FAYETTEVILLE -- Washington County's justices of the peace were told Tuesday that requests for added funding for 2019 have topped $1 million in just the last three days.
Bill Ussery, justice of the peace for District 4 and chairman of the county's Finance/Budget Committee said he's learned the Sheriff's Office will be asking that the pay of deputy sheriffs be brought into line with officers in municipal departments. Ussery said the county's elected officials and department heads are also wanting to replace 55 computers and look at upgrading the software used by almost every department.
Sales tax receipts
Receipts from Washington County’s county’s 1 percent sales tax for September were up by about 5 percent from the same month in 2017, Treasurer Bobby Hill told the county’s Finance/Budget Committee on Tuesday. According to information Hill presented to the committee, the county received about $7.3 million in sales tax revenue in 2017. The county budgeted for $7.5 million in sales tax revenue for 2018.
Source: Washington County
The committee held its first budget meeting for the 2019 budget year. Ussery said the next meeting will be Oct. 25.
The justices of the peace also heard from Prosecuting Attorney Matt Durrett on Tuesday. Durrett said he needs to add three paralegal positions to his staff to keep up with the increasing paperwork. A draft ordinance given to the committee showed the cost to the county of the three positions at $125,448.
Durrett said the change to electronic filing and a paperless office management system has increased the work of filing, record-keeping and other "non-legal" work. He said the deputy prosecuting attorneys in the office are spending less time on legal work.
"They're doing 'non-lawyer' stuff," Durrett said. "We need to free them up to do lawyer stuff. That's what we're paying them for."
Lisa Ecke, justice of the peace for District 6, asked Durrett if his office has considered using interns from the University of Arkansas law school to do some of the work and seeking grants to help offset the costs. Durrett said he is looking into "externships" for law students. He said he hasn't done much research into grants because of the sometimes burdensome restrictions that come with them, but said he will do more in that area as well.
Several justices of the peace asked Durrett about seeking money from the state to cover the costs of his office. He said the state pays for all but one of the deputy prosecutors but none of the other staff.
Ann Harbison, justice of the peace for District 14, said the county needs to pursue more state money.
"The state pays for deputy prosecuting attorneys," Harbison said. "Maybe that's what we should be looking for instead of paralegals that we pay for. We're picking up too much of the state's responsibilities."
The committee took no action on the 2019 budget at Tuesday's meeting. Ussery said the meeting was for information gathering and asked the justices of the peace to study the budget books prepared for them.
Ussery said after the meeting the county's requested expenditures as the budget process begins exceed anticipated revenue by $4 million to $5 million. He said that doesn't take into consideration money the elected officials and department heads will turn back to the general fund at the end of the year. Ussery said the justices of the peace have a lot of work to do to balance revenues and expenses.
"We're going to be OK," he said. "We're not going to go broke. We want to do the best we can with the resources we have."
NW News on 10/10/2018