Lowndes supervisors on Wednesday added $92,000 to the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office budget, including $65,000 for new uniforms and $27,000 to match a federal grant to buy bulletproof vests.
The board voted Wednesday to amend the budget to cover the new costs. New uniforms for all LCSO employees will total about $85,000, said Sheriff Eddie Hawkins, but the department has $20,000 in its budget for uniform purchases.
Some employees will have three sets of everyday uniforms whereas others will receive class-A uniforms, which are for occasions such as court appearances, Hawkins told The Dispatch. Currently, employees wear clothes of different colors to work, he said.
“The problem that I have right now about uniforms is there’s nothing uniform about it,” Hawkins said during the meeting. “What I’m trying to do is to build morale and a more professional department.”
Supervisors also made budget room for $27,000 to match a 50-50 federal grant for the bulletproof vests. Some vests the department uses are wearing out, Hawkins said.
Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders told The Dispatch Thursday he thinks the money is needed to protect the safety of the county’s enforcement officers.
“I think that’s a no-brainer that we furnish them with all the protective items we can to protect our police officers anyway that we can,” he said.
It’s also important for the sheriff’s department to wear matching uniforms, Sanders said.
But the supervisors were reluctant to give the greenlight to a $28,000 purchase of three storm shelters for road department employees across the county following the Easter Sunday tornado, which swept through Mississippi and caused 12 deaths statewide. The board postponed the decision until its first meeting in May.
The road department has six stations across the county, but only three are furnished with storm shelters, District 4 Supervisor Jeff Smith said. Workers at the other three stations in Caledonia, Crawford and on Jess Lyon Road, he said, do not have a place to shelter in threatening storms.
“Those (shelters) are essential for the county workers who respond to any weather event we may have in the community,” he said.
Smith told The Dispatch the three 8-by-12-foot shelters would each cost roughly $5,000, according to the quotes County Emergency Services Director Cindy Lawrence received from local vendors. With additional costs for installation and transportation, the purchase would not exceed $28,000, he said.
The money could come from amending the budget of the board or the road department, he said during the meeting.
Sanders suggested Wednesday the road department could build storm shelters themselves and therefore reduce the cost.
“They do all kinds of constructions already,” he said.
Sanders told The Dispatch Thursday the board will vote to buy the storm shelters at the next meeting if the road department cannot build them.
“If we can do it cheaper, we’ll do it ourselves,” he said. “If we can’t do it cheaper, we’ll buy the (prefabricated shelters).”
During the meeting, the board also discussed the necessity of building storm shelters across the county for the general public, especially when there is only one such shelter in the county west of the Tombigbee River.
The Easter Sunday tornado, Smith said, could have ripped through Crawford where hundreds of mobile homes reside.
“It did turn,” Smith said. “But that could have been devastating for Lowndes County.”
Aside from the storm shelters in the east part of the county, he said, “we are pretty much at the mercy of the Lord.”
Sanders suggested Wednesday that the board could work to set up shelters in every community center and volunteer fire departments across the county, which he told The Dispatch totals about 20 locations.
But, he said, the money, which he said could reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, would need to be budgeted and phased out in the next three or four years.
“You are talking about probably $50,000 or $60,000 per shelter,” Sanders said. “And if you are going to have 20 shelters … that’s $1 million.”
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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