On Nov. 8, the Lincoln County Budget Committee approved a total budget for 2019 of $10,429,874, up 3.92 percent from $10,036,096 for 2018.

In the final workshop, the panel approved the Sheriff’s Office budget of $3,000,545, down from an Oct. 29 request of $3,042,045. Committee members had asked Sheriff Todd Brackett to bring the budget down, and had tabled approval. Brackett told the committee, aside from personnel issues, most of the budget was pretty lean, but he felt strongly an additional deputy was needed for 24-hour staffing. However, reasoning it would be March or April before he could staff the job, he said he could push it off to July to save $46,000, and with minor shaving of other budget items, he could reach a total of $50,000 in savings. Brackett met with County Commissioner Hamilton Meserve recently to hammer out the changes.

Brackett also discussed the issue of drafting an ordinance for towns about nuisance burglar alarms. The ordinance would set a fee for alarms that go off without cause after the owner has had a chance to have them repaired or checked out. Brackett said all 1,500 alarm calls his deputies responded to last year were false, resulting in 33 hours and 18 minutes of response time. Lt. Rand Maker told the committee there were three major reasons the alarms were going off – faulty alarms, animals setting off too-sensitive motion detectors, or people coming to work at the home who didn’t know how to turn off the alarm. Brackett related one story of a family whose alarm went off regularly in the summer; the culprit turned out to be an oscillating fan moving curtains.

Brackett said he would provide the draft ordinance to the committee members when it is finished.

The only other agenda item was capital improvement and reserves budgets. Until County Administrator Carrie Kipfer began her tenure, the county did not have a capital improvement budget at all as line items. Kipfer gave the example of the underground oil tank three years beyond its life expectancy, and that will cost $250,000 to replace – unless it leaks first, in which case the cost will be much higher. Because the county knows the issue needs addressing sooner rather than later, the buildings and grounds line item request more than doubled in 2019. Planned spending on the recycling department machinery and trucks are another big ticket item, and one of the items – the baler machine – will have to be replaced soon, at a cost of $400,000. Finance Director Michelle Cearbaugh said she was looking for direction, since the capital improvement plan is a new document with a different timing of expected failure. The capital improvement budget is about 1.5 percent of the budget. The committee requested cutting the capital improvement budget by $80,700.

Commissioners will review the county budget and may tweak items whose costs are not yet known including health care and contracts being negotiated.