Jackson Allocates 90K To Purchase Six Vehicles For Sheriff’s Dept.

Jackson County Commission appropriated some $90,000 to the Sheriff’s Department to purchase vehicles.

Mayor Randy Heady said that the money will cover the cost of six vehicles purchased from a government surplus in Missouri.

“We have some vehicles that have a lot of miles on them,” Heady said. “They’re starting to, the maintenance side of it, is starting to eat us alive. Also, we have some wrecked vehicles. So it’s getting to the point that we just need some (more vehicles) to replace some.”

Heady said that four vehicles of the department’s current fleet will go to School Resource Officers and two will replace deputies’ vehicles.

Heady said that the money for the vehicles from funding delegated to the counties by the state from the general assembly. He said that the best part about getting these six vehicles is that they use no local tax dollars.

“Last year when the budget passed, when the governor and the General Assembly passed their budget, they appropriated money to the counties. Millions of dollars, to be appropriated across these state. and it was based on population. we’ve always tried to be frugal with that money, and we had done some different things with it the years before. This time we had appropriated $200,000, of it went to the road department to do some rod improvements in the county which we thought was extremely important. This year, there was 103,934 left and so the sheriff came and talked to the budget committee and he had asked the county commission to appropriate the money (…) Here’s the bottom line. For the sheriff to do his job, no matter who the sheriff is, you have to have the equipment to do the job with. “