I attended the August 30, 2022 Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.
We continued our whirlwind tour of new meeting locations and this particular meeting was held in the conference room of the fabled (and infamous) Commission Annex Building.
Commissioners Hasty and Williams were present.
There were 8 people present besides the Camden County employees who normally attend. The conference table was intended to seat about 10 people so there were quite a few people standing. Nobody went through any metal detectors to get in so I guess we were all on the honor system.
I didn’t see any obvious heaps of asbestos as I walked in, so I tried to take shallow breaths and be brave for the sake of the commissioners. No need to panic. Steady there. Set a good example, Gadfly.
The first agenda item was the Sheriff JAG Grant. Sheriff Helms said this was a Missouri DPS grant to drug task forces. This grant would help fund LANEG (Lake Area Narcotics Enforcement Group).
The Auditor stated that since Camden County is the only 1st Class County in the task force, the grants have to come through the Camden County Sheriff. It was a $500,000 grant application for a variety of items that were all listed in the grant application.
LANEG had a 2022 budget of $636,000 so it does seem like this grant would make up the majority of the budget for the task force.
This item was approved unanimously.
The final agenda item was a Request for Surplus Money from a tax sale. The surplus was granted unanimously.
And that was that.
I did find it interesting that LANEG is made up of a combination of Camden, Laclede, Osage, Gasconade, Crawford, and Maries counties. It consists of 5 officers from the member counties and 2 MHP troopers. The locations of those counties hardly seem like Lake Area counties. Why aren’t Miller and Morgan counties part of LANEG?
Hmmm. Sounds like we need to do some gad-flying.
Among the Dogwoods 