Sheriff’s office to no longer fund NCHS school resource officer position

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio

Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015, 11:45 p.m. — Nelson County Sheriff Ed Mattingly has advised the Nelson County Schools that his office will no longer fund the School Resource Officer (SRO) position at Nelson County High School.

In a letter to Nelson Fiscal Court dated Monday, Jan. 19, 2015, Mattingly said he and Bardstown Police Chief Rick McCubbin met with Anthony Orr, the superintendent of Nelson County Schools, on Monday, Jan. 12 and informed Orr he intended to move the SRO position back to patrol duties at the end of the current school year.

“The sheriff’s office has been absorbing the cost for many years, and we can no longer afford to do it,” Mattingly wrote in the letter.

The SRO program began with grant money that helped pay the officer’s salary, Orr told the Gazette Tuesday evening. When the grant money ran out, the entire cost of the SRO’s salary was absorbed by the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office, which has continued to pay those costs over the years.

Mattingly said he would be willing to provide an officer if the school district was willing to pay $60,000 toward the full costs of hiring a deputy, given that the officer would work patrol when school was out or on break.

The district’s two high schools — Nelson County High School and Thomas Nelson High School — are both now in the Bardstown city limits and policing the city is the responsiblity of the Bardstown Police Department.

Mattingly wrote that McCubbin is also in discussions with the city school system about an SRO position, adding that the city school district would also have to fund the position — something that Mattingly said is fairly common among school districts with SROs.

Orr said he felt the district and its employees paid enough in fees and taxes to cover the expense of an SRO. The sheriff’s office gets approximately $300,000 in fees for collecting county school taxes, and the district’s employees pay both both city and county governments’ occupational taxes.

“We would like to have seen a different answer, but we didn’t get it,” he said. “We felt it was worth considering.”

Orr said he was confident in the Bardstown Police Department’s ability to respond in a timely manner to either high school’s needs.

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