Raise approved for county employees

During the final regular meeting of 2020 the justices of the peace approved a budget for 2021.

Including in the budget is a 3 percent raise for all county employees and an additional one percent raise for all certified law enforcement employees including deputies, jailers and 911 dispatchers, according to Brian Coston, chair for the court’s Budget and Finance Committee.

Coston said he along with other members of the committee and the entire court are excited to be able to give all employees a raise.

The budget also includes funding for the Public Defender’s Office to hire an additional part time employee and funding for Terry Eubanks, director of HSC Emergency Management, to move from part time to full time.

Eubanks’ salary is paid by the county, as well as, the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management and the decision to change Eubanks’ hours was fueled by COVID-19.

For this year’s budget, HSC County Judge Dennis Thornton also restructured the county road department and reduced the county’s labor cost by more than $30,000, Coston said.

A large purchase that is included in next year’s budget is a refrigeration system for the HSC Coroner. Currently, the coroner depends of local funeral homes for assistance with storing bodies.

Prior to the approval of the budget, members of the Budget and Finance Committee gathered for several meetings to go through the 2021 budget one line item at a time. They also went through budgets from previous years to determined how much money had been spent in the past.

Coston noted that this year the committee streamlined the budget and asked county officials to only asked for expenses

that they needed. Coston said the county also had a slight increase in revenue this year because of COVID-19 and the amount of people shopping online.

When HSC residents choose to shop online instead of visiting nearby cities, sales tax money came back to the county instead of staying in those cities, Coston said.