Council approves Sheriff’s contract, amendment and additional appropriations
MARSHALL COUNTY — Sheriff Matt Hassel appeared before the County Council on Monday to present his 2021 Salary Contract for the council’s approval. The sheriff had no issue with the contract presented and neither did the council. They approved the contract and an ordinance amending the salary amount to $91,125.80. The ordinance was necessary because there was an inaccurate salary amount on the prior ordinance.
Sheriff Hassel informed the council that the Central Dispatch meeting will be Wednesday at 7 p.m. and it will be located at the Sheriff’s Department. That particular meeting meets quarterly each year. Council Vice President Mandy Campbell stated that she couldn’t be at the meeting, but Council President Tim Harman said that he should be able to make it.
Later on in the meeting, some additional appropriations were requested by the Sheriff’s Department.
“as most of you are aware, I have
two funds that basically pay for my jail and central dispatch and during the budget hearings they reduced the Jail Fund which comes out of General Fund money and asked me to ask for an additional in the Local Income Tax Fund (LIT) which is the fund we created to pay for the new jail,” the sheriff explained. Hassel clarified that it was the Special LIT Fund.
When some of the more recent council members asked about last year’s budget process, Council Member Steve Harper explained that in August, department heads brought their budgets to the council and that “each line item has an amount and you’ll see last years, this year’s amount, and what they spent. And at that particular time we’re able to reduce that, we’re not able to increase it, but we’re able to reduce it at that time. And this way, when it was asked for, they could not increase it in Special LIT because that budget had already been published. So, at that time, they zeroed it out here and then did an additional in the new year to cover.”
Those additional appropriations, to the LIT Special Purpose fund, are Wages-Overtime for $20,000, Wages- Turnkey dispatcher for $ 10,000, Office Supplies for $ 8,000, Janitorial Supplies for $35,000, Prisoner Supplies for $ 30,000, Equipment Maintenance Contracts for $33,000.
“It’s basically a reduction here, and a move over there, but you cannot increase it once they’re published. You have to wait until the first of the year,” Harper said.
The council approved each additional appropriation unanimously.
There was two additional appropriations that the council approved from the Marshall County Community Corrections. While they were presented to the council during the December 2020 meeting, there was an advertising conflict with the newspaper so it was brought to the council again for consideration. The additional appropriation is for a Community Corrections grant from the CARES Act. There were two appropriations in the amount of $60,000 and $42,266.50. The council approved both of them.
The sheriff also brought another issue to the council’s attention. He received a letter from the jail’s cook stating that he will retire Jan. 29 unless the jail can hire a part-time cook for the weekends. Currently, the current cook is the only working full-time in the kitchen. There are inmate workers that do all the handson cooking and delivery. “He feels overwhelmed because he’s the only one,” Hassel said.
The sheriff said he has advertised for the position three times, but has been unable to find anyone to fill that spot. He told the council that he would re-advertise for it.
Hassel stated that the cook has “done a fantastic job for us at the jail” and that he would be “in real trouble if I lose him.”
The alternative would be to contract with an outside meal service that prepares off- site and delivers the meals. The sheriff wasn’t sure how financially efficient it would be.