Clint Reaves, McKenzie police chief, has the approval of the town council to attend a district law enforcement conference this month. Reaves said he has high hopes of obtaining a grant “that would help out the town a lot.”

Reaves told Mayor Shufford and the council the four-day conference on grant writing stands a good chance of helping him net monies to cover the cost of a school resource officer for the town.

“I usually attend the chief’s conference, but this will cost the same. I would still get the same credits, and it think it will benefit McKenzie a whole lot more,” Reaves said.

“If we can get that grant, it would reimburse the town 100 percent of my pay and benefits for four years.”

He said one of the grant’s stipulations would be for him to dedicate a certain number of hours to working at the school.

“However, I have done this before, and I am already in the schools quite a bit, so I know that would be OK,” Reaves said.

According to the police chief, a $3,700 ADECA grant has allowed the McKenzie Police Dept. to purchase new equipment, including a laptop, scanner and printer, to streamline the ticketing process.

“This will allow us to swipe a driver’s license through a machine to read the bar code and to automatically print out tickets,” Reaves said.