Fiscal court approves budget, split on salaries

Posted June 23, 2015 at 7:10 pm

Clinton County Fiscal Court finalized a new budget on a split vote, granted county employees a small cost-of-living increase and verbally debated employee salaries during a two-and-a-half hour special meeting last Tuesday evening with all members present.

The session was a call meeting, due to the judge and magistrates having to be out-of-town on the date of their regularly scheduled meeting last Thursday.

Several items of business were on the agenda, with a large portion of the meeting pertaining to finances and employee salaries which caused some arguments and disagreements at times, especially between some of the magistrates and the judge/executive.

The 2015-16 fiscal year budget of $4,768,214.96 was approved on second and final reading and will take effect July 1. However, as with the first reading, the vote by court members was split down the middle. Magistrate Hershell Key made the motion to adopt the budget with Magistrate Terry Buster giving the motion a second and Magistrate Johnny Russell also voting yes. Magistrates Patty Guinn, Ricky Craig and Mickey Riddle again voted no, with Judge Richard Armstong again breaking the tie with a yes vote.

Magistrates who voted against the new budget were apparently opposed to some components in the budget, more specifically, rates of pay for some employees compared to others.

With the judge breaking the tie, the new budget was adopted by a 4-3 vote.

Later in the meeting, the court discussed the road foreman’s salary, which some squires feel is too high.

Judge Armstrong said that foreman Michael Craig had passed the mandatory drug test and obtained his CDL license. He started out at $13.50 and the judge said he was asking for a $1.50 increase to $15 per hour.

After magistrates Key and Russell made the motion and second, respectively, to grant the increase, a verbal disagreement between the judge, and some magistrates, ensued over the issue prior to a vote being taken.

Magistrate Craig pointed backward to a group of ambulance service employees who were in attendance at the meeting and indicated they deserved raises as well.

Judge Armstrong asked Craig and the other magistrates if they had voted to give the (EMS) employees a raise over the last eight years or “vote for the Occupational Tax increase.” He further stated the county had 19 employees at $8.50 per hour, and he was requesting a two percent increase across-the-board for all county employees.

Magistrate Guinn said the ambulance service was “the most important thing in this county.”

Director of Emergency Services Lonnie Scott also told the court the EMS had lost three paramedics in the last month. Apparently the local rate of pay for EMTs and paramedics in Clinton County doesn’t equal that of most counties’ ambulance services.

When Magistrate Russell asked how much the county could afford to give (in salary increases to EMS employees), Judge Armstrong said they would have to wait and see what the new Occupational Tax License Fees are going to generate. He also added that originally, he had promised the new road foreman a $16 an hour salary and said he always tried to keep his word.

When the vote was eventually taken, again it resulted in the same three-three tie, with Magistrates Russell, Key and Buster voting in favor of the raise for the road foreman, Magistrates Riddle, Craig and Guinn voting no, and the judge breaking the tie with a yes vote, passing the raise by a 4-3 vote.

Following the vote, Magistrate Craig requested that a special meeting be held to discuss the salaries of the ambulance service employees.

An employee from the Clinton County Jail was also present and noted that several deputy jailers were working at the jail for $8.50 an hour and questioned why the jail staff wasn’t included in the pay raise issue.

Craig then noted that the jail has, and lives by, its own budget and salaries for jail employees should be included in their budget.

At one point, Magistrate Guinn, directing her comment to Judge Armstrong said, “You’re making the ambulance people feel like they’re nothing.”

After the court voted unanimously, on a motion by Key, to approve the two percent across the board cost-of-living increase for all county employees, the court set a date for a call meeting on the ambulance service salary issue for Wednesday, June 24 at 5 p.m. (That meeting was too late for press deadline and will be reported on in next week’s issue.)

The cost-of-living increase, which will only amount to about .17 cents per hour for employees currently at $8.50 per hour, will take effect August 1.

The court also dealt with county employee insurance and other issues last week and a separate article on the other regular business items can be found in a separate article beginning on page 1.