Quorum Court members spar over spending | Miller County may have to cash CD to meet payroll

TEXARKANA, Ark. - The need to possibly cash a county certificate of deposit in order to meet payroll led to a discussion about financial priorities at a Miller County Quorum Court meeting Monday.

Last month, county officials decided to cut as many as 10 staff employees from the county's Lantz Lurry Juvenile Detention Center to save money.

Now with the need to bridge a possible payroll shortfall, coupled with plans to hire a new juvenile detention center administrator, the situation sparked heated exchanges between District 1 Justice of the Peace Eric Darden and other Quorum Court members.

"Here we are looking at hiring a new administrator for the JDC and we just dismissed 10 employees from the center, " Darden said. "How is it we can dismiss 10 employees and now we are going to spend more money hiring someone else to administrate the center?"

District 10 JP John Halton said the Quorum Court can't tell the county judge (Cathy Harrison, who was absent from Monday's meeting) who she can hire.

"I understand what you're saying, but we can't tell the judge who to hire; We can only advise her on who to hire and on how to set a salary," Haltom said.

Darden disagreed, saying JPs are responsible for having a say in county's budgetary matters.

"Here we are dismissing 10 employees from the center, to save money, now we are having to put money back into the county (cashing a CD) to hire someone who will be getting a large salary," Darden said.

Haltom replied that he didn't know if the salary for the JDC administration position would be comparable to money saved by the staff layoffs.

Miller County Budget and Finance Committee Chairman Ernest Pender then told Darden that the matter wasn't going to be decided during the meeting.

"I'm afraid that we are just going to have to agree to disagree," Pender said

Following the discussion, the Quorum Court approved using a $200,000 state historic preservation grant to pay for water leak repairs on the courthouse's third-floor roof.

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