White Hall City Council Approves Request to Purchase New K-9

WHITE HALL, W.Va. (WBOY) — Officers with the White Hall Police Department approached the City Council Monday to request funding for a new police dog after the current dog, Riley, retires.

Officers asked the council to give the department $6,500 to purchase the K-9, which was approved. These funds will be used in addition to $10,000 from the department’s drug seizure account.

“We have a dog that’s almost retired, he’s getting a little older. This new dog that they’re looking to get, he’s also going to be fentanyl trained. So this is a dual purpose dog, he can be a tracker, so he can pick up a scent, and tracker looking for people, but he’ll also be on drugs, he’ll be on fentanyl, he’ll be on heroin,” said White Hall Mayor Jason DeFrance.

Also considered Monday night was an update to the city’s police and public works service fee ordinance, which the council unanimously approved. The ordinance, first approved by the council last year, allows the city to charge a fee if the police or public works department must respond to an incident involving a nonresident.

“Sometimes our police and/or public works can be on scene for a couple of hours,” DeFrance said. “Sometimes there’s cleanup, oil, whatever. So there should be a fee for that if it was a substantial incident. The problem was there was no real definition of what a substantial incident was. So we updated that ordinance to allow the police and/or public works to use their discretion.”

The council also considered and approved reallocating sales tax funds that members had previously discussed in a council workshop. Mayor Defrance said that the city’s sales tax revenue has increased due to the redevelopment of Middletown Commons with new businesses opening. This has allowed them to reallocate how much money goes to each of the city’s departments.