Court OKs SRO for Academy
The Hays County Sheriff’s Office will provide a School Resource Officer (SRO) for the San Marcos Academy after receiving the county commissioners’ approval of an agreement with the school.
“This is a very standard agreement for us,” said Precinct 3 Commissioner Lon Shell at the commissioners’ Tuesday meeting. Shell noted that Hays County provides SROs for other campuses in the county. The San Marcos Police Department provides SROs for SMCISD campuses.
Hays County Resident Dan Lyon spoke out against the agreement, favoring the idea of all licensed faculty and staff carry firearms but without bullets in the chamber instead of having taxpayers pay for an officer’s presence on the Academy campus.
“You don’t give up your constitutional rights just because you go into a school zone,” Lyon said, adding that the presence of an SRO provides “a false sense of security” for students and staff.
“All a potential terrorist would have to do is disable the SRO and he would have free rein in a gun-free zone,” Lyon said.
“I think this is a great idea for us to put an officer out at the academy,” Shell said, adding that when the officer is not at the academy, the officer will still be a deputy with the sheriff’s department.
The annualized cost for the SRO would be $90,497, Shell said, with the San Marcos Academy paying 75 percent of the officer’s salary and the county paying 25 percent.
“We do fund 25 percent of it, but typically during these SRO arrangements we get the officer back during the summer months.”
In other business, the commissioners approved the selection of Freese & Nichols to manage the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Municipal Separate Stormwater System program for Hays County. Separate storm sewer systems are storm drainage systems, including ditches, curbs, gutters and other means of collecting or conveying runoff. A municipal separate stormwater system is such a system owned or operated by a public entity. TCEQ periodically develops new permitting requirements for those systems.
“We currently do have a permit, but it has to be updated based on the latest regulations that have come down from EPA,” Jerry Borcherding, the county’s transportation director, told the commissioners.
Borcherding said that given the depth and complexity of the requirements, the county wants to have Freese & Nichols on board to “give us some instructions on how to carry out the requirements.”
The commissioners also authorized the county clerk to use the Tyler Technologies Eagle Tyler Software Product’s land and vital statistics software package to manage the recording and filing of land records, transfer documents, trust deeds, mortgages and tax liens.
Additionally, the software can maintain the integrity of official records by easily indexing all documents, including birth, death, and marriage certificates, notary bonds, and filings for DBAs. Funds were budgeted during the FY19 budget process to implement the new software package.
Also at their Tuesday meeting, the commissioners authorized the county auditor’s office to process necessary expenditures related to incoming elected officials such as continuing education expenses related to the official’s duties.
