Sheriff Craig Mast and Lieutenant Scott Bosley were in attendance at the Oceana County Board of Commissioners' June 11 meeting to present the board with a purchase approval for the long-awaited firearm optics upgrade for sheriff’s office deputies and correction officers.
The items purchased include Glock-17 pistols, with Aimpoint optics and Alien Gear retention holsters, the total cost of which is $48,975.89.
Mast said he believes the handgun upgrades are necessary for the department. “It's been really obvious at the range that optics are the way of the future,” he noted, adding that Oceana County is one of the last counties in West Michigan to upgrade their optics in a similar fashion.
It was also mentioned that it is more fiscally responsible to upgrade the firearms overall than outfit the current equipment for optics. Another important aspect of the upgrade is that, as corrections officers (COs) are transporting inmates and need weapons to safely do so, many COs are outfitting themselves, and it is preferable “to have the entire department armed similarly.”
Commissioner Tim Beggs likewise championed the upgrade in optics, saying, “We’re not a county that thankfully has to use our firearms very often, but when the deputies need them, they need them right now.”
There are multiple funding mechanisms utilized by the sheriff’s office to ensure this purchase would be a budget-neutral item, including property auctions, commissary funds and - most notably - the auctioning of the seized and forfeited pickup truck introduced back in March. The office worked out a trade-in deal for existing firearms, however, deputies can purchase their previous weapon at the trade-in price if they choose to do so.
Chairman Robert Walker brought up a major concern regarding the county’s contract with the Police Officers Association of Michigan (POAM) and the listed articles the county and sheriff’s office are required to supply - nowhere on which was itemized firearms for corrections officers. He also voiced that he considered it “disrespectful that nobody brought it to this board before we did it.”
Walker pointed out, however, he did not deny the “merits” of the upgrade, but would vote against the item, stating, “We have a contract, and our contract doesn’t allow us to do this.”
In response to Walker’s concerns, Mast explained that he and the sheriff’s office meant “no disrespect intended whatsoever.”
He further explained that, during POAM contract negotiations, the funding mechanisms had not yet been finalized and that “this project has moved much more rapidly” than expected. Beggs and Mast both continued on to point out that there are several items that corrections officers and sheriff’s deputies are furnished with that aren’t stipulated in the POAM contract that are not required - such as patrol cars for road patrol deputies - and that those items have not presented issues.
In a final statement on the matter, Mast, again, reiterated that no offense was intended. “We’ve tried to make this as budget-neutral as we can to bring this upgrade to the entire department. We’re trying to be fiscally responsible to find a funding mechanism so we don't have to come here and ask the board to partner with us on something we didn’t budget and didn't contract.”
At the regular meeting, Walker ended up voting in favor of the purchase, as did the rest of the board. As he explained following the roll-call vote, “The more I thought about it, it is not the concept and what we’re doing with it. It's the way it was gone about. It would have been improper for me to vote against it when I believed in what we were doing.”
Drain Commissioner Michelle Martin approached the board with a request to authorize annual expenditures over $10,000 to go towards a $20,000 engineering study on the Lake Holiday earthen embankment dam, which separates Lake Holiday and Upper Silver Lake. The dam has shown signs of minor sloughing and seepage in the past several years, indicators of internal erosion due to soil collapse. Likewise, the toe drains - integral to controlling seepage in embankment dams - are not working as they should, and in fact, ground-penetrating radar, further exploration and the unprecedented April rainfall have revealed drains that were not previously in the dam’s plan.
There is no imminent danger of dam failure, but there is potential for high-level property damage (totaling in the millions of dollars) if it should. The major concern is rectifying the dam's deficiencies before the issues exacerbate and the cost of rehabilitation increases. The price of the project is, as yet, unclear. The costs associated with the dam will go back to the assessing districts, as well as an already existing bond earmarked for the dam.
In other business, back in February, Lake County had approached Oceana County regarding recent denials from the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission (MIDC) for reimbursement for indirect costs related to indigent defense, proposing partnership in mediation with the state government for access to those funds. While the recent mediation rules were in favor of Oceana's and Lake County’s requests, MIDC decided it will not honor the decision. The likelihood of this result was discussed in February, and commissioners allowed the county administrator to move forward with litigation alongside Lake County. MIDC’s most recent denial was for $33,000 in indirect costs to Oceana County.
