News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Putnam County Commissioners approved the new fiscal year budget Monday night, adding some $380,000 in expenditures.
The increase the result of more funding for the local senior centers, new camera surveillance equipment for the sheriff’s department, and commission change to the cost-of-living raise for county employees. The commission voted to increase raises to $1,500. County Mayor Randy Porter said these raises are important to prevent the extensive turnover rates they have seen in past years.
“This is the first time we’ve saw, that I can remember in a long time, that we’ve saw that we’re fully employed and we’ve stopped that situation,” Porter said. “I think where you’re going is we don’t, if we’re not careful we can be right back there if we don’t keep it up. And, you know, you’ve just got to figure out where that balance is.”
The increased wages represent about $300,000 of the increased expenses. Commissioner Darren Wilson proposed the change to the raise, saying that county employees are the most valuable asset they have.
“By the time you take taxes out of $1,500 it looks suspiciously like $1,000,” Wilson said.
Porter said it is important to remember that both the senior center funding and employee raises will become ongoing expenses that the county will have to account for in future years.
Commissioner Vinnie Faccinto said the money allotted to the county’s senior centers should be updated because the budget committee had not received the latest information from certain senior centers regarding their operations. Faccinto said that Porter worked with each senior center to get their weekly attendance numbers. He said he used that data to make a formula determining how much the county should provide.
“There was no real formula in the past,” Faccinto said. “It was kind of like randomized numbers. So what I did is, based on the attendance numbers that the mayor gathered with Baxter seeing 150 people as a percentage of what Cookeville sees, would give them $42,500 for this year’s budget cycle. Algood, with their attendance numbers, would qualify for $32,500. And Monterey would be $30,000.”
Faccinto said the attendance numbers indicate how many people each center feeds in a week. He said the Cookeville Senior Center feeds 175 people, Baxter’s feeds 150, Algood feeds about 115, and Monterey’s feeds 90 to 100.
Commissioner Jonathan Williams said they should collect this data every year and use it when calculating the budgets of the county’s senior centers.
“I was part of the budget committee and the discussion, comment I think I made before was that (it) felt like we were flying blind on this issue,” Williams said. There were requests coming in for additional funds, but we did not have any data to back it up. So now that we have that data, I’m grateful.”
Chairperson Ben Rodgers said their budget for all of the senior centers will change from the originally planned $125,000 to $155,000.
