City & County Beginning to Draw Lines on Paying for Shared Expenses
December 18th, 2014 by Joe Burgess
At last week’s City Council budget committee meeting, the group discussed budget items that could be cost-shared with the county.
One of these items was the “man on the hill” at the transfer station. This city employee operates the compactor the presses the (city and county’s) trash, after it is dumped from the trash trucks.
At Monday night’s quorum court meeting, a request from the city to split that cost was discussed. Judge Akin seemed to agree in principal; but did point out that the county only produced 205 ton/ month out of the total of 800 tons/month, so that a 25-30% figure may be more reaonable.
Another similar issue is the payment of expenses of the district court, along with the salaries of the deputy clerks.
On the other side of the coin, the county operates the county detention failiity which has been putting a financial burder on the county’s finances for years. Although the city does pay a set fee for MPD detainees, by far, the largest expense falls on the county, due to the way regualtions and the court system are mandated to operate.
Although both entities are operating with “mutal good intentions,” as budgets tighten, more and more issues of this nature will surface to be dealt with.
Both parties see more “deal making” down the road, but hope it can be done in a partnership manner, without hard feeling, like developed back in the 1970’s
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Study the benefits and advantages of merging the county and city administration and infrastructure to reduce costs and by ending duplicate services. The citizens would benefit.