Luthersville Responds to Sheriff’s Letter

The newspaper contacted the City of Luthersville about the decision to end its contact with the Meriwether County Sheriff’s Office. Below is the response received from the newspaper from the city attorney.
STATEMENT OF CITY OF LUTHERSVILLE
REGARDING
SUPPLEMENTAL LAW ENFORCEMENT
CONTRACT
The City of Luthersville is committed to the safety and security of its citizens. It has demonstrated that commitment by continuing to pay the Meriwether County Sheriff’s Office for supplemental law enforcement coverage for six months past the end of the previous contract, which expired December 31, 2025.
During those six months, Luthersville proposed or agreed to several short-term extensions of the previous arrangement to allow time for a new year-long contract to be finalized, but the sheriff never engaged in meaningful negotiations with the city. The city has received no communication on this matter from either the sheriff or his staff since April 14, 2026, and saw no point in continuing the extensions past June 30, 2026.
Like their predecessors in office, Luthersville’s current council members and mayor value and take seriously the city’s supplemental law enforcement coverage arrangement with the Meriwether County Sheriff’s Office. However, they also value and take seriously their duty to the citizens of Luthersville to be good stewards of the city’s resources, and the current mayor discovered last year that the city was being billed for law enforcement activity outside the city limits, as well as for routine administrative tasks that are not directly related to supplemental coverage inside the city limits. Furthermore, there is broad public sentiment in Luthersville that the expense is hard to justify when, to quote multiple residents, “all they do is come up here and park.”
The City of Luthersville has proposed a contract that addresses those and other concerns by spelling out the activities the city will and will not pay for, establishing basic coverage schedules, setting a minimum frequency of patrols, and requiring transparent and detailed billing. The city believes that those are very reasonable terms for a supplemental coverage contract.