The Pulaski County Council is suggesting cutting the emergency management agency director position to part-time and reallocating airport tax revenues to the county’s General Fund. Council members continued working on the 2021 budget Monday.
Auditor Laura Wheeler said the General Fund budget had already been cut to less than $7.4 million going into Monday’s hearing, and they had to cut about $300,000 more. But how to do that was the topic of some debate.
“Pulaski County has been a backward-thinking county for a long, long time now – a long time,” said Council Member Kathi Thompson. “We are continuing that backward thinking tonight.”
Thompson estimated that making the EMA director part-time could save about $33,000. County officials also pointed out that the airport could skip at least a year of tax revenues and still have enough money on hand to operate. They suggested cutting $100,000 from the airport’s tax levy and reallocating that money to the General Fund.
But other ideas were less popular. A proposal to switch a part-time Circuit Court position to full-time was discussed for more than a half-hour. Judge Mary Welker said she’d found a way to do that while having a minimal impact on the budget. But Council Member Jay Sullivan was concerned that the court budget had increased by hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past five years.
Judge Welker went on to accuse the auditor of reducing the court employees’ pay raises, while inflating her own budget with raises that wouldn’t be approved, something that Wheeler denied. “Ma’am, you asked for 10-percent increases for your employees,” Welker said.
“I did not!” Wheeler replied. “I had three percent on mine. I think you should get your facts before you start spewing.”
In the end, the council decided not to make the position full-time by a vote of four-to-three. They also decided against any personnel increases at all, by the same vote.
Some council members also suggested reducing the funding for security at county facilities, noting that none of it was actually spent this year. But the judges noted that security planning was put on hold, when they were forced to put together emergency plans to keep the courts running through the COVID-19 pandemic.
It still remains to be seen how much of a pay increase, if any, employees will get. The county council agreed to meet again next Monday at 7:00 p.m. to keep working on the budget. Final adoption is scheduled for October 12.
