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| New Guns a Hot Topic Between Sheriff's Department and BOL Committee 07/11/15 09:00am |
Lowville- What started as a presentation to the Board of Legislators by Sheriff Michael P. Carpinelli requesting funding for the purchase of new hand guns, has seemed to boil over the past few days.
Board of Legislators. Sheriff Carpinelli came before the board with range instructor Brett Cronizer to talk to the full board about the purchase of the new guns. The department wants to purchase 23 .45-caliber handguns for the road patrol and 30 .40-caliber handguns for the correction officers, Mr. Cronizer said. The cost is $7,188.78 for the total of 53 guns. It will cost an additional $4,605 to replace all of the leathers for the .45-caliber handguns, it will cost $11,793.88. Refurbishing the handguns the department now has would cost $9,169.
Wednesday morning. According to information obtained in an article in the Watertown Daily Times the topic was discussed during the committees meeting. County Manager Elizabeth Swearingin told the Sheriff that he should have consulted with her and Legislator Jerry H. King, chairman of the Courts and Law Committee, before making a presentation to the full board on the subject, according to the Times. According to the Times, Mr. King said the committee told Sheriff Carpinelli previously if he needed the guns immediately the money could come out of the food budget, but the sheriff said he would wait until budget time to talk about the purchase of the guns. If the issue was brought up at budget time, the county could have applied for funding Mr. King said.
because the issues with the guns did not happen overnight, but had been building over the past four years, the Times report said. “Why did you let it get to this point? You’ve had money in your budget to replace some of those parts if you had done it on a schedule,” Mr. King said, as reported in the Times.
“You force us every year to cut someplace, and we are paying for it. This is what happens, guys,” Sheriff Carpinelli said, the Times reported. According to the Times report, Mr. King said the Sheriff's Department is supposed to have a savings in the food budget this year that should cover the cost of the purchasing the new guns. The money will have to come out the sheriff’ s budget somewhere at this point and the Board of Legislators is not going to waver on that, Mr. King said.
“I came here with an honest and open presentation, but once again you make it sound like I am asking for too much and I am asking for something that can’t be done.” Mrs. Swearingin said the county is looking for a reasonable path forward on the issue. “There are some legitimate questions here being asked about how we got where we are and what we can do potentially to mitigate the request, and you are saying this is the only request we can have; there is nothing else,” Mrs. Swearingin said, as reported in the Times. “We are saying, ‘Wait a minute, what about this?’ That’s their job, that is my job, to make sure we question every consumption of every dollar.” A motion was made by Mr. King to take $12,000 out of the sheriff’s food budget to buy the guns and the committee approved the motion, the Times report said. There is an expectation with the new guns that a maintenance policy will be in place and personnel will be reprimanded if they are not properly taking care of their weapons, Mr. King said. According to the Times report, Mr. Carpinelli told the committee he would do what he could to purchase the weapons with the money in his budget.
Department office with a for sale sign on them. It was removed a short time later after the county asked Sheriff Carpinelli to take it down. The sheriff said he wanted to see how much the public would be willing to pay for the equipment because he needed money to buy new firearms for the department, according to WWNY/7NEWS.
to fund that so no one gets hurt in this county," Sheriff Carpinelli told WWNY.
his departments budget.
cut an area that has nothing to do with this particular issue and take away from that side where if I don't have - if I should run short on that side - I'm gonna have to go back and ask for that money anyways," Sheriff Carpinelli told WWNY.
WWNY/7NEWS report here. |
