When the Blaine County Commission held its first meeting of 2023, there were two new faces at the table.
Traci Matli and Darryl Hicks had just been sworn in as new commissioners, filling the seats of retiring commissioners Raymond Scheffler and Mike Allen, respectively.
The new guys voted to maintain Brandon Schultz of District # 2 as the chair of the commission. Following that decision, much of the agenda was business as usual. It reappointed Schultz to the board of Northern Oklahoma Development Authority and added Misty Kitson, who had been sworn in earlier as Blaine County Tax assessor, as a requisitioning officer for that department.
Longdale Fire Department asked for and received permission to purchase a truck console at $350 and allowed a road crossing in District #3. Three tractors and four generators from District # 1 were sent to surplus and the district also appointed Adrian and Carolyn Arnold as receiving officers, while Hicks and Cynthia Arnold were added as requisitioning officers. Cynthia Arnold was also named chief deputy officer.
With the regular business accomplished, the department heads at the meeting spoke about what was going on in the various offices.
Blaine County Sheriff Travis Daughtery noted his office has applied for an environmental grant to cleanup dumpsites around the area and investigate the persons doing the dumping, who could then be liable for prosecution. He will know when the grant is awarded how much of the salary and/or benefits it would pay toward an additional deputy.
The department has two officers headed to the bridge academy, an abbreviated standard officers training associated with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. It accepts already certified officers and trains them to become troopers.
Daughtery also said he was going to work with the tax assessor’s office to revisit and perhaps reassess area marijuana grows because the county could be leaving dollars on the table. He asked whether the county could use some of its ARPA- American Rescue Plan – money to add vehicles to the fleet.
“We are in vehicle distress,” Daughtery said. “We need to surplus a bunch of equipment.” County clerk Jennifer Haigler said that other counties had used some of their federal dollars for patrol units, equipped with separate airflow systems for the officer and any detainee in the back seat, thereby making traveling together less likely to spread the COVID virus.
Daughtery also said the Canton Public Schools had won a grant for a school resource officer that would pay salary, benefits and retirement costs for a deputy with the exception of three months per year, when school is out of session. His hope was the same officer could fill the Canton lake officer contract during those months. He did point out that Blaine County has the lowest income from the Army Corps of Engineers for lake officers, and he suggested the county apply for an increase simply to cover the costs to the county.
Haigler, for her office, said the county has received half of its ARPA money, about $900,000 and has arranged for the District Attorney’s office to administer the funds. She did not say when the second $900,000 would be in-house.
Some of the suggested projects for the money include increased support to the county health department, streamlining the reception area of the court clerk’s office and the addition of a Plexiglas window in the reception area.
Haigler also said the county needs to strongly consider changing the courthouse entry system to a single door where everyone coming in to the building would pass through a metal detector. That entry would have to be on the east side of the building, where the elevator is located.