Court approves overtime pay for dispatchers at 911 Center
County purchases two trucks to help with trash collection
Dispatchers working for the St. Francis County 911 Dispatch Center will soon receive overtime pay instead of comp time.
Meeting before a full meeting of the Quorum Court Tuesday, the Court’s budget committee reviewed an ordinance presented by SFC Judge Craig Jones to address the pay situation.
Jones explained that the 911 dispatch center needs the ability to pay overtime rather than extra comp time.
"They have been having people call in sick, and when they do that, someone has to be there. They need some overtime because when they give comp time they will still be off later on and you will still need help. Our 911 dispatch center director Jackie White is here to speak more on this."
White said that while overtime pay is not something that is needed at all times, there have been situations where the center was shorthanded and needed to get more dispatchers into the office.
"I am just here to request overtime pay for our dispatchers, as needed," said White. "It is not something that I will need all of the time, just when it is necessary. This past week, I had two dispatchers out at the same time, so I was short. I need three per shift. Our room is not this big, so when one gets sick, I may end up with two sick. It is hard to say how much we will need, but this last week was one of the rare instances when I had two people sick.
Justice Ernestine Weaver said the committee doesn't care how much is spent, but instead needs to know what everyone would be paid.
"Normally, it is time and a half for overtime pay," said Weaver. "I am not setting it, I am just suggesting time and a half pay for overtime pay. We don't care how much you spend, we just need to have a count on what everybody is getting."
The committee agreed to present the ordinance before the full Court.
Jones told the group that the SFC Assessor’s budget adopted for 2023 had an error associated with the salaries.
"I can speak on this ordinance heavily as I did this budget for many years," said Jones, who previously served as county assessor. "This ordinance was created to correct issues with the ordinance for the 2023 budget for the county assessor’s office. The money was put into the budget, but it was listed wrong. It left the salaries $12,592 short. It was wrong in the budget that was submitted to you, not the budget that I submitted to the treasurer or clerk’s office. The money is in the account; it just got transposed. This is just a mistake that has to be corrected. Nobody is getting any extra money."
The board unanimously agreed to present this ordinance to the full Court, which was also subsequently adopted.
Opal Chapman, administrative assistant in the judge’s office, told committee members that following the loss of approximately $380,000 in
checks through the post office, she began tracking packages worth more than $3,000 and needs petty cash to continue tracking those.
"The petty cash for the judge’s office is used for tracking money that we take out of this county and send to other people," said Chapman. "The post office lost $300,000 worth of checks and they lost $80,000 worth of checks before I started this process. Any company that is getting over $3,000 from our county, I put tracking on because they request that they know if it is going to be late or what is going on with the package. Tags for the sheriff or road department vehicles comes out of our petty cash. Years and years ago, Judge (Gary) Hughes put his own $150 into the petty cash, because back then, it was not legal for the office to have petty cash, but he knew we had to have it. When he retired he asked for his $150 back, which left me with zero.
"I have been using my personal debit card to do all of the tracking recently, and I would like to be reimbursed sometime soon, but it is okay, I want to make sure that the county's funds get where they are supposed to get and not be lost like they have been in the past," continued Chapman. "It is perfectly legal now to establish petty cash for our office. I took the legal papers to (county attorney) Fletcher (Long) and he wrote up this ordinance. It is very much needed in the judge’s office. It is very legal and very transparent."
SFC Treasurer Tammy Talley told the committee that a fund needs to be created within the county to hold the $50,000 awarded through the Local Assistance Tribal Consistency.
"This is just to establish a fund for the $100,000 we were awarded, $50,000 last year and $50,000 this year," said Talley. "It is called a LATC, which is similar to the ARPA money we received over the last two years. We have to keep track of it, and this ordinance is just to create a fund code. Once someone decides where it needs to be spent, then it can be appropriated. This fund will just hold it until we can use it."
The full Court unanimously approved all ordinances forwarded to them by the budget committee.
Following the approval of the ordinances, Jones updated Justices on the trash collection problems that have been plaguing the county.
"I am sure you all have gotten some phone calls about the trash collection throughout the county," Jones began. "We are getting that situation under control. We have had one or two trucks running at a time, sometimes three were running. We have ordered two used trucks. One has 20,000 miles on it and the other has 21,000. They are both in good condition and have three-year warranties on them. They will be delivered either by Friday of this week or Monday of next week. The holiday kind of messed up the delivery a little bit, but once they are here they will help out a whole lot."
"A leased purchase or a lease to own was an issue because the earliest we could get them would have been July," continued Jones. "We can't wait for July. We are lucky that all of them didn't break down at the same time. We were able to get all of the cities collected last Friday like we said we would. It is starting to get better, just hold on."