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Edmonson County's Number One Source For Local News and Information

Cannon Warns Of Potential Budget Crisis, Asks County Offices To Scale Back As Sheriff/County Clerk's Budgets Are Approved

12/21/2017

1 Comment

 
County Estimates Over $100K In Added Costs, Barely Paying Bills Now
Darren Doyle, story:​
Increased jail costs of around $35,000 and a newly discovered state-required increase of almost 10% in the county retirement system--an extra $76,000 expense-- has slammed a bare-boned fiscal court budget for the upcoming year. 

Judge Wil Cannon said at today's fiscal court meeting that the county was just barely paying their bills before local government dealt with the extra $111,000 in expenses, so what does that mean?

Just like any business or family budget, if your bills go up you have one of three options: 1. find ways to increase your revenue, 2. Cut costs where you can 3. Both 1 & 2.

In the case of the county budget, the only way to increase revenue is to raise taxes, or have a surge of incoming business and homes. Since the latter isn't happening any time soon, that leaves raising taxes, which Cannon said he will not do as long as there is even a slight chance another option will work. With both Sheriff Shane Doyle and County Clerk Kevin Alexander scraping their budgets to the bone already, forcing them to make more cuts is asking a great deal, considering the services that each office provides to Edmonson County residents.

Doyle presented a budget to the court that was very similar to last year's, which included one newly-leased police car at a cost of $7200 per year. He is already using part of the money not spent from this year's budget to purchase one new car.

He announced at the last fiscal court meeting that his office was going to come in around $60K under budget for the year, money that was saved by not spending as much on fuel and maintenance, thanks to the new cars purchased last year, and having one less full time deputy on staff for a period of several months. A deputy quit the office in May of 2017 and was not immediately replaced. Doyle took the former deputy's shift in addition to his own work schedule until another deputy was recently hired.
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"I fully support the sheriff's office," said Cannon. "But if there's no money in the budget, there's just no money. If we all can start thinking of ways to cut back and save money, we can weather this financial storm until it blows over." 

Cannon said he was making cuts to his own office, such as cutting back his secretary's position to less than 40hrs per week and cutting expenses on meetings and conferences. He said that Parks & Rec would be expected to finds cuts and that extras that the county saw in 2017 such as sidewalks, the Community Center stage, and similar projects would be suspended as well. 

Doyle said he would never purposely put the county in financial bind and asked if the budget could be tabled until the next meeting, which would be January 8, 2018, in order for Doyle to comb back over his budget to try to find ways to accommodate the court; however, that couldn't happen because the budget had to be passed in 2017, and a special meeting couldn't be called within the next week. With the upcoming holiday, the court wouldn't have enough time to advertise a special meeting in a printed newspaper, which is required by an archaic state law that forces the county government to advertise in paper form.

After a lengthy discussion, Doyle agreed to cut the newly leased car out of the budget.  He said besides the new vehicles from last year, the two other vehicles being used by current deputies share a combination of a busted steering pump, no windshield wipers, and a homemade kill switch, rigged to keep the battery from draining. The court agreed that if any extra money was available at the end of next year, they would reconsider his request for another vehicle and the sheriff's budget was passed in the amount of $582K, $135K of which is funded by fiscal court.

The court also agreed to approve the budget of County Clerk Kevin Alexander, which works differently than that of other county offices. The County Clerk overturns fees to the county, and based on the needs of his office, the fiscal court and the clerk's office approve those numbers. The total budget approved was $2,561,585 in receipts with $2,537,734 in disbursements.
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1 Comment
Dist.2 Constable Office
12/21/2017 04:18:47 pm

So given the above crisis, the Sheriff is doing the best he can with what he has, we can simply NOT do without the Clerk Office, and with the use of our volunteer special deputies which are not paid, strictly volunteer, then if we had Constables, firearms trained by the Sheriff training officers and qualified, should help take some load off the county.

while special deputies are furnished cars, gas, equipment etc, Constables, furnish all these things themselves.
Constables pay their own bonds, their own gas, their own uniforms, their own insurance on their vehicles.

Constables do not cost the county one cent to operate.

Given neither special deputies nor Constables are required to be certified, and perform the same basic patrol duties, would it not be a wise decision to call upon the active Constables we have in our county, to patrol their areas and help out the county in this crisis?

before the same bunch of Constable haters starts slinging mud, remember, special deputies which patrol are NOT I repeat NOT academy certified. They are not required to be under law.
Nor is a Constable required to be.
Each has the benefit to the county of being non-paid.

So free help, in any uniform should be a good thing.

when we can grow up, out away politics and see the only difference between a Constable and a special volunteer deputy is, one is appointed and one is elected.
Both can be utilized to make a GREAT contribution to this county in its time of need.

Let's make this less about political agendas and more about protecting our county.

We can all pitch in and make it through this if we quit arguing and get to policing.

Constables have been a free resource for many years, and sat unused.
If we train the best, active Constables alongside the special deputies and work together, then we have a valuable resource available to this county ! and it cost taxpayers NOTHING for the Constables help. Not even gas.

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