Suwannee County Sheriff Sam St. John requested the county commissioners support his submission for a grant that will provide funding for body cameras.

LIVE OAK — Suwannee County Sheriff Sam St. John requested the county commissioners support his submission for a grant that will provide funding for body cameras.

The sheriff’s department is currently working on the grant, which is due Feb. 16. One of the big components of the grant is involving as many stakeholders as possible, deputy Adam Prins said at the county commissioners meeting Tuesday.

“In an effort to implement (St. John’s) broad strategy of community oriented policing, he believes that body-worn cameras will provide more transparency and do just that for the sheriff’s office and Suwannee County residents,” Prins said.

To better understand where the community stands on body cameras, the department held an online survey on Facebook, he said.

They had more than 500 responses, most of which came from people who live inside the county. Of those, 86 percent supported the idea.

Currently, the sheriff’s office has no policy on body-worn cameras. For now, the department is working on the grant. Policy will come later.

“We’re not actively creating a policy yet,” Prins said.

Chairman Ricky Gamble said he didn’t want to get into policy at this meeting. He did ask if the department would welcome public input on the policy for body cameras. Prins agreed.

The board then approved a motion to support the sheriff for his grant. It was approved unanimously.

Barry Baker, clerk of the circuit courts for Suwannee County, asked the county commissioners if the clerk’s office could take last year’s excess revenues of a little more than $215,000 and use it to resolve some technological issues.

Commissioner Larry Sessions said it was sort of like farming. If someone has a good year, they should put that money back into the farm in case you have a bad year.

“If (the board) doesn’t have a real need for this money, I suggest that we go ahead and try and reinvest it and make the department better,” Sessions said.

Gamble said the board does a similar thing with the supervisor of elections. Every year, a certain amount of money is put into an account for equipment replacement. That account would be under the board’s control.

“It will be there for the purpose of in case a server goes down or you have an unexpected expense,” Gamble said. “(The clerk) won’t be able to make that purchase. You’ll have to come back to the board and make a request.”

Baker agreed with Gamble. The board then approved a motion to set aside the money for future improvement to the clerk’s department.