Sheriff's deputies in Newton County are among the lowest paid in the state, with full-time deputies' salaries starting at $21,260 a year.
On Feb. 14, voters in Newton County will decide whether they want to give them a raise.
A special election will be held that day asking voters to approve a 1 percent sales and use tax "for public safety." Revenue from the proposed tax could be used to help pay for operation of the county jail and the sheriff's office, including raises.
Newton County, population 8,330, has some unique features.
More than half of the land in the county belongs to the federal or state government, so the county gets no tax revenue from that property, said Clinton Daniels, a justice of the peace who will leave office Saturday after serving six years.
Carved from a rugged section of the Ozark Mountains, much of Newton County is National Park Service land. The Buffalo National River stretches across the northern half of the county.
Other parts of Newton County belong to the U.S. Forest Service and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said Daniels.
Newton County is one of the busiest in the nation in search-and-rescue operations, said Chief Deputy Jarred Morgan.
The Buffalo River attracts hikers, canoeists, rock climbers, elk watchers and other adventurers who occasionally find themselves lost or injured. When that happens, the Newton County sheriff's office often assists other agencies in rescue efforts.
That translates to long hours in a county that doesn't pay overtime. So deputies have to take compensatory time off. Often, when deputies leave for another job, they've accrued hundreds of hours of comp time, Morgan said. While the departing deputy is being paid for comp time, the sheriff's office doesn't have the funding to hire a new deputy.
A group of deputies, including Morgan, went before the Newton County Quorum Court on Nov. 7, asking for a budget increase for salaries in the sheriff's office.
"We are only asking to be fairly compensated, especially for the additional things we have to do and the unpleasant things we regularly deal with," Morgan told the justices of the peace. "We usually have two deputies on in the evening to cover the 822 square miles of Newton County, but oftentimes deputies work the entire county alone.
"The sheriff's office has to cover if Jasper police, Arkansas State Police, National Park Service or any other law enforcement agency is shorthanded or just doesn't want to cover their jurisdiction," Morgan told the Quorum Court. "In the place of those agencies, Newton County deputies work accidents on state highways, take calls inside the city limits and deal with drunks, unruly tourists and injuries on the river."
On Dec. 5, the Quorum Court passed an ordinance calling for a special election. According to Ordinance No. 16-18, the ballot wording will indicate that revenue from the tax will be used "for one or more of the following: a) to equip, furnish, operate and maintain the existing jail, [and] b) for all other law enforcement purposes."
On Dec. 19, the Quorum Court met in special session and decided to give a raise of 75 cents per hour to all county employees, Daniels said. That amounts to $1,560 per year for full-time employees. Daniels described it as a cost-of-living raise.
That will help, Morgan said, but it's not enough.
Morgan said he would like to see starting salaries for deputies in Newton County increased to about $26,000 per year. He wants to increase other salaries in the sheriff's office accordingly.
The starting salary for Newton County's chief deputy, at $22,877, is also among the lowest in the state, based on a chart from the Association of Arkansas Counties surveying 2016 salaries.
Newton County Sheriff Keith Slape made $39,863 in 2016, according to the survey. While still low compared with most of Arkansas' 75 counties, it was higher than what sheriffs were paid in four other Class 1 counties: Searcy, Lafayette, Monroe and Nevada. Nevada County was the lowest, with the sheriff's salary budgeted at $35,821. Class 1 counties are those with a population of less than 10,000.
In 2008, Newton County voters approved a 0.5 percent sales tax to build a jail to replace the 104-year-old rock jail, which had been deemed unsafe. But voters twice rejected another tax to pay to operate the new jail.
The jail was constructed and began housing prisoners in 2014, two years after it was completed.
To fund operations, Slape accepts inmates from other parts of the state, and the Arkansas Department of Correction pays to house them at the jail in Jasper. Inmates from Newton County usually take up fewer than half of the jail's 30 beds.
But Morgan said that's not a guaranteed source of ongoing income.
"We need to let voters know that for any reason at all the Arkansas Department of Correction says we can't send you any prisoners this week, we would have to shut down," Morgan said.
He said Newton County might be able to go two weeks before the jail would have to be closed.
Morgan said deputies weren't the lowest paid full-time Newton County employees in 2016. The deputy collector and deputy treasurer each made $19,828.
Metro on 12/28/2016