As promised the F&A Committee of the Quorum Court recommended an ordinance that would allow the county to micro-manage the budget of the sheriff's office. This ordinance would appropriate money quarterly instead of yearly allowing the committee to keep a closer watch on spending within the sheriff's department. This idea would seem to be a good one but we suspect that the sheriff's office and at least one JP, Marvin Kelley, would have a problem with it. Look for this opposition at the next full quorum court meeting.
The F&A Committee also lived up to their promise and voted to give county employees a 3% raise retroactive to the first of the year. Although we do find that a 3% raise in pay is a slight bit low considering the cost of living increase was higher. People who are on society security got a 4.5% increase this year. But it's better than nothing right. There is one more hurdle this proposed raise will have to jump, it must be voted in and ratified by the full court.
Something that has been over looked however by the county is the millions in delinquent fines that still plagues the county. The county voted to publish a list of the delinquent fine owners in the Log Cabin but we haven't seen anything published lately. The first list you'll remember was littered with incomplete and inaccurate information that was suppose to be corrected in the next publication. But we did not see this published, maybe we missed it. At any rate the county has only seen a limited increase in the collection of these fines while millions are still owed. Maybe if the Quorum Court was to allow a collection agency to collect more of these fines a bigger raise could be given to the employees of this county next year.
Food for thought. . .
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