CAIRO — Officials in Cairo-Grady County are looking at the possibility of forming their own drug task force.

The county has been part of the Southwest Georgia Drug Task Force for approximately eight years, officials said Friday, but its intergovernmental agreement with Mitchell County expires in about 90 days and it must decide whether to stay in the group or not.

Grady County Sheriff Harry Young, who formerly acted as interim commander, recently resigned from the task force’s advisory board.

“I want us to have our own,” Young said. “I feel reasonably sure we can have our own and have local government and law enforcement agencies involved. I think we can recover enough money from drug seizures to pay for the task force.”

Young’s absence left no real law enforcement representation on the advisory board, County Administrator Rusty Moye said, and he put feelers out to local officials to see if there was interest in looking at the possibility of a joint drug task force.

“It is important that we focus on drugs eradication or elimination,” City Manager Chris Addleton said. “We know drugs are prevalent in our area.”

The Grady County Board of Commissioners attended Monday’s Cairo City Council meeting to speak about the possibility, Moye said. Representatives from the City of Whigham, Mayor Jimmie Laing and Chief of Police Tony Black, were also in attendance.

“It was decided to have a committee of the police chiefs (Black and Cairo Police Chief Keith Sandefur), the sheriff, District Attorney for the South Georgia Judicial Circuit Joe Mulholland, the city manager and myself to discuss and evaluate the possibility of a drug task force,” Moye said.

Young said the county commissioners and the district attorney both play vital roles in the process, via funding or back-up in prosecuting cases, but he thinks law enforcement should be in charge of running the task force.

The committee met Thursday to discuss a plan.

“It was a real good meeting and we received a lot of information to start working on a preliminary proposed budget that we would present to the group again before we present it to the cities and the county,” Moye said. “It was decided that if this goes ahead, the sheriff and two police chiefs will manage the drug task force and there would be four agents with one lead agent.”

Officials hoped they would have a presentation ready within the next month.