Putnam County Department Heads requested 18 employees during the second meeting of the County Commission’s Budget Committee Monday night.
Seven of those requests came from the Sheriff’s Department. Putnam County Sheriff Eddie Farris said the county’s growth in population demands more manpower.
“Our increase in population and demands for service have just astronomically went up, and then you start factoring in things like traffic that we deal with every day,” Farris said. “We are working almost twice a many wrecks as we did three years ago.”
The Putnam County Health Department also requested seven additional employees. Putnam County Health Director Lisa Bumbalough said the additional employees would be enough staff to provide services five days a week in Monterey.
“I think it’s a win for our community, I know you guys have a hard job and I hate to come to you with making it more difficult, I know you’ve got a lot of great departments here that have needs, but we can’t go into Monterey full time unless we have these positions because it just, I can’t do it and still cover what we’ve got.”
Putnam County Fire Chief Jeff Hicks requested three additional employees for the county fire department. Hicks said additional employees would help cut down response times.
“The goal is to get somebody North, South, East, and West and they first respond,” Hicks said. “That’s why I use medical calls, they are over 50 percent of our calls, 65 percent of our calls are medical calls. Now, the closest sub, actually, I have it, the Carlen Station was 13 minutes to our station, Station 12 in Bangham. The Algood sub is in 10, and if both of those are out, they are coming from he main, which is coming from he same place we are if our guys are out or if it’s after 5pm. That’s why I am asking for that.”
The Putnam County EMA Department requested one additional position. Putnam County EMA Director Brandon Smith said the one position would be a full-time GIS systems administrator.
Smith says he currently handles those duties, but the role is very time-consuming, and he simply does not have the time to handle those duties. Smith said after speaking with Cookeville Mayor Laurin Wheaton, he believes Cookeville would increase the amount it gives to the department from an estimated $25,400 to $40,000 to help cover some of the cost for the proposed position.
Smith said the county would only be responsible for $12,000 of the salary and for the benefits of the employee.
The Putnam County EMS Department did not request additional employees but requested a $786,000 budget increase. Putnam County EMS Director Tommy Copeland said the increase involves promoting four employees to lieutenant positions, and $130,000 for overtime and $70,000 for part-time personnel. Copeland said with the moves it would not cut down the need for overtime.
“All the employees, full-time employees, are scheduled eight hours of overtime every two weeks,” Copeland said. “I think it would be pretty hard to cover it if we did not have scheduled overtime, yes. The other place that get overtime is if somebody takes off, I may not have and usually don’t have enough part-time employees to cover all the full-time employees that might take off.”
The Putnam County Budget Committee will consider the presentations as they work to form the upcoming fiscal year budget. Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said he will provide a revenue update at the next budget meeting.
