MARLBORO, SC (WBTW) – Marlboro County Council met Tuesday night, and discussed its new EMS task force, and school resource officers for two of the county’s schools.

Marlboro County Council agreed to add two new School Resource Officers to Blenheim and Wallace Elementary Schools.

“This is a very important move and I’m happy to see this,” said Chairwoman Carolyn Prince. “With all of the things going on in the country, it’s important that our children, and the people working, the staff and everyone, are protected to the best of the ability.”

Marlboro County Administrator, Ron Munnerlyn, said the school board and county have been working on getting school resource officers for the past few months.

“Everyone’s in support,” he said. “It’s actually a very good example of the school district, the county, and the sheriff’s office all working together to do what needs to be done in light of school shootings.”

Council said two officers with the sheriff’s office will be assigned to the schools.

Munnerlyn said the starting salary for the position is $30,000. He said the Marlboro County School District will reimburse the county for the expense.

The County Administrator said the sheriff’s office will also assign a deputy to act as a supervisor to the school resource officers.

Marlboro County School Board Chair, Lucy Parsons, said the school resource officers will start patrolling the schools by the end of March.

Every council member expressed their happiness about the two schools getting the school resource officers.

Munnerlyn also gave council an update on the county’s newly established EMS task force.

The task force was put in place in January to help with ambulance response time.

“We’re continuing to address concerns about EMS service, in light of the fact that we have no hospital,” Munnerlyn said. “There’s an audit being performed, because that’s part of what we do under our contract, so that will help us with the budget.”

He said the task force is closely looking at ambulance response times, and the budget that the task force has.

“We’re getting to a point to where we have a lot of information, and the task force will have to make some decisions on which path we go,” he said.

Munnerlyn said the EMS task force typically meets every two weeks, but a time and date for its next meeting has not yet been set.