County will proceed to cut personnel

The Donley County Commissioners’ Court today decided to go forward with a proposed budget that will increase taxes seven percent and trim personnel in three offices.

The decision comes after a called meeting of the court on September 5, 2001, in which commissioners said they could not see a way to raise enough money to keep the positions funded. The Enterprise will have a complete report next week.

Last week, Donley County officials got their chance to respond to proposed cuts in their budgets during an August 30 called session of the commissioners’ court. Three officials sought to preserve their secretaries’ positions while Sheriff Butch Blackburn argued that personnel in his department deserve raises.

The proposed county budget for 2001-2002 called for the secretary in the Extension Office to be cut to half time. Church said his office is involved with agriculture and community development, 4-H programs, and consumer science programs. He said the Extension has been instrumental in providing crop demonstration plots, cotton variety and fertility trials, moisture monitoring for peanuts, a roundtable lecture series, the Don Taylor business development series, the July 4th Craft Fair, and nutritional programs at the senior citizens centers in Clarendon and Hedley.

The Extension Office saved local residents $115,000 in health screening fees over the last four years at the annual Health & Wealth Fair, he said. Church also pointed out there are 142 young people in 4-H and discussed the Walk Across Texas program his office sponsors.

“We can do all of those things because we have a fulltime secretary,” he said.

County FCA Agent Sue Church also said that the local secretary has been asked to train the Extension’s district secretary. Three other community members also spoke out in favor of the Extension’s secretary, praising her commitment and performance on the job.

Pct. 1&2 Justice of the Peace Jimmy Johnson echoed complaints aired recently by some county officials who did not approve of the commissioners’ handling of the proposed budget.

“I wish you had called us and told us the county was in a deficit,” he said. “What disturbs me is that my employee found out about the cuts before I had a chance to tell her.”

Johnson’s court clerk was also cut to part time status in the proposed budget.

Johnson outlined the responsibilities of his clerk and told the court that she exercises her duties with a professionalism of which Donley County should be proud. He also said that Pct. 3&4 Justice of the Peace Ann Kennedy in Hedley is a personal friend of his, but that there is no comparison between his court and hers. Johnson said his court is busier with items such as felony arraignments, bail hearings, and delinquent taxes due to his office being in the county seat.

The justice said his office is not a revenue producer for the county on its own. He said his court produces revenue through tickets written by law enforcement agencies by being timely in handling its business.

“[My clerk] has been with me almost five years,” he said. “It takes a long time to educate a court clerk to handle that type of business.”

Tax Assessor/Collector Wilma Lindley also had her deputy’s position cut to half time. She agreed with Johnson.

“I felt like [the court] should have called me in and talked about it,” she said.

Lindley said the only people who don’t use her office are the ones that don’t own vehicles.

“Some days we’re swamped,” she said. “Some days we don’t have very many people, but I feel like I should have the fulltime help because I need my vacation.”

Sheriff Blackburn had no cuts in his personnel, but the proposed budget also had no pay raises for his deputies and dispatchers like he had sought.

“I know we’re broke; we have been broke for 100 years,” Blackburn said. “I wouldn’t ask for my people a raise if we weren’t paying our own way.”

The sheriff pointed to the increased number of traffic tickets his department has issued since he took office in January, noting that it has dramatically increased county revenues.

“Already this year, we’ve written over 300 traffic tickets,” the sheriff said. “That’s a total of $98,210.25 if they were all paid. What has been collected is $52,817.45. I don’t believe y’all were getting that under the previous administration.”

Blackburn said he is the fourth lowest paid sheriff in the state and said the county is asking his deputies to work for “welfare wages.”

Blackburn earns a salary of $20,834.88. His deputies earn $18,680.58 annually, and dispatcher/jailers earn only $6.97 per hour.

The sheriff said average pay for counties this size is approximately $27,000 per year. He realized Donley County couldn’t meet the average, but said it should do better.

“We’re putting these [deputies] out here on the highway, they’re going on calls that not very many people want to go on, and the reason they’re doing that is because they want to. They’re not doing it for the pay. We need to at least pay them a wage where they don’t qualify for food stamps.

“If you want to save money, we can send these rented radar units back and forget about the $52,000 we’ve already collected.”

For their part, members of the commissioners’ court said they did not question the job any department was doing, but that the county only has so much money. The court also pointed to a health insurance benefit that the county provides to its employees – the premiums for which have increased from $60,000 annually in 1998-99 to $120,000 in 2000-01 and is expected to cost $157,000 in the coming year.

County Clerk Fay Vargas said the health insurance provides excellent coverage, but other county officials questioned the high cost of insuring family members under the program.

After returning from a lunch recess, the court spent the afternoon looking for ways to restore the secretaries to fulltime in the proposed budget. Commissioners considered raising taxes to just under the legal rollback limit and also looked at hiring a fifth deputy whose job would primarily be traffic control.

As the afternoon progressed, the court was discussing across the board pay raises for most employees that might be paid for by higher taxes and increased revenue from traffic control. Attention focused on a four percent raise, and Sheriff Blackburn said that a four percent raise “on not very much is not very much” and still pushed for higher raises in his department. Blackburn told commissioners he would settle for a four percent raise for his dispatchers but wanted to increase deputy salaries to $20,000 annually with the chief deputy getting an additional $1,000.

Commissioners recessed for dinner and reconvened after 8 p.m., and at that time commissioners began discussing having two departments share a secretary and not having such a big tax increase.

Commissioner Donnie Hall told the sheriff, “You’re not going to get what you want.”

Blackburn responded that his office did not want to take on the added burden of a fifth deputy if it meant just a “Mickey Mouse” four percent raise.

Judge Jack Hall told the commissioners he thought the court should take more time to consider the budget and not rush to any decisions. Commissioners met again Wednesday afternoon and agreed to make the cuts as proposed.

A final vote on the 2001-2002 budget will be taken on September 19 at 1:30 p.m.