff ask for this…he said that he did not. This was a last minute move to slip it by and jab the City of HVL one more time. No good management of tax payer dollars here, it will cost taxpayers over $500,000 more for the same services. What else this does is put students, the parents and teachers in a place of uncertainty, and it’s not a good idea to mess with children’s safety. The County Commissioners have every right to defund the four City SRO’s, but they sure could have started a conversation a long time ago so this would not have happened. Parents, students and teachers can be assured that the schools will have SRO’s. I am very sorry politicians thought that this was somehow a good idea."
 
"I haven’t heard anyone say it was a good idea," Andreotta responded. "It was just a topic of conversation. As were many other line items in the budget."