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What does the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office need, in terms of new vehicles, repairs or new equipment? What about the fire departments in the county? And out of those requests, what can Cumberland afford to include in this year’s budget? That’s the question the Cumberland Planning Commission continues to go over. 

In this edition, we take a look at the needs submitted by the sheriff’s office, emergency services and fire departments in the county. First among those is $435,000 for an ambulance replacement. Cumberland currently has six ambulances, ranging in miles from 60,000 to roughly 100,000. Emergency services needs a new one as they have a unit wearing down. They look at the age of the vehicle, mileage and the cost of repair versus the cost of replacement. 

“Once you get to a certain percentage of the cost of repair, it makes more sense to surplus that vehicle and look for a replacement,” Cumberland Administrator Derek Stamey said. 

In the past, the county has looked at buying used ambulances, but Stamey said county staff would not advise that in the future. The reason is that they break down quicker and have to be replaced sooner, so a short-term savings could cause long-term expense. Stamey said staff had finished a new grant application that would cover 50% of the cost for a new ambulance if it gets approved. 

The Cartersville Volunteer Fire Department has asked for $100,000 to get a new foam truck. Cumberland Volunteer Fire Department has asked for $100,000 for an apparatus truck. Stamey said he was hopeful grant funding would be available for both of those items. He also said that the planning commission could recommend approval dependent on getting the grants for any of these items. If they don’t get the grants as expected, then dependent projects don’t move forward. 

What about the sheriff’s office? 

As far as vehicles go, the sheriff’s office also had a request for that. They’re asking for $185,000 to replace vehicles that have aged out or have high mileage. In the past year, Cumberland staff have worked cooperatively with surrounding counties and towns to acquire used vehicles for the sheriff’s office at a significant discount. However, much like with EMS, while that works as a temporary solution, it doesn’t as a full-time plan. 

And the final request of the sheriff’s office is something we’ve touched on before. The office is asking for $33,000 to cover funding for body cameras. 

What happens next for Cumberland? 

The Cumberland Planning Commission held the first of several discussions on the proposed capital improvement plan during their Monday, March 17 meeting. A second discussion was held this week, on Monday, March 24. It’ll come as no surprise that the proposed courthouse renovations were up for discussion, along with millions of dollars in projects from the school district, parks and recreation and the sheriff’s office, among others. 

Counties and towns develop capital improvement plans to set up a schedule of when work will be done on a number of issues. Officials list all of the needs and requests from the various departments and then those get narrowed down. The pieces the planning commission and supervisors deem as important get higher priority, while others get pushed back several years. The plan typically includes projects for the next 25 years, broken down into five year segments. Currently, Cumberland is working on the 2025-2030 segment, and looking to decide which of the requests should be moved up or kept in next year’s budget. Just like in planning and zoning cases, the planning commission makes an official recommendation, which is passed on to supervisors. The Cumberland supervisors will make a final decision on this list.