FARMINGTON — A Franklin County budget panel began review Monday of a proposed $5.5 million budget for 2013-14.

The package for all departments includes a 2 percent increase for employees but that doesn’t mean that is what they will get.

The Budget Advisory Committee began its review of the $161,229 county courthouse budget. Of that amount, $25,000 is to repave a county parking lot. The budget panel removed about $19,000 last year for paving and kept about $5,000 to allow some repairs to be made where sink holes had developed from old fence posts.

Budget Advisory Committee member Terry Brann of Wilton said last year that the committee did not think the parking lot needed to be paved and it could go a few more years.

County custodian Greg Roux said he believed it should be paved. There are a lot of cracks that have gotten bigger and there is also a drainage problem.

“I think the longer we prolong this the more it is going to cost,” Commissioner Gary McGrane of Jay said.

The current pavement on the lot would be reground, the pitch would be changed to improve drainage and it would be repaved, Roux said.

Every year the lot improvements are put off compounds the problems, he said.

The committee moved on to review the proposed $1.5 million Sheriff’s Office budget.

Brann said he did not support the 2 percent wage increase. The only places he sees that are getting raises are in the schools, municipalities and county budgets, he said.

These unions think money grows on trees, Brann said.

The only way to reduce the budget is to reduce employees, McGrane said.

There are people making decisions on whether to pay taxes or buy food, Brann said, and he is hearing from them.

Budget Advisory Committee member D. Scott Taylor of Wilton asked about $90,000 in the sheriff’s budget for three new vehicles.

The plan is to buy only one type of vehicle for the fleet, Sheriff Scott Nichols Sr. said. That way all of the tires, screens and other items eventually would be the same to outfit all of the vehicles. He previously said they would be Ford Explorer Interceptors that the Sheriff’s Department bought four of last year. The Interceptors get an average 16 mpg, he said.

The county is trying to keep on a three-year rotation of vehicles. Once a vehicle reaches 100,000 miles, the repair bills go up, Nichols said.

It is best to keep a fleet up and running as opposed to run old junks that are breaking down, he said.

The vehicles travel 115 to 200 miles each day, he added.

Budget panel member Ryan Morgan of Farmington said he is glad the department is going to go with one type of vehicle to save money on setting up a new one.

McGrane told the budget panel that it makes it extremely difficult to negotiate a contract if there is no money in the budget to do so.

The panel also reviewed the proposed $792,479 communications budget.

Members went over shifts for dispatchers and discussed plans to reduce built-in overtime due to working 12-hour shifts. One week dispatchers work 48 hours each, the next 36 hours. That increases the overtime, Nichols said.

Peter Smith, director of technology services in Franklin County, also discussed that the county courthouse and the Sheriff’s Department’s need to increase bandwidth to receive and send information.

A fiber line would be able to provide four times the current data rate for the courthouse departments and the Sheriff’s Department. The cost would increase to $1,015 a month combined, about $500 more than is currently paid, he said.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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