April 11, 2024
By: Dwayne Page
The DeKalb County budget committee met Tuesday evening at the courthouse to begin making plans for the 2024-25 operating budget.
Half of the 14-member county commission makes up the budget committee including 1st district commissioner Tom Chandler, 2nd district commissioner Sabrina Farler, 3rd district commissioner Susannah Cripps, 4th district commissioner Tony (Cully) Culwell,, 5th district commissioner Glynn Merriman, 6th district commissioner Jeff Barnes who serves as chairman of the budget committee, and 7th district commissioner Mathias Anderson. Chandler was absent.
The committee heard budget requests from a few county public officials and department heads at the meeting including the sheriff, general sessions/juvenile court judge, circuit court clerk, administrator of elections, as well as from directors of two non-profit groups, the chamber of commerce and rescue squad. County Mayor Matt Adcock reviewed with the budget committee the estimated revenues and expenditures of the county general fund budget for the new year which is subject to change if cuts are made or new spending is added based on funding requests from the various departments
Salaries, which have gone up in recent years and are now significantly impacting the budget, are going up again. Pay increases have been plugged into the proposed new spending plan for county public officials as mandated by the state as well as for employees in the county general government based on what they are due to earn under their tiered salary scales.
Sheriff Patrick Ray, during his budget presentation, urged the committee to not tamper with the existing wage scale for 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 (for employees). 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. Its 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 (sign-on bonuses) 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. I ask that you consider all county employees, not just mine because I’m sure they have problems just like me in finding somebody to come to work that is trustworthy and doesn’t have an arrest record. Its hard to find people like that,” said Sheriff Ray.
As for his budget, Sheriff Ray said one of the biggest changes 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 (cost) this year versus last year because their malpractice insurance has gone sky high,” said Sheriff Ray. “About all of them are requiring the county to be responsible for the medicine that the inmates receive. For years they (inmate healthcare provider) have always furnished medication in their bid other than anything for HIV, cancer, and other things they don’t pay for. The reason their malpractice insurance costs went up is because some lawyer got with all the jails that had contracted medical health services and had noticed that in their contracts, the health care companies had supplied the medicines, so they went back and sued those companies saying you are saving money by not giving needed medication to inmates therefore they are suffering, hurting, or dying. That is the reason all of them have opted out of that (providing medication) this year because their malpractice insurance went so high,” said Sheriff Ray.
The medications will continue to be provided by IHS Pharmacy, the company with whom Fast Access does business, but the county will now have to bear those costs.
Projections on paper currently show that the county might be in the red by as much as $835, 576 at year’s end (June 30, 2025) but County Mayor Adcock said that’s only if everything is spent as budgeted and that is not likely.
“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.