County looking to spend smart as budget time nears

County looking to spend smart as budget time nears

Wheeless: ‘ We will be stable and real strong’ at year’s end

news@theeveningtimes.com

With budget hearings soon to get underway, Crittenden County officials are asking their department heads to watch their spending and stick to their line item budget.

Justice Vickie Robertson pointed out that the Election Commission was close to running out of money, the Health Department was over its repairs budget, and that the prosecuting attorney’s office was also overbudget on several of its line items.

“We need everyone to stay in line with their line item as opposed to padding an area and at the end going over,” Robertson said.

“People aren’t looking that we have a line item budget.

They are saying they have money in their budget and are spending it. They are taking money but then when it gets down to the end of the year if they need postage or phone service, they have spent all of the money because they didn’t follow the line item.”

The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office had several budget items that had exceeded the allotted line item — $3,000 over on one and $1,000 on another.

“I think that needs to be brought to their attention now because we still have two and a half months left,” Robertson said.

County Treasurer Charlie Suiter said he has already spoken to them about their telephone budget, which was one of the items that is over.

“He still doesn’t know why this is off,” Suiter said. “He said he was going to find out what is going on.”

Robertson asked Suiter to let them know that they are over-budget and need to be careful.

She also questioned why the Health Department was substantially over-budget on its repair budget.

“They spent $800 on something last month,” Robertson said.

County Judge Woody Wheeless said there have been some major sewer issues there. “We have been up there working a lot on that sewer system,” Wheeless said.

According to Wheeless, the building had some water lines break and the county also had to replace some toilets as well.

“We’ve been working with the City of West Memphis on that,” Wheeless said.

“We had to have a plumber come out because it was on our side and not West Memphis. So we have had some sewer issues out there this last month for sure.”

Robertson also cautioned that the Election Commission was going to go overbudget as well.

“They spent $1,800 last month,” Robertson said. “I don’t know how they hit $1,800 last month.”

Robertson said the general election will be much larger than the school board election, and that the Election Commission only has about $1,600 left in its budget.

“I think part of that will be billed back to the school district for the school election,” Robertson said. “We need to make sure we are billing that back to them.

And in the primary they paid some big dollar fees to some people who worked on the election. I think that needs to be curtailed so we don’t go over-budget. They paid some people thousands of dollars in the primary.”

Suiter said he also noticed the costs and has spoken to them about it.

“I don’t disagree,” Suiter said. “I have talked to them. I told them we’ve got to get these things under control. They don’t have that much money to finish out the year.”

“That’s all I am trying to do,” Robertson added. “Because we are getting close to budget time. We need to know if we under-budgeted or people are just spending because the money is there.”

Wheeless said the Road Department is also overbudget on some items because they had to spend $12,000 on new tires for their graders which took half of their budget, and are also over on their lumber and pilings budget because of the extensive amount of bridge repairs.

“We’ve done some major bridge work,” Wheeless said. “But we’re through with that for the year.”

Suiter said he and Wheeless are working on the budget will hold hearings in November.

“I don’t see any problems,” Suiter said. “We will be tweaking some numbers here and there. But overall, we will be stable and real strong.”

The county will have to make some salary adjustments because the minimum wage will be going up to $8.50 an hour in January. “We are trying to address that in a manner that we take care of every employee,” Wheeless said.

“Even though you take care of the ones who are at or below that wage when it goes up, we feel if we escalate that we need to adjust the step for every employee in the county.”

The county is also facing a 12 percent increase in its health care premiums.

Wheeless said they are still negotiating with Blue Cross to get that lower.

“We have been negotiating back and forth with them,” Wheeless said. “We are at 7.5 percent now. Last year they presented a ten percent increase and we negotiated it down to five percent.

But, if you look at the last five years, the insurance company has spent almost a million dollar over the premiums they have collected. We have constantly been in the hole. We’re about $250,000 in the hole this year from what they collected versus what they paid out.”

Suiter said as of September the county’s sales tax revenue was only off by .006 percent from the same time as last year.

“We’re less than one-tenth of a percent off,” Suiter said. “So we’re having another good year. Everything appears to be pretty stable.”

By Mark Randall