With warm weather upon us, trees are budding, flowers are blooming, and bees are buzzing around the yard. There’s also another sure-fire sign of the summer months, it’s BUDGET TIME! The DeKalb County Budget Committee met on April 9, at the DeKalb County Courthouse to begin hashing out the 2024-25 operating budget.
Several local officials were on hand at the meeting, and with the issue of a new jail/justice center yet resolved and a possibly property tax increase looming, the purse strings seem to be tight this year.
Those presenting their proposed budgets at last week’s meeting included Sheriff Patrick Ray, General Sessions/Juvenile Court Judge Brandon Cox, Circuit Court Clerk Susan Martin, Administrator of Elections Dustin Estes, as well as Suzanne Williams of the Smithville/DeKalb Chamber of Commerce, and DeKalb Rescue Squad Captain Dustin Johnson. Salaries increases seem to be the biggest issue for next year’s budget.
Sheriff Patrick Ray said the pay scale is a big issue in retaining qualified employees. “I made myself a promise when I got elected to always take care of my employees, and I would appreciate your consideration for the pay raises. I know it’s a tight year, but I think we owe it to our employees of each office to get raises. That’s how we retain people here, especially in my office. It’s hard to find anybody to work anyway, and then to make them work in corrections is about impossible.”
“A lot of places are giving sign-on bonuses and incentives. I talked to the county emergency services committee the other night. There are grants out there for that, but how am I going to explain to a high tiered deputy that I am giving somebody $10,000 to stay and them make more than my higher tiered deputies. That’s not really a good way to retain somebody,” said Sheriff Ray.
Another issue for Sheriff Ray is an increase of $33,000 to the county from the company that provides inmate health care, Fast Access Corrections Health Care of Chattanooga. “Our health care costs have gone up about $33,000 from the current contracted amount of $400,900. We met with them about two months ago and learned that everyone, and it doesn’t matter what health care company we use, will have a higher number this year versus last year because their malpractice insurance has gone sky high.”
Judge Brandon Cox was back before the committee, again asking for increased security at the DeKalb County Courthouse, a request he also made last year.
Judge Cox pointed out several security weaknesses at the courthouse and said other surrounding courthouses have already taken steps to make courtrooms more secure. Cox is requesting establishing one main entrance into the courthouse, with a full-time officer and a screening station at the entrance.
“On a daily basis here, this courthouse is left vulnerable and the folks who work here are left vulnerable. I challenge you to find another courthouse in the state of Tennessee that you can walk into without being scanned into. I don’t think you can. We are unique in that respect,” said Judge Cox.
“My requests are taken from the National Best Practice Standards for courthouse security. My main ask is that we have a full-time security officer here, that there is one main entrance that the public enters through and that everybody who enters this building is scanned and checked. That will cost money, and I don’t know what those numbers are like, but it’s cheaper than the cost of the disaster that’s probably coming down the line,” Judge Cox said.
“It is my understanding that this county commission amended the court fees some years ago to include $25 for each disposed case for court security. Last year the numbers were around 3,200 cases and while not all a good majority of them were disposed with that fee so there are some monies supposed to be set aside for court security. I would ask that you look into that, and a plan be made for that,” added Judge Cox.
Judge Cox explained that the courthouse would need to be open during early voting and on Election Day, as it is a voting location, but during court days the risk of an incident happening is higher and measure need to be made.
Administrator of Elections Dustin Estes presented his proposed budget, which includes an increase in pay of $25 per meeting to the five election commissioners, and a $2 per hour adjustment for election workers. Plans are to expand early voting to six hours a day, four of the five days a week during the early voting period and to make the daily hours more uniform.
“I am requesting an increase of $2,500 to pay the election commission for their monthly meeting from $75 to $100,” said Estes. “For the election commission workers, I am requesting in total an amount of $42,000, an $8,000 from the 2023 budget. I would like to make mention based on how the fiscal year operates, every other year we have one election and then the other year we have two elections. We are coming out of one year that has one election and going into the next fiscal year that has two elections. In our 2023 budget, we had $34,000 so in total this is an increase of $8,000. This increase is to help pay for the early voting workers’ hourly rate increase from $10 to $12 that was approved last year, and for extended early voting hours,” said Estes.
Captain Dustin Johnson of the DeKalb County Rescue Squad asked the committee for $122,000 to replace their radios with used portables, mobile radios, and at least four repeaters. Johnson explained that the request would actually save money in the long term by accessing deals for used radios over new models. Johnson said the cost of new radios is more than $400,000.
“We are not asking for any more money in our budget,” said Captain Johnson. “We just want you to think about our radios. To replace all our radios is something like $400,000, but I have talked to Brad (Mullinax-911 Director) and I have come up with a plan. Starting to come on the market are used radios, and I think for $122,870 we can replace all of them, and have four repeaters in our vehicles. I couldn’t just go buy them tomorrow, but they are coming online, and Brad said he could buy them when he finds them online. If you have any extra money, think about that so we could get our radios. I hate to go used, but sometimes you have to do that,” said Captain Johnson.
County Commissioner Greg Matthews also addressed the committee with an idea he says would save the county money. He is requesting new computer tablets for each commissioner and the county mayor, to save in the longrun on paper costs.
“I am requesting for us to switch over to tablets and do away with all this paper, ink getting wasted, and time spent for thousands of sheets of paper getting copied and printed every year. It will cut back on a lot of waste and a lot of money in the long run. I don’t know what it would cost yet because there are different prices. There are 14 of us (commissioners) plus the mayor and whoever so we would probably need around 20 tablets. I would like to ask for $5,000 to be put back for the equipment and what doesn’t get spent can be returned,” said Commissioner Matthews.
With all the requests, County Mayor Matt Adcock also warned that projections on paper currently show that the county might be in the red by as much as $835,576 at year’s end. “Our preliminary total expenditures budgeted for now are $13,437,467 and that is $835,576 more than revenues. If you take what we have coming in as revenues and we collect every penny that we budget to bring in and then spend every dollar and every penny we budget to spend, we would be going in the hole by $835,576. Obviously, we have never done that. All of our department heads are very conservative and good about turning money back in at the end of the year. Not everybody is going to spend everything budgeted but these numbers give you an idea of what we are looking at. It shows that the fund balance for July 1, 2024 would be $6,486,486 but by June 30, 2025 the fund balance would drop to $5,650,910 if we overspend by $835,576,” said County Mayor Adcock.
