Overton Budget Committee Approves $2 Raise

The Overton County Budget Committee approved a $2 across-the-board raise for county employees Tuesday night that will increase property taxes by 27.81 cents.

Salary Committee Member Donna Savage said employees deserve a bigger increase, but the county just cannot afford the proposed $3 raise. Salary Committee Member Patrick McCurdy said he supported the original $3 raise because it would have the biggest impact on several vital departments they are struggling to keep staffed, such as at the county jail.

“We can’t afford to get the jail decertified,” McCurdy said. “It’s going to cost us four to five hundred thousand dollars a year to transport prisoners if they decertify the jail. We need to have the money to get jailers to at least apply, let alone stay, and so I’m for the three dollars.”

Committee members decided not to meet about the budget any further as they have already made cuts to the budget with the rest of the commission.

“In June they met for two days to go through and slash the budget already,” County Executive Steven Barlow said. “So that was what the conversation was about that took so long is do we meet again and prolong it even more or just make the decision because everybody’s already met? There’s two things that changed, and they’re two things that everybody wanted.”

Barlow said those two items were the possibility of a $2 raise instead of a $3 raise and the decision to take $1,000,000 from their debt services fund to cover the cost of the county’s lawsuit settlement.