Meetings Held to Discuss Budget; Road Work Problem

Four of five Jasper County Commissioners met in a budget work session Monday evening, and four of them were to meet again Tuesday evening.

Commission Chairman Charles Hill was not available to meet Monday, and Commissioner Mary Patrick was not available Tuesday. However, Commission Vice-Chairman Alan Cox presided Monday, and commissioners Jack Bernard and Carl Pennamon were also both present Monday and planned to be Tuesday.

The commissioners completed going through the revenue side of the budget, and started on the expense side. They basically want to cut $789,639 from the expenditure side of the budget. At Monday’s meeting they succeeded in cutting less than $100,000.

The commissioners also discussed the condition of and the contract for Hodges Farm Road. Commissioner Patrick said she had asked for copies of it several times, before finally getting a copy.

Commissioner Patrick said the contract was worthless, outlining numerous errors in the contract and suggesting that there were places where it appeared names had been whited out and something replaced. She commented on the incongruencies, date discrepancies and other concerns.
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County Attorney Jim Alexander said he agreed with the issues that were raised by Commissioner Patrick. He’s supposed to review the contract and come up with a recommendation.

Hodges Farm Road was paved last fall, and Commissioner Alan Cox has repeatedly complained about the job that was done. The commissioners had previously voted not to pay the contractor any more money until the problems with the road are corrected.

While reviewing the budget, commissioners commented that they are missing a lot of money they could get if they had code enforcement, and tacitly agreed to replace the code enforcement officer. They also discussed at length whether a building inspector is needed.
They also discussed newspaper advertising, and questioned if they should spend the money to put the agenda in the paper before each meeting. They will likely cease to do that. Also, several departments’ budgets went up because of changes in insurance.

They discussed increases in the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) budget, and commented that “nobody wants to privatize.”
At the end of Monday’s work session, the commissioners went into closed session to discuss pending or threatened litigation.