This coming school year, county schools that are not in Blacksburg or Christiansburg will add another student resource officer from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
Previously, the sheriff’s office only had officers at the middle and high schools outside of the two town limits, while police departments in Blacksburg and Christiansburg provide SROs to their middle and high schools, with a roving officer to the elementary schools.
While hinting that the new officer would rove among the four elementary schools outside of the town limits, due to security concerns, Sherriff Hank Partin did not specifically say where the new officer would be assigned.
The Board of Supervisors passed the measure to reallocate $57,818 funds for the position 6-0 (Supervisor Sara Bohn was not in attendance) at Monday night’s meeting.
Discussions began about expanding SROs to all schools in the county after the Feb. 14 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Partin and some supervisors were even in favor of raising the real estate tax by a penny to make sure that every school had its own SRO.
The four republican supervisors voted against raising taxes for the seventh year in a row, so the measure did not pass.
The school board had said previously that they were in favor of adding the SROs as long as it did not come out of, what it described as, a barebones budget.
Tuesday night, Supervisor Todd King was unsure that the officer was needed and did not seem to be on the same page as the other supervisors on what had been previously agreed upon during budget season in the spring—allocating the funds for one officer on a one-year trail basis.
Ultimately, he did vote in favor of the measure. A visibly annoyed Partin reiterated the need for the position due to the fact that some of the elementary schools on the outer limits of the county have vastly longer response times than those located closer to law enforcement offices.
The funds are a “one-time-only” allocation, which means they could be removed from next year’s budget.
The supervisors generally agreed that it was a good first step, but Mary Biggs said she’d like to see it go even further.
“I’m not going to be happy until all the schools are covered,” she said.
MCPS spokesperson Brenda Drake reiterated the school system’s stance on the matter.
“School safety is always a primary concern. In order to educate our students, they must be safe. We are grateful for cooperative partnerships with our local law enforcement agencies and the resources that they provide in our schools and for our students,” she wrote in an email. “We also have agreements with all of the police departments that any officer can use a school as a stop for paperwork, restroom, water, etc. It is important that our students and staff can build relationships with law enforcement officers.”
Other news
The county allocated its $1.5 million in carryover funds from the previous fiscal year to the Lyric Theater ($4,500), Floyd Library budget ($73,897), Compensation Board revenue adjustments ($29,505), fire and rescue funding to specific projects ($1,000,000), school system supplemental funding ($395,826).
The joint bike share program between the county, Christiansburg, Blacksburg and Virginia Tech was supposed to start July 2, but has been put on hold indefinitely.
Christiansburg spokesperson Melissa Demmitt said that “the company providing the bikes is experiencing inventory issues with the controllers for the bikes.”
“These controllers power the technology on the bikes and are sourced from SoBi (Social Bicycles), the exclusive tech provider. SoBi’s parent company, JUMP, recently underwent an acquisition by Uber. Due to this acquisition, all new inventory orders have been put on hold until their legal and compliance teams can review supply chain partners.”
The original bike-share plan has been that seventy-five bikes will be placed throughout the county at 12 different stations available for rent on a per hour basis or through an annual subscription. The News messenger will provide more in-depth coverage once the program has a finalized start date.
