BUCKHANNON – The Upshur County Commission on Thursday agreed to help cover the costs of a law enforcement recognition banquet, tentatively scheduled for mid-October.

Steve Wykoff, Volunteers in Police Service coordinator, attended the Aug. 19 Upshur County Commission meeting to announce the banquet and request funding for food and recognition plaques.

“We’ve been discussing a form of a recognition dinner within our VIPS program for quite a while and due to the health status within the state and within the county, it was postponed last year, and we started moving forward on it this year prior to the recent outbreak of the Delta variant,” Wykoff said.

The event is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 16 at the Event Center at Brushy Fork.

“We’d like to get all law enforcement together at a dinner, present each department with an Officer of the Year award and we also have some fun superlative awards that we will pass out as well and have a little bit of fun there,” Wykoff said. “I, myself, am going to donate my time to provide music and emcee services during the event.”

Wykoff asked the commission to split the costs of the food, recognition plaques and the rental fee with City of Buckhannon, which totaled $1,500.

“We started planning this well before the Delta variant came into play, and we would still like to go ahead and continue with the planning. [We will] wait a little bit longer before we decide whether or not we want to put all of our law enforcement together in one room — that could be an issue,” Wykoff said. “Regardless, we will have a dinner and I would still like to honor the officers.”

Wykoff said he hopes the event may help raise morale for all the local law enforcement departments, including city, county and state officers.

“Our officers are pretty well-respected here within our county, within our state,” Wykoff said. “I know a lot of the nation looks at West Virginia and sees it as a backwards and isolated state, but in a situation like with what’s going on in the law enforcement community, it’s a good thing we’re a little bit removed from that.”

The Upshur County Commission approved the request, and Wykoff said he would also seek approval from the City Council. (At council’s regular meeting that evening, members unanimously approved splitting the cost of the banquet between city and county governments after assistant VIPS coordinator Jewel Fisher presented a similar request.)

In other Upshur County Commission news:

• The Upshur County Commission approved a memorandum from county Administrator Carrie Wallace, requesting the employment of Joey Dillon as a part-time, temporary groundskeeper, effective Aug. 30, 2021.

• The commission approved of Lewis-Upshur Animal Control Facility Volunteer Traci Cayton.