County juggles funding for jailers, bailiffs, 911

The Putnam County Council made some big decisions during its May meeting.

The Putnam County Commissioners, the council's legislative counterparts, spent part of their first June meeting wrapping their heads around what those decisions mean to the county financially.

Councilman Larry Parker was at the Monday-morning commissioners meeting and asked Auditor Lorie Hallett to help bring the commissioners up to speed on the decisions that were made regarding the county's Public Safety Local Option Income Tax (LOIT) funds.

"The council spent a lot of money (at the last meeting) -- that LOIT money," Parker said.

Parker was talking about the seven new positions the council approved the creation of during the Thursday, May 26 meeting. Those include two bailiffs for the Putnam County Courthouse and five new jail officers.

At a proposed base salary of $30,000 and considering benefits, each of these positions will cost the county between $42,360 and $54,354 per year, depending on health insurance options, Hallett reported.

This means the additional seven positions are likely to cost the county between $296,520 and $380,478 each year.

While these totals fall well within the $971,288.16 per year the new tax is expected to bring in, it does not take into account paying for 911 upgrades -- a project that was the driving force behind creating the Public Safety LOIT.

Total appropriations for the account already take up most of the money the LOIT brings in annually, with $901,275 allotted to E-911 and another $50,000 to animal control.

This leaves just a little more than $20,000 in non-allocated money.

The county council can -- and almost certainly will -- re-appropriate this money.

The biggest question revolves around the time the county plans to repay the loan that purchased the new 911 system. While council members would like to have paid off the entire $960,000 upgrade cost in one payment, other needs have made that plan impossible.

A three-year payment schedule would bring the annual loan cost down to $337,882.38 annually, a much more manageable figure even with other projects.

Hallett also presented other terms to the commissioners: five years with an annual payment of $207,713.22, seven years with a payment of $151,983.09 and 10 years at $110,259.70 annually.

Ultimately, the issue was mainly information on Monday, as such fiscal questions are the concern of the council.

However, commissioners and Hallett still had questions, such as why the council opted to approve funding for full-time bailiffs rather than part time, as the commissioners had recommended earlier in May.

Chief Deputy Col. Phil Parker of the sheriff's department fielded the question.

"If you're wanting to bring a quality individual and you do that part time, you're going to be hiring a new bailiff every six weeks or even nine days, like we are with our part-time jailers," Col. Parker said.

Hallett said she is worried about spending the money before it even arrives.

"My only concern is we get a total per year of $971,288.16 and that comes in over a 12-month period," the auditor said, adding that she doesn't want to constantly be playing catch-up.

That has not been a problem so far, with $404,703.40 brough in since Jan. 1 and only $53,633.27 spent, leaving a $361,070.13 cash balance in the account.

The expenditures are sure to go up, though, when loan payments come due and officers are hired to fill the seven positions.

The latter is likely to happen very soon. Col. Parker was in attendance in part to ask if the sheriff's department is authorized to fill the five new positions.

He explained how jail officers have been short staffed recently and filling the five positions would make things run much more smoothly.

A recent jail inspection revealed that the Putnam County Jail likely needs 24 or 25 full-time jailers to be properly staffed. Currently, Putnam County has 12 such full-time positions and only 10 of them filled.

The five new positions only get the county to 17, but will still fill a void.

"One of the statutory requirements (of the sheriff's department) is to provide safety for the inmates of the jail," Col. Parker said. "Right now I don't think we're holding up our end of the bargain."

The commissioners unanimously authorized filling the positions.

Also following the council's lead, the commissioners also agreed to waive the requirement that department heads get pre-approval for filling positions that are already funded.