Quorum Court tentatively OKs sheriff’s budget increase
Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008
Washington County Quorum Court unanimously approved Sheriff Tim Helder's current budget requests for 2009, but that could change.
"Until we finalize the budget in our December Quorum Court meeting, everything is on the table," said H. L. Goodwin Jr., chairman of the Quorum Court.
The sheriff's office requested $ 528 000 more than the basic budget assumptions under which the Quorum Court is working through its budget decisions.
"Basically, all we're asking for this year is replacement of vehicles and a few incidentals, like kitchen utensils, and maybe some equipment," Helder said.
The sheriff's proposal was $ 350, 000 for capital outlay in enforcement, $ 300, 000 for replacing 10 marked and three unmarked vehicles, and $ 50, 000 for a building, parking lot and fencing at the firing range.
He also requested $ 178, 000 for equipment at the jail. Of that amount, $ 150, 000 was identified for replacing six transport vehicles with equipment. The remainder is for replacing kitchen equipment, two computers and a medication cart.
In building the budget to date, Quorum Court has assumed a 2-percent increase for operations; a 15-percent increase for food and medicine, salary increases and fuel prices reaching $ 5 per gallon for diesel and $ 4. 50 per gallon for gasoline.
As it tentatively stands, the sheriff's office proposed budget for enforcement is $ 6, 002, 527. The total proposal for the jail portion of the sheriff's budget is $ 11, 490, 471.
If all of the department budgets considered by the Quorum Court so far were approved, the county's general fund would be in the red $ 51, 151, 820.
However, county Comptroller Boyd Darling explained that is not a true picture because it does not reflect projected revenues, final decisions by the Quorum Court or additional requests yet to be heard by the county's governing body.
"General fund, we have 50 departments fighting for this $ 28 million," Darling said. "And so, this number's going to go up before we're done."
Goodwin said he anticipates a combination of budget cuts and revenues to balance the budget. Carryovers may be adjusted, for example, and the county will have more months of sales tax data to study before a budget decision is reached in December.
"We'll get to the 23 rd [Oct. 23 ] and kind of chew around on it and then see if we need to chew some more on Nov. 18," he said.
Finalizing the budget is on the agenda for the Oct. 23 meeting.
Goodwin said there is a caveat to that finalization, the pending election of a new judge.
He said it would be "the better part of valor and professional courtesy"to meet with that person to "discuss ideas and plans and situations that they may want to fold into the budget and ways they may want to adapt the budget to meet their particular vision.
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