Justices adopt ordinances to place funds in county accounts

The St. Francis County Quorum Court voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of adopting seven new ordinances for the county.

During the Court’s regular monthly meeting, held at the Rock Center on East Broadway, justices reviewed two ordinances presented by the budget committee, along with five others.

Justices Greg Gray, Maceo Hawkins and Charles Jones did not attend the meeting.

The first ordinance appropriates the money to the county to pay salary stipends for full-time law enforcement officers in accordance with Act 224 of the 2022 fiscal session of the Arkansas Legislature. The ordinance also makes an amendment to the county’s annual operating budget for this year.

County Judge Gary Hughes said the move will not cost the county any money because it is being provided by the state.

"This is being paid by the state of Arkansas, the money is just being funneled through us,” explained Hughes. “This ordinance is at no expense to the county, but we have to adopt this ordinance to appropriate the funds once we receive them from the state."

"Do we have this money now?” asked Justice Regan Hill. "No," said Hughes. "When do we expect to get it?” asked Hill.

"We have no idea," said Hughes. "We filed for the money through the state of Arkansas. We don't know if it will take two weeks or two months to be processed. We won't release the money until the funds come to us."

A pair of other ordinances deal with funding for juvenile programs in the county.

One allow for a new accounting fund number to be created to receive funds from the supplemental juvenile funding grant of $45,000.

"This is strictly just approving the fund that the grant funds will be going in,” said Hughes. “Ordinance 22-22 will actually appropriate funds from the grant that they are to receive in the amount of $45,000."

(Continued from Page 1) Hughes said that in addition to the grant funds received by the juvenile department, the group also received funding for a juvenile officer fund.

"I believe the county has received another grant, in the amount of $100,000 that also has to be put into a special fund. Ordinance 22-23 strictly creates this fund, while ordinance 22-24, appropriates the funds into the newly created fund,” said Hughes.

Ordinance 22-23 establishes the St. Francis County Juvenile Officer's Grant Fund.

According to the ordinance, the purpose of this fund is to receive money from the juvenile officer grant for the First Judicial District. The total amount of the grant is $100,000. A followup ordinance appropriates the money to that account.

According to Hughes, another ordinance before justices was to appropriate funds back into the county coroner’s budget due to repairs that had to be made on the county coroner's vehicle.

"I think most of you remember that we purchased a vehicle for the coroner. We weren't able to get a new vehicle at the time, so we purchased a used vehicle. A short time after that, he had to put quite a bit of money into it. He had to put somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 into the vehicle for major repairs and this money was not budgeted this year. This ordinance is to put that money back into his budget for this year,” explained Hughes.

Justices also adopted an ordinance to reallocate the 2021 budget to account for Rescue Plan funding.