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Community members can now donate directly to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office’s (TCSO) burgeoning aviation program.
In a 3-1 vote on Tuesday, Jan. 6, the Thurston County Board of County Commissioners approved a resolution to establish a dedicated donation fund for a program TCSO is developing around a OH-58 helicopter it purchased in October.
TCSO intends to use the helicopter for pursuit mitigation and search-and-rescue efforts.
The helicopter itself cost TCSO $10,000, which TCSO paid out of the Public Safety Sales Tax Fund.
Launching and maintaining the TCSO aviation program will come with additional costs, including $94,000 for a new law enforcement radio and roughly $12,000 per year for insurance, according to previous reporting.
Some of those costs have already been covered by donations.
When Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders gave a presentation about the program to the Thurston County Board of County Commissioners in October, he said TCSO had already received multiple sizable donations, including one for $19,000 and another for $17,000, and had more donors at the ready.
“We’ve had a number of individuals who expressed that they would like to donate to such a program, but didn’t just want to donate into kind of the abyss of the general fund. They really wanted to be able to donate in confidence,” Sanders said Tuesday.
A dedicated aviation program donation fund, Sanders said, makes it easier for the public to see where the program’s money is coming from and what the dollars are being used for.
Following Sanders’ presentation to the commissioners in October, the commissioners gave Sanders authorization to research the establishment of a dedicated donation fund for the aviation program.
That research led to the resolution approved by the Board od County Commissioners on Tuesday.
It was evaluated by county risk assessment, legal and financial management advisors before it went before the commissioners, and specifies that the donation funds shall only be used for the maintenance and operation costs of the TCSO’s aircraft.
“There are so many processes in play here that ultimately keep this entire program in check,” Sanders said.
While Commissioners Tye Menser, Wayne Fournier and Carolina Mejia agreed that Sanders and county staff had done their due diligence in preparing the resolution to establish the donation fund, Commissioner Emily Clouse said still had questions ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
While she agreed that there were significant benefits to creating the fund, she said, “I just think it needs a couple more details hammered out.”
Particularly, she said she was concerned that the resolution itself didn’t cite the specific state and county laws that allow the county to establish the fund without a public hearing.
She also said there was a need to clarify the rules around anonymous donations, echoing public comment given by a Thurston County resident earlier on in the meeting.
“There are a lot of laws at every level about donations, and so I just think we should take a little bit of time to review those and make sure the t’s are crossed, the i’s are dotted, and we’re passing behind a resolution that we can stand behind with confidence,” Clouse said.
Clouse said she couldn’t stand behind Tuesday’s resolution, and became the sole dissenting vote.
Commissioner Rachel Grant was formally excused from Tuesday’s meeting due to a family emergency.
The resolution passed Tuesday directs the county auditor and county treasurer to work together to establish the donation fund.
Specific details on the fund and how to donate were not publicly available Tuesday evening.
As of October, TCSO was approximately six months to a year away from implementing the aviation program, according to Sanders.
