Financial questions and budget considerations were a recurring theme during the May 2 Sweetwater Board of County Commissioners meeting.
Several agenda items were called into question and action was postponed due to a desire to understand more about the impact on the county budget.
Judge Suzannah Robinson and Clerk of District Court DonnaLee Boback appeared before the commissioners to discuss a potential hourly salary increase for court-appointed attorneys. The current rate is $100 an hour, which it has been set at for at least 20 years. The current general rate paid for local attorneys is a minimum of $200 an hour. Judge Robinson said the opinion among courts across the state is that the rate is too low and that the attorneys who take the cases, which are difficult and emotionally charged, are taking the cases at charity rates. She asked for the rate to be raised to $150 an hour.
Chairman Keaton West questioned the impact raising the rate would have on the county budget, which Robinson admitted she doesn’t know specifically, but Boback said she may be able to find out and present to the commissioners. West recommended getting more information in order to make an informed decision, which the other commissioners agreed with.
County Assessor Dave Divis also appeared before the commissioners to request adding a full-time position in the County Assessor’s office. The request involved eliminating a current seasonal position and replace it with a full-time position. In Fiscal Year 2016/2017, the office had 10 full-time employees, and currently it has eight with a seasonal position. The net difference for the request would be about $76,000. The commissioners and Divis discussed why the position was wanted, along with questions about considerations like the need for certification among staff members.
Commissioner Robb Slaughter questioned the timing of Divis’s request, understanding that Divis might want the position to be approved so it could be included in the budget, but worrying about not being able to fund things after considering the budget.
“We have just received all of the budget requests for Fiscal Year 24, we are several million dollars short of revenue to finance that budget at this point in time, so the timing of this doesn’t fit well for me,” Slaughter said. “I am in favor of the position for you, I believe you need that position, I just think we need to look at our budget process potentially before we approve that and see how everything fits in.”
The commissioners voted to postpone the request to add the position until after the budget is adopted.
One agenda item that concerned funding but did not impact the county budget was an update from Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County. Tiffany Marshall, the executive director for the Memorial Hospital Sweetwater County Foundation, and Irene Richardson, Sweetwater Memorial’s CEO, presented to the commissioners to let them know that the hospital received funding from the State Loans and Investment Board (SLIB) for the hospital’s medical office building renovation, which is a $2.1 million project. The project had originally been part of the plans the commission earmarked funds for, but the hospital decided to focus solely on the lab renovation and not the MOB renovation. Now that the project has funds to go forward again, Marshall wanted the commissioners to know it was happening but wouldn’t require any county funds.
After the regular BOCC meeting, the commissioners hosted a three-hour budget workshop to begin looking into the details of the county’s finances and making the next budget.
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