Sheriff's request denied (08/14/2008)

The Jay County Council split votes and denied full-time status to two Sheriff's department employees during Wednesday night's budget meeting.

The county council voted 4-3 to deny a request from Jay County Sheriff Ray Newton for the department's administrative assistant and secretary both to take on an extra 5 hours per week, increasing to 40 from 35 hours.

Council members Marilyn Coleman, Gerald Kirby, Jim Zimmerman and Judy LeMaster voted against, with George Meehan, Mike Leonhard and Fred Bailey supporting the request.

Newton presented the option as a possible solution to cut down the sheriff department's compensation time problems. The sheriff stated several overtime hours come from the two courthouse employees.

"Can that help alleviate comp time?" asked Leonhard.

"I don't know," responded Coleman.

"Is a majority of comp time for working overtime?" Zimmerman asked.

"Yes," Newton answered.

The council's first attempt to vote came up short, as LeMaster didn't voice in one direction or the other.

"Whether we address it now or next year, we'll have to do it," urged Newton, who has been hounded to get his department's comp time under control.

The increase in hours for the two employees would cost the county about an additional $3,000 per year. LeMaster made her decision soon after the numbers were crunched.

"Three-thousand dollars could pay for a lot of comp time," she said, and voted no. Coleman threw in her nay vote to seal the denial.

After the meeting, LeMaster said approving the motion "opens up another can of worms," in that other departments with 35-hour employees might want their employees moved to 40.

"If they need more hours, the rest of them need more hours," Coleman agreed. Zimmerman held a similar opinion.

Kirby, who served as sheriff years ago, said he's familiar with the duties of those employees and thought that these clerical positions should be able to handle the workload during the workday.

"It wasn't a close call for me," he said.

The council otherwise worked through the remaining budgets in less than an hour. While fuel costs continued to be major points of increase throughout the departments, the council found the budgets to be very conservative and tight.

"They have been very careful," said Jay County Auditor Nancy Culy.

During the county council's regular session Wednesday night, council members:

•Approved a $4,500 appropriation from the Drug Free Community fund to pay for new cameras in the police cruisers for the sheriff's department.

•Approved purchase of a new vehicle for Community Corrections at a cost of $19,200.

•Approved a $12,741.20 reduction in the township assessors budget, since those duties effectively ended July 1.

•Approved a $300 transfer within the Jay County office of the Purdue Cooperative Extension Service to pay for summer part-time help.

•Approved a $500 transfer within the Jay County Cemetery Commission to the cemetery maintenance fund.

•Approved transfers of $25,000 and $14,221 from the infrastructure fund to the commissioners budget for payments to Schenkel Shultz Archtiectures and Financial Solutions Group for initial work on the possible Jay County Jail expansion.

•Approved a transfer of $3.90 within Community Corrections to cover a calculation error.

•Received information about 911 fees from Culy. Jay County has 8,256 land line phones in the county. The current monthly 911 fee of $1.75 could be raised to $2.47. The maximum increase would raise about an additional $6,000 each month.[[In-content Ad]]