March 28, 2024
Archive

Panel passes Somerset County budget

SKOWHEGAN – On a Friday when the county jail was licensed to hold 45 prisoners, there were 77 in custody in the morning. Increased burdens on the jail were some of the reasons for a 14 percent increase in the Somerset County budget, passed Thursday night by the county’s nine-member budget committee.

The $5.47 million budget was approved by six committee members and voted against by Philip Roy of Fairfield and Davida Barter of Skowhegan. One member was absent.

Built into the budget were three new corrections workers positions for the jail. On Friday morning, the jail housed 75 prisoners and two more were in the process of being booked. The jail was built in the 1800s.

“We are feeding them in shifts,” said Lt. Gary Crafts. “We’re double bunking them in cells and using visiting rooms for housing.”

Crafts said all 77 prisoners were Somerset County inmates. “None of these are state prisoners,” he said. “They are all either pretrial or already sentenced. It is a statewide problem.”

Somerset County Commissioner Zane Libby said Friday that the process of building a new jail continues. “We are now looking at where the jail will be located,” he said. “We have several sites we are assessing.”

Libby said the jail study group also is determining what to do with the existing jail. “Do we renovate it or tear it down?” he asked. “We are looking at our options.”

On the other side of town, the Somerset 911 Communications Center also received funding for two additional dispatchers in the budget.

On its busiest day this year, the center handled 669 calls, Somerset Communications Center Director Dale Sweet told budget committee members, defending his need for additional dispatch personnel.

Somerset Communications Center recently absorbed Pittsfield into its 911 system and will add several fire departments in the Madison-Anson area after the first of the year. So far in 2001, Sweet said, the center has handled nearly 168,000 calls.

Discussion Thursday night centered on how many former dispatchers have been bumped into supervisory positions. Sweet explained that Deanna Warren is the systems administrator and Mike Smith is dispatch supervisor. He said both former dispatchers pitch in when the calls begin overloading the staff.

Sweet divides his time as the SCC director and director of emergency management for the county.

Several committee members, however, questioned Sweet’s management style, stating that the center does not require three – including Sweet – managers and supervisors. They said that two new dispatchers would fill Smith’s vacant seat at the radio console and that in actuality, only one new dispatching position was being added.

Budget committee Chairman D. Dwight Dogherty said Friday that “the unfortunate thing is that we are pretty helpless when it comes to many areas of the budget.”

He cited the failure of the Department of Corrections to pay enough for boarding prisoners; Veterans Affairs’ decision to halt payments for prescription drugs for veterans that are in jail, a cost now picked up by the county; considerable hikes in insurance and Workers’ Compensation budgets; a half-salary paid annually to the widow of a deputy killed in the line of duty; and problems with the physical facilities, such as the courthouse and the jail.

“A lot of these costs are uncontrollable,” said Dogherty. “The communications center is bought and paid for but it was very expensive to get it up and running. County employees also have an extraordinarily high benefit package.”

The budget includes a 5 percent cost of living raise for administrators and a 4 percent raise for most county employees.

Dogherty said the revenues for the county are anticipated at about $751,000. “There doesn’t appear to be any undesignated fund balance [surplus] available to offset taxation,” he said.

The budget committee proposal is $107,000 lower than the budget proposed by the Somerset County commissioners. The commissioners will meet on Jan. 2 to either adopt or defeat the committee’s recommendation.


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like