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Muskogee council authorizes manager to negotiate Hilldale school resource officer contract after hours of public comment
Summary
The Muskogee City Council voted to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a contract with Hilldale Public Schools to provide two uniformed School Resource Officers, after extensive public comment from teachers, students and school leaders urging the council to retain the officers.
The Muskogee City Council on April 28 voted to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a contract with Hilldale Public Schools to furnish two uniformed police officers to serve as school resource officers (SROs) at the district campuses.
The vote followed more than two hours of public comment from Hilldale teachers, students, parents and Superintendent Eric Puckett, who described the program as “not about money” but about relationships and safety. “We pay 75% of the contract,” Puckett told the council, and said Hilldale has invested in training officers for school work. Student speakers said the presence of SROs makes them feel safe: “Every day when I walk through the doors, I feel safe,” said Kenley Moore, a Hilldale Middle School student.
Why it matters: Council action authorizes the manager to negotiate the contract but does not itself bind the police chief’s deployment decisions. Council members and staff repeatedly clarified limits on the council’s authority and the role of the city manager and police chief in staffing and assignment decisions.
Council and staff context: Police Chief Teehee described a staffing shortfall across patrol and specialty units and offered a compromise: retain one Hilldale officer immediately and return a second officer to the school if hiring projections produce enough new officers next year. “We are 25% short for patrol,” the chief said, and said a one-off staffing compromise could avoid pulling community resource officers and detectives into patrol permanently. He told the council the department had an unusually large hiring class in process that could ease shortages but would take months to put new officers on the street.
Superintendent Eric Puckett and many Hilldale staff and parents urged the council to keep the two named officers, stressing long-term relationship-building and rapid on-campus response. Teachers and staff gave multiple examples of officers intervening in medical and behavioral incidents and of students turning to SROs for help with family or safety concerns.
What the council did: Councilors moved and approved the motion to “authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a contract” with Hilldale Public Schools for two uniformed officers. The roll call vote recorded unanimous approval.
Limits and clarifications: City Attorney Katrina Bodenhamer reminded the council that, under the city charter, contract execution and deployment decisions are within the city manager’s and police chief’s purview, not the council’s. The chief echoed that the department would open the positions to city officers if the contract stays in place and that assignment would be subject to department procedures. He also warned that, without some compromise, the department might reassign community resource officers and drug investigators to patrol to cover shortages.
Next steps: The city manager is authorized to negotiate and execute the contract; the contract’s exact terms, including which officers are assigned, will be determined through that negotiation and by the police chief’s staffing decisions.
