Fayetteville police seek acceptance of $10,000 THSO grant and propose charging events for overtime costs

Chief Jennings told the board the department had received a $10,000 grant from the Tennessee Highway Safety Office and sought board acceptance of resolution R2025-13 to accept the funds. Jennings described the proposed use: $2,000 for officer overtime/high-visibility traffic enforcement and the remaining $8,000 for allowable equipment. "Earlier in the year, you gave us permission to apply for a grant… It's a $10,000 grant, and the plan is to use $2,000 for overtime… and then out of that remainder… we're allowed to spend $8,000 for equipment," Jennings said.

Jennings also reported that the department had approved four permit requests: a Christmas parade (Nov. 14), Washington Street Church of Christ fall festival/trunk-or-treat (Oct. 26), Fear Not Festival (Oct. 31) and the Cheetah 5K Reindeer Run (Nov. 15). He asked the board to consider charging event organizers a permit fee to cover police overtime: "We would like to sit down and go over the permitting process to make in the future… start charging a fee to help out with the overtime. That kills my overtime budget," he said.

The chief said staffing remains strong after recent academy graduations and that traffic-enforcement citation activity has increased (95 citations last month, about 50% more than this time last year), which he said corresponded with a slight drop in crashes.

The board moved to forward acceptance of the grant resolution for formal action; staff will prepare the resolution (R2025-13) for the consent agenda at the next regular meeting.