County officials present budget requests

By Ben Holman

Nevada Daily Mail

All this week the Vernon County Commissioners are working to put together the 2005 budget. Today and yesterday commissioners met with representatives of various county entities to discuss budget requests. On Tuesday the commission met with Lynn Ewing III, county prosecutor, Phil Couch, treasurer, Virginia Habjan, county administrator, David Ferry, coroner, and the University Extension Office.

Most budget requests were similar to previous years. The prosecutor's office requested a one-time expenditure of approximately $11,500 to purchase software. According to Ewing, one software purchase would be used to keep better records on bad check management software. He said that a perennial concern of the auditor's is the bad check management procedures, the software would address that issue.

The other software would be used to digitize files held in the office.

"About all we do over there is pull files and re-file," said Ewing.

He said that the one-time expenditure would be more cost effective than the alternatives, "it's about the same cost as hiring one full-time person for one year."

He said that the software would save a lot of man-hours for his office. Ewing also said that malpractice insurance rates continue to fall, making his office more cost-effective adding that his office only costs the taxpayers around $18,000 annually, "I think we've been pretty good stewards."

Couch made no major changes to the treasurer's budget from the previous year. His main requested increase was for employee raises.

Habjan said that her job is getting harder and harder to do with the amount of help that she has and she requested additional funding for office assistance. "If I could just get someone for 20 hours a week, that's about twice as much as I have right now," she said. She also requested funding for a cell phone for the office, saying, "I'm on call 24 hours-a-day and people need to be able to reach me."

She said that she has used up minutes on her personal cell phone on several occasions and would like to have a county phone for county business. "I save folks money by keeping these people off the streets."

Habjan noted that it is difficult for people to get into contact with her when there is a problem because she is often out of the office.

Ferry was under the impression that the state had legislated a salary increase for his position but the commissioners could not find any statutes that indicated so. They said that they would look into it further to see if they were required to increase the coroner's pay. He also said the cost of post-mortem examinations has risen and an increase in that budget area would be required.

"There's one lady who'll come to Nevada to do an autopsy, but if there's something more major we send it to Kansas City or Springfield ... Kansas City is $1,500 per autopsy."

The University of Missouri Extension Office also requested an increase in county funding, asking for $46,000 -- last year they received $40,000. The main increases were for the maintenance plan for a new copy machine and the purchase of a risograph, which they use for larger print jobs.

Last week the commissioners met with Presiding Circuit Judge James Bickel and Court Administrator David Humader to discuss the circuit court's funding. According to David Darnold, presiding commissioner, Vernon County's share of the Circuit Court costs is 37.27 percent, lower than last year.

Today the commissioners will meet with Doug Shupe, recorder of deeds, and Sheriff Ron Peckman.

"The sheriff's budget is the biggest and hardest to work with," said Darnold.

Last year the sheriff surprised the commissioners with a court order for pay increases for sheriff's deputies. However, there were not enough county funds to pay for the increases and the order was withdrawn. Commissioners said they weren't expecting anything like that this year but they aren't making any budget decisions until they've met with everyone.

"We get all our numbers in before we decide what we're going to approve and deny," said Darnold.