News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Putnam County Sheriff Eddie Farris has presented his four year plan to county commissioners.
Farris said he wanted to submit the plan before the upcoming budget process and future construction of a new jail facility.
“We have a lot of new commissioners and I wanted to give them some guidance,” Farris said “and also the addition of me going back to the commission and asking for funding for our additional jail space that we are hoping to get built.”
The plan calls for $3.3 million over the next four years to fund eight additional deputies, two dispatchers, 24 correction officers, and five school resource officers.
Farris said the additional SRO’s and corrections officers will be “time sensitive” hires.
“We still have five schools that do not have school resources officers so that is a priority in this budget,” Farris said. “With our new building project, we will be needing to hire correctional officers and we can’t hire correctional officers the same year that the building goes live.”
The sheriff will request all five SRO’s and four correctional officers to be hires in the upcoming budget.
Farris said the county needs to gradually add more correctional officers so they can be trained and ready to go when the new facility opens.
The jail committee will meet with county commissioners next month to discuss the new facility. Farris said he will approach the commission for funding sometime between March and May.
“It’s going to cost a whole lot of money and we hope we can do this without a tax increase,” Farris said. “We certainly have done a lot of work thus far on it and we want to bring the commission up to speed on what we’ve done.”
The jail committee is scheduled to meet with the county commission on February 19th.
