New county budget totals $13.5 million

JACKSON, Mo. -- Cape Girardeau County commissioners on Thursday approved a $13.5 million budget for 2002 that's slightly smaller than this year's budget and includes no money to build a juvenile detention center.

H. Weldon Macke, the county's auditor and chief budget officer, said the county is putting $300,000 in escrow should it be forced by circuit judges to build the detention center. The matter currently is before Missouri's Judicial Finance Commission.

The money in escrow would go for expenses associated with bonds the county would have to issue to pay for a multimillion-dollar building.

But a new detention center isn't envisioned in the budget that Gerald Jones, presiding commissioner, calls "austere."

Macke said the budget is about $500,000 less than the current budget. It includes $9.85 million for general operations, $2.59 million for road and bridge operations and $1 million in capital spending for road paving and construction of two bridges.

The county has another $5 million in investments that it could tap for emergency expenses.

The 2001 budget for capital improvements included $50,000 for architectural expenses for the detention center. Plans were drawn up, but then the project stalled.

Macke said he drew up the leaner budget because revenue from fees and federal and state program reimbursements was less this year than had been projected.

Macke said the county, among other things, housed fewer federal prisoners in the new county jail that opened in March.

3.5 percent pay raises

The new budget includes 3.5 percent pay raises for the more than 160 county employees and officeholders. That's half the pay raise most county employees received this year and 7 percent less than the pay hike given the county's road deputies in the 2001 budget.

The new budget year begins Jan. 1.

As for the juvenile center project, Jones said Thursday that the commission earlier this year had been ready to proceed with a scaled-down building on a nine-acre industrial tract at the end of Progress Street in Cape Girardeau.

Jones said the county commission agreed to build a $2.7 million detention center in Cape Girardeau that would have had 20 cells, including four holding cells. But Randy Rhodes, chief juvenile officer in the local circuit, opposed the scaled-down plan.

Rhodes wants a center with 32 regular cells and six holding cells. Rhodes said the bigger structure is necessary to secure state funding for additional staff to operate the center. Otherwise, he said, the county would have to pay the cost of added staff.

Jones said Thursday the county won't pay for additional juvenile staff under any circumstance. Jones said the state pays the salaries of juvenile officers. Staffing is up to the state, not the county, he said. "They cannot force us to hire more people."

The dispute has left the county commission opposed to building any juvenile center, Jones said.

Center reopens

The commission recently spent $35,000 to make safety improvements in the 10-cell detention center in downtown Cape Girardeau. The 30-year-old center, which had been closed following a fire in August, reopened on Wednesday.

Juvenile office and detention center operations, excluding salaries paid by the state, are budgeted at over $157,000 for next year. Cape Girardeau County will pay 69 percent of the cost. Bollinger and Perry counties will pick up the rest of the cost.

The county commission approved the 2002 budget following a public hearing attended by only two news reporters.

Macke said county government hasn't seen such tight finances since prior to enactment of a sales tax in 1982.

In his budget message, Macke wrote that the sales tax provided the county with enough money to renovate buildings, expand the county park, increase salaries and build a jail. The county expects to generate $5.43 million in sales-tax revenue in 2002, half of which will go to lower the county's personal property and real estate tax.

But Macke wrote that added expenses within the past year, particularly the building of the jail, have reduced the county's general-operations fund balance.

The new budget seeks to limit expenses and build up the fund balance, which currently stands at about $300,000.

"We are trying to do this by not constructing new buildings, not buying more property, and just using good judgment in what we do buy," Macke wrote.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123