Planning commission recommends 8 new sheriff’s officers

In a letter to the Oconee County Council, the county’s planning commission is siding with Sheriff Crenshaw’s request to hire additional officers to help keep the peace in the county.  But, whether the planning commissioners have any business in injecting their opinion in a budgetary matter involving an elected official and county administration is something that was hashed out during the commission’s meeting last Thursday.  The letter of recommendation was the idea of planning commissioner Frankie Pearson, who believes the matter fits well into the purview of the commission.  Not so sure about that is Mike Smith, the planning chairman.  “I just think we are getting into a gray area….Are we going to go into the hospital?”  In his first planning commission meeting, Gary Gaulin raised the question of whether, from a practical standpoint, the county should use aerial drones to surveil situations when it’s not possible to have an officer present.  The planning commission letter agreed on reads as follows:  “Oconee County currently has 90 police officers and according to national standards 120 officers would be recommended minimum for our county’s population.  Due to the large geographic size of the County having additional uniformed-patrol officers to respond to citizen’s in-need is critical.  Other divisions within the Sheriff’s office include Narcotics, Cyber-crime, and the Child/Elder abuse investigation units would benefit from a staffing increase.  The Planning Commission recommends County Council fund the Sheriff’s Office to hire at least eight more officers in the coming fiscal year and supply funds to pay our current officers at or above regional pay-rates.”