Deputies and dispatchers with the Donley County Sheriff’s Department will get significant raises if the proposed 2002-2003 county budget is approved next month.
The budget, which was filed in the county clerk’s office this week, meets the request of Sheriff Butch Blackburn and will raise deputies’ salaries from $18,680 per year to $24,000 per year with the chief deputy making $25,000.
Dispatcher/jailers’ wages will be increased from $6.97 per hour to $8. The sheriff’s salary will increase from $20,834.88 to $28,500.
Blackburn had been very vocal about the “welfare wages” his department was earning, and several citizens had rallied to support his case in recent weeks. Now the sheriff says he is pleased with the raises.
“I feel better about it now,” Blackburn said. “I just want to thank everybody who supported us and what they did for us. I think the city and county both went to great efforts to do this.”
The sheriff said he had received wide support for his department from around the county.
“I have not had one person say anything to me against it,” he said.
The increase in the county budget comes after a budget workshop at the City of Clarendon last week in which the Board of Aldermen stated its intention to raise the city’s payment to the county for police protection from $100,000 to $130,000.
“We’re still working on the city budget,” said Alderman Janice Knorpp, “but it is the intention of the city to give them more money.”
Knorpp said she thought the sheriff’s deputies needed a raise and said other local employees are also working at food stamp levels and need raises also.
“But I realize this is a different job where there are dangerous situations,” she said.
County Judge Jack Hall acknowledged the city’s help with the salary increases.
“The sheriff’s department raises were made possible by the $30,000 contributed by the city,” Hall said. “We then filled in the rest of the things the sheriff had requested.”
Hall said that while he had not had any calls on the issue of deputy salaries, the commissioners’ court itself had several.
“The court has had great support for it. We have had a lot of people say that’s what we needed to do.”
Blackburn’s proposed budgets for the sheriff’s department and jail include salary and overtime increases totaling $45,892.83.
Other county officials and employees are given a three percent raise in the proposed budget. Several elected officials, including the judge and county commissioners, declined to accept their raises.
Commissioners are also proposing slight increases in the county ad valorem rate from 0.288297 to 0.293224 and in the county special (or road and bridge) rate from 0.084637 to 0.085873.
A special debt component tax rate has also been proposed of 0.09745 to generate revenue to pay the courthouse restoration notes and the lease of patrol cars.
“It’s just a sound business practice,” Hall said of the debt component rate. “It guarantees that you have the money to cover your debts.”
The county’s largest debt in the general fund is the courthouse project. Payments on those tax notes will total $101,587.50 in 2002-2003.
“You just have to look at the courthouse as a project we’ve started and are committed to finishing,” Hall said. “We signed a contract with the state in 2000 to do that.”
The total proposed increase in county taxes will amount to an increase of $26.35 per year on the average local homestead.
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