New Youth Hang Out Hits Spot On

June 7, 2025
By: Bill Conger

Many people have longed for a safe place in DeKalb County where kids could hang out and have good, clean healthy fun. Justin and Kendra Cantrell have made that dream a reality with the help of the court system, city and county governments, and the generosity of local folks.

On Saturday (May 31), “The Spot” officially unveiled its cool digs at the grand opening in the former Rotary Club building, across from the Smithville Golf Course and Swimming Pool.

“One day we drove by here and my husband said the Lord told him that this is going to be our building and within a couple days, it was,” Kendra Cantrell recalls. She and her husband Justin had helped with “The Spot” in Smith County, which opened in 2011.

“Justin and Kendra came to work there and have been working with me in Smith County with students there doing a lot of our after school programs,” explains Program Director Barbara Kannapel. After becoming certified in social/emotional learning curriculum and working with kids in Smith County for several years, the couple wanted to bring the idea back home.

“I saw the need in DeKalb County and just thought I’d tackle it,” Justin Cantrell said. “The community has been a big help. Everybody that I have encountered has been a big help with it. We just hope to see kids’ lives more stable, families more stable, and just have a safe place for kids to hang out and have a good time together.”

“I grew up in the foster care system myself,” adds Kendra Cantrell. “So, I’ve always had a passion to want to help kids. and we’ve prayed about it and talked about it for years now about having our own program here in DeKalb County.”

The couple first opened the doors for “The Spot” on April 30. Thirteen children came that first Wednesday, and the program has rapidly taken off.

“Justin and Kendra are wonderful because they can relate to those kids in a way that a lot of us can’t. So, they’re seeing great results,” Kannapel says. “We have a program that we do for kids who have been through juvenile court. We work with them for about eight weeks and get them back on track hoping to prevent them from being adult offenders. We proposed a five-year plan to DeKalb County folks. That was two years ago, and we’re way ahead of the game on our five-year plan.”

The Cantrell’s have been working with kids in juvenile court and seeing great results. They’ve extended their teaching to kids in the school system in 5th grade and up with building healthy relationship skills, solid communication, and learning refusal skills to help in making wise choices.

The Spot is open to 5th through 12th graders on Wednesday’s after school.

“Everything is free. So we’ll be offering some camps this summer. we’ll be offering some swimming and some summer activities. or they can just come and bring their friends and have a good time,” Kannapel says. “Justin and Kendra have worked really hard with the community to bring in game tables and video games, everything that’s going to be fun for kids and have a safe place to bring their friends.”

“They come and hang out,” Kendra adds. “It gives their parents a break, and it gives us time with them just to kind of pour into them and try to love on them and help them anyway we can.”

“I come from a broken home,” Justin said. “Both my parents were very young when they had me, and they struggled. They also had addiction, alcoholism, things like that in my family and if it wasn’t for sports, I probably would have been way worse off than I really was. But I think if I had a place like this, I could have found comfort and peace and more understanding than what was going on in my home life.”

The vision of The Spot is to see families with the assets they need to thrive as positive, contributing members of their schools and community.

“Our end goal is to see stronger families, have more family engagement,” Kannapel said. “We know that some of the kids that come to our programs, their parents have been incarcerated or have had some kind of brokenness in their families. We want to strengthen families for the next generation.”

“I’m just overjoyed,” Kendra said, as a large group of kids played in the background. “I told my husband today I think I literally prayed in my sleep last night. I’m just blown away with the people and the support we have.”

For more information about “The Spot” Youth Center call Kendra Cantrell at 931-854-6172.

June 7, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

Put on hold again!

The budget committee, Tuesday night, again tabled adoption of the ambulance service budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year until perhaps next week. The final proposal will be submitted to the full county commission when it acts on the consolidated budgets for all departments later this summer.

EMS Director Trent Phipps had initially requested as one option a $5.00 per hour increase in pay for the 20 EMS medical personnel employed by the ambulance service and that his own pay be increased from $61,040 to $90,000 in 2025-26.

The proposed EMS budget request has since been revised to include only step pay increases for personnel and for the director’s pay to go to $70,000. The EMS budget would also include another $6,000 to cover an increase in pay for medical death investigators.

“We proposed making my salary higher than the highest paid paramedic on the list”, said EMS Director Phipps during his initial meeting with the budget committee in April.

According to payroll records provided by a county commissioner, the highest paid EMS employee for the period of July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 was $71,971 (gross amount) including hourly pay and overtime. The same employee earned $60,177 (gross amount) during the period from July 1, 2024 to April 10, 2025.

During Tuesday night’s meeting, County Mayor Matt Adcock recommended setting the EMS director’s pay at the same level as the DeKalb County Administrator of Elections which for the 2025-26 fiscal year will be $84,699 per year. And every time the state gives a raise to the election administrator, the EMS director would get the same raise.

Again, the budget committee has not yet voted on the EMS budget requests.

Meanwhile the budget committee voted to fund the purchase of a new remounted ambulance which is not what EMS Director Phipps had originally requested. Phipps had asked the committee to include $275,000 for a new ambulance which if approved would not be expected to arrive for another two to three years. Instead, the committee budgeted $158,600 (from capital projects) for a remounted ambulance with options of $16,800 and $700.

The county is expected to take delivery this summer on another ambulance which was authorized for purchase and ordered during the 2022-23 budget year but not yet paid for at $225,000. These two ambulance purchases ($225,000 for one on the way and the remounted ambulance) puts the total EMS local capital projects funding at $401,100 for 2025-26. The budget committee Tuesday night added a little cushion to make the total appropriation $415,000.

In other business, the budget committee raised the hourly county employee part time pay across the board from $12 to $13 per hour. Pay for each of the three judicial commissioners would go from $14,900 to $20,000 per year.

In 2024, the county funded a full-time courthouse security officer for a portion of the year through a $37,440 budget amendment with benefits including (social security, retirement, health insurance, unemployment, and Medicare) Constable Mark Milam was hired to fill the position. This year the cost would be $49,030 including benefits for the entire year. Meanwhile a part time unfilled security guard position at $18,720 was also funded last year to assist Constable Milam and is to be included in the 2025-26 budget.

Meanwhile work is underway to make the entrance doors to the courthouse more secure. According to County Mayor Adcock, panic bars and related hardware have already been installed, and the project should be completed by the end of July.

The committee adopted the sheriff’s department and jail budget and granted Sheriff Patrick Ray’s request for the addition of two deputies and one secretary to his operation. In making his request in April, Sheriff Ray explained how he had taken steps to minimize budgetary impact of the additional staff.

“We are adding 2 deputies to the sheriff’s department and the 3% salary increases plus tier jumps. I have made deductions from the sheriff’s budget to try to offset expenses for the extra 2 deputy positions. We have also lost high tier deputies and detectives, so our salaries line item is less this year than last year. With the deductions from Sheriff’s Department budget line items and the pay decreases, I feel the impact of the extra 2 deputies along with the 3% increase in pay with the employee tier jumps will have a minimal impact to the budget,” said Sheriff Ray.

“I have also made deductions from the Jail’s Budget to try to offset expenses with the extra secretary position. We have also lost high tier correctional officers, so our salaries line item is less this year. One of the major cuts, is with the jail’s inmate food line item. The food item line cut is where our contract for feeding 85 inmates and over has gone down to 52 inmates because of the TCI bed count cut. That food cut alone was $103,000,” said Sheriff Ray

The budget committee also approved an expenditure of $600,000 from capital projects for courthouse heating and cooling repairs and transferred $100,000 from interest income in capital projects to help support the county general fund.

The capital projects fund includes up to $450,000 for either a used or demo fire engine to allow placement of an engine at the new Wolf Creek Public Safety Building that may be constructed within the next 12 months.  The capital projects fund also has a total of $250,000 in seed money for the Wolf Creek Public Safety building. Four new sheriff’s department patrol cars totaling $175,000 would also be funded from capital projects in 2025-26.

The budget committee will continue its work Tuesday, June 10 at 6 p.m. in the lower courtroom of the courthouse.

June 7, 2025
By: Dwayne Page

Meeting a budget request halfway!

The county budget committee Tuesday night adopted the election commission budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year but denied a request by election administrator Dustin Estes for a second full time employee for his office. Instead, the committee voted to fund a part time position at $18,096.

Estes, as he had done in April, tried to make his case for the second full time deputy and he cited statistics to back up his request.

“I am requesting to add one deputy to my staff. I operate with a staff of one,” said Estes during his previous remarks in April. “Some statistics to back up the need for the extra support, from 2017 to 2025 we have seen a 21% growth in our voter rolls,” explained Estes. “In the last four years DeKalb County has increased 8% in its total residents and our voter rolls have increased 11%. Looking at similar counties to DeKalb County, Smith County has two deputies. I think they have operated with two deputies for some time. Adding a second deputy would potentially alleviate any comp time and it would also support our office in vacation and sick time. We have been fortunate so far but with a staff of one I feel like we run the risk during election time. Heaven forbid but if something were to happen to myself or that one person during an election, we would really have liability with such an important task,” explained Estes.

The budget committee’s recommendation will be included in the 2025-26 budget subject to final adoption by the full county commission later this summer.

Meanwhile plans are moving forward to eventually relocate the election commission office from the courthouse to unused office space at the county complex. In January a budget amendment in the amount of $110,000 was appropriated from the fund balance of capital projects. A bid was recently awarded to make the renovation, and the work is expected to be completed perhaps by the first of July.

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