News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Fentress County Budget Committee approved a $1 hourly raise and made overtime available for the county’s sheriffs deputies.
County Executive Jimmy Johnson said the starting rate for a certified deputy will now be $17.10 per hour. Johnson said the raise is meant to decrease the number of deputies leaving the county for higher pay.
“You know, when you have to spend a lot of resources on different things, and then you have to compete with bigger cities, it puts you in a – it can put you in a bind sometimes where you can’t really offer as much as you really would like to,” Johnson said. “It’s never that we, that the commissioners don’t want to, sometimes that they just really can’t at the time, but now they’ve found a way to help curb this, hopefully.”
Johnson said overtime has not previously been available, only compensatory time. County Commissioners must approve the budget committee recommendation.
Johnson said holding onto deputies has been an ongoing issue that the county is struggling to deal with.
“You have to compete to keep workers anymore,” Johnson said. “Sometimes it’s hard to when you’re a smaller county.”
Johnson said the sheriff’s department currently has around fifteen deputies, but would like to have close to twenty. Johnson said the county has paid to put deputies through law enforcement training in the past only for the deputies to leave within a few months.
“You’ve got to help to match the wages that possibly they can get someplace else, and so hopefully this here will be a start to help control that, retain the ones that we have.”
“The more people you have working, the better off you are,” Johnson said.
The raise was approved during the budget committee’s Monday meeting.
