Sometimes items on a meeting agenda seem innocuous enough – until they aren’t. It happened three times at last Friday’s meeting of the Putnam County Board of Commissioners.
The first involved “2023 Budget Amendment #2.” Before the commissioners finally voted unanimously to approve the amendment, the two most recent previous commission chairmen had taken to the podium during the “public comments” period.
In the wake of property tax increases this year, Steve Hersey and then Billy Webster each asked for explanations for the various shifts of some hefty sums of money from one fund to another. Each suggested the current commission may have “overspent” the general administration budget by a half-million dollars.
As set up under the commission’s meeting rules, the commissioners “listen” to the public comments but do not engage in debate with citizen speakers. However, Chairman Bill Sharp was quick to call Finance Director Linda Cook to come to the podium to explain the various financial maneuvers.
Putting a budget together for a coming year is typically based on past performances and known expenses. However, when the year arrives, both unexpected expenses and unexpected savings come into play.
Without getting too deeply into the accounting weeds, Cook said $500,000 was taken out of the general administration line item to further fund the county’s unfunded retirement obligations, and another $300,000 was shifted to the capital projects fund.
One expensive surprise came when the county had to re-cap the whole Martin’s Mill Road old landfill. In the end, it cost $1 million.
“We tried Option 1, and it didn’t work. We tried Option 2, and it didn’t work,” County Manager Paul Van Haute said. “Because of the rock and the topography, we had to go with Option 3, which was to re-cap the whole landfill. But we shouldn’t have to touch it again for very many years.”
The county is obligated to protect the water table from leakage for another 23 years, Van Haute added.
On the other hand, Cook pointed to some significant savings by the various departments, led by the sheriff’s office with $747,000 (mainly in staff vacancies) and the superior court with $162,000.
And in an inflationary period, a sizeable jump also occurred in last winter’s earned interest, from $155,000 in 2021-22 to $589,000 in 2022-23.
Meanwhile, another seemingly innocuous agenda item also turned complicated. The proposal was to reduce the speed limit on Scott Road from 55 miles an hour down to 35 mph. Complaints had come in, especially about truck traffic using the somewhat curvy Scott Road as a cutoff between the Greensboro Highway and Harmony Road.
Problems surfaced with both engineering and enforcement. In looking into the possibility of straightening out some of the curves, it was found that at least parts of the paving had originally been laid without a proper base beneath it. In other words, it had been paved on raw dirt.
Speed limits imply enforcement and being able to have arrests stand up in court. “You just can’t post a sign and make it the law,” Sheriff Howard Sills explained.
A traffic study is required to be sent to the state Department of Transportation for law enforcement officers to run radar. “That’s how you enforce it,” Sills said (adding that most of Putnam’s county roads are already on the radar list).
As for outright banning trucks over 56,000 pounds, “I’d have to have scales,” Sills said.
The matter was referred to the staff and county attorney for further study.
The third “seemingly innocuous” agenda was a little different in that a resolution urging the governor and General Assembly to “reform and improve mental health services” for the state had some real-life roots in Putnam County.
An example given by Sills after the meeting involved a woman who had been judged in court to be insane and to be sent to a state institution. She remained in the Putnam County jail for three years, however, waiting for the state to transfer her to their custody.
“And she had not been convicted of anything,” Sills stated. “Nothing.”