The news in Blount County lately has been covered up with issues stemming from a dash cam video of a conversation between a Warrior police officer Lee Glenn and District 3 commissioner Dean Calvert referring to a constituent in his district as a racial slur. The Blount County Sheriff’s Office contracts with the Birmingham Water Works board at Inland Lake to provide security. This pays each officer that works security approximately $1,500 a month. This contract is set to be terminated if Dean Calvert does not resign from his position as commissioner. If this happens, it will be a major blow to the police department as many officers May leave because of the major cut in pay. This brings up a debate that has been popular on social media surrounding this issue. Should the Blount County Sheriff’s Office rely on the Water Works board for such a crucial piece of the deputies pay? In my opinion, that is an easy yes!
It is not possible to make everyone happy especially when it pertains to government, but one sure fire way to get as close as possible to that is to reduce government spending. While the current circumstances are not ideal, it is worth smoothing it over as it is saving the county $500,000 per year. That is taxpayer money we are not having to spend on salaries so it can be used to fix some of these trails we call roads! Dean Calvert is proposing that the county now spend this money so we don’t have to rely on the Birmingham Water Works board to pay our deputies as private security. This of course was not proposed by Dean in person at a meeting as he has been scared to show his face in a commission meeting since this incident surfaced. There are many theories floating around about who released this video and why it was released, many are getting caught up in this. The only facts we have are in this video and show that District 3 commissioner Dean Calvert cannot truly represent all of his constituents fairly considering he has constituents that are not white. If you are an elected official racial discrimination is unacceptable on an entirely different level.